Author: poetryfest

You drank black water until your liver
burst. You lay slime green in your hearse,
after two weeks. Tart tears slip from my eyes,
stinging my cheeks that sigh relief
from your tobacco-infected lips. You dug
a grave of wrath and pride. I saw you last

before you expired alone. We were together
two days beforehand. We ate grocery store
fried chicken at nine in the morning. I wanted
Subway, and you insisted on Trini and Carmi’s
for a supreme nacho bathed in cheese and artery
blockage. The October air wasn’t as cold

as your tone when you tried to discipline me.
Hooking up your box television with no cable.
How dare you! You didn’t have Disney, Nickel-
odeon, or Cartoon Network. I didn’t want to watch
“Family Feud” with you because that wasn’t
our thing. Our thing was meeting at the police

station twice a week. Tuesdays after a long day
of fifth grade. Saturdays at the crack of dawn
till after dark. Our thing was waiting on you
because you showed up whenever you wanted,
for the havoc you initiated. You demanded power
through hatred and destruction.

I started missing you.

I started missing you
when I arrived home,
when I drove alone on a toll road
New Year’s Eve,
when you escorted me
in your robe in the chilly night,
when my lips embraced your ivory cheek
pressed together
like two hands reaching for midnight
in the moonlight.

I started missing you.

Agony simmered in my sullen eyes,
lost to heartbreak with a major surprise.
I couldn’t believe this with all your lies;
you brought me to my condemning demise.

And yet you swore to me that it was mine,
but I knew you had been with other guys.
So I poured from a tall bottle of wine
and drained it in the sink during sunrise.

It was the same wine we shared our first time,
but now the bottle is empty and so is my life.
What you have done to me should be a crime.
I was going to make you my dear wife.

How did I not see you were a disease?
Now I sit alone riddled with unease.

Mad girls running bare
through Bondi Beach Matted hair
Honey on their toes

My residence is
hollow, soaked, and dripping in
your absence tonight

My heart thumps offbeat
Stuck on mimicking Take 5
Dave Brubick? Or Paul?

My weak heart lays crushed beneath the rubble,
blood stains my blouse with a shade of crimson,
and my numb fingers search with a struggle
to find him in the dark is my beacon.

I soon squeeze his hand with our wedding band,
aching for his pulse under this debris.
There is only silence and his cold hand.
My love is gone, and now I am ready.

I stare ahead at the mass pile of black,
clutching tightly to my love’s open palm.
My lungs fill with dust while my bones are cracked.
I shut my teary eyes and remain calm.

At least I’ll be buried with my true love,
and soon I’ll be next to him up above.

eath came calling
For an elderly man.

Knocking three times
With cold boney hand.

Enfeebled old Laurence
Answered the door.

Lacking surprise
For guest he abhorred.

“I’m sure by now
You know who I am.”

“Of course I do
I’m a dying old man.”

This quixotic answer
caught Death by surprise.

Such folie and hubris
It saw in his eyes.

So Death did decide
A joke it would play.

For Grim Reaper’s humor
would be on display.

A peanut butter cookie
did suddenly appear.

But to mortal’s eye
Suspicion drew near.

With cynical distrust
Filling his guts.

Laurence replied
“I’m allergic to nuts.”

Without hesitation
It responded in breath.

“Of course… I know;
that’s why I’m called death.”

The river, clear-ish and almost green
Dropped the best gouda of my life in
At which the god of the Seine splashed at our feet
“Don’t you know I’m vegan?”

Brindle coat like a tiger, bouncing ears like swine, an elf, your face
at 13 years old has grown white like a Madagascarian lemur, none of you
is the fighting wretch they told me you were. When I brush you,
your hair flies like a hoard of locusts
in the air of our apartment, my sneezing startles you.
I find new lumps on your chest, your neck, your head
of dander, my kisses land there. I begin with the short-haired comb, then
the curry comb, then the boar’s brush to spread
the oils so your skin — a landscape of little hills
and dermatological stumps — doesn’t dry. On your left eye
an ever-bleeding wart, you whinny and snort like a thoroughbred horse,
trot and prance on the concrete searching for trash. When you sit
your hind legs are magnificent
like a sphynx. Black eyes inside them a man’s soul. Clouds
in your pupils, your chest like pure white cotton, linen thrown
in the grass and mud, your teeth a mangled mess,
o fifty-six pound, snow-footed beast with ever-growing claws
that scrape on the tar of our neighborhood, its enchanting
strangers, their legs to sniff. Your adorers. You don’t know the difference
between this block and that. Blight from the manicured
three-story homes of fence vines and front-yard sculptures.
Just its smells, prowling into the hedges where you don’t belong, your teeth a mangled mess,
lunging at the other leashed dogs. Your family
contains Shih-Tzus, Havanese, soft and groomed.
you a goose among prize ducklings. You wake every five minutes
from your curled-body naps on the couch, stare longingly over your shoulder
at me. You pule and grumble like a bored child, something along the lines of outside
or food, stomping your little feet, your tail in a semi-circled path
like an infant’s first crayon. When we do venture,
your nose like coal, obsidian, is to the ground
like an anteater, a scapegrace. Sometimes I’m not quick enough
when you snatch fried chicken skin or bones,
then throw them up a day later, and yet I feed you
like a king of beasts: salmon oils, joint supplements,
kibble and beef-flavored wet food, pressure-cooked
chicken breast, Greenies, I will give it to you willingly like a servant. I pick up your shit
and hose piss off your front legs when you aim poorly. hold you
like a toddler and buy you sweaters. I rub my face into your snout,
that wet nose, wherever it’s been, because I can’t help it.
o bourgeois idiots I pass on our walks with their $5,000 purebreds
they have no idea what they’re missing. With you
every day is gentle, kind like a secret
I stumbled upon in the dirt. Pristine
and overlooked treasure. Effigy
of the carnivorous, war chief of the benign,
creature key to a whole life, master
and teacher of the unconditional love that we,
the companions feigning to be the evolved species,
would never learn on our own.

Growing up, playing in the streets
Soccer with your friends, who’s gonna win?
Only problem is homework, no motivation
Want to get outside and just have fun.

Getting older, playing some kinds of sport
Part of a team, working hard after school
First crush, first kiss, first relationship
Feeling excited, so mature, still innocent.

Graduating school, grades okay, future awaits
Having a rough plan, studying and partying
Cause that’s what’s university about, right?
Getting to know yourself, finding out where to go, what to do.

You finish university, celebrate your degree, happy
The next day you watch the news, a war close by
Everything gets more serious, future insecure
Will the violence reach us, what can we do?

Sharing posts on social media, visibility, awareness
Nothing changes, people fight, every day a new horror
Then they start talking, rebuild the army, old strength
Mandatory military service for the younger generations.

Fear, uncertainty, never learned patriotism, only shame
How should I fight for this country, not even believing in it?
Feeling unwelcome, politicians discussing women’s rights
Not waving the rainbow flag, friends I’ve known for life facing deportation

Politicians come and gor, telling lies until they get cancelled, dying rich
Shouldn’t care about them people say, news ones going to replace soon
Problem is we voted for them, we let them reign, fighting like little children
Wanting security for themselves, “us”, not realizing majority of their people’s excluded

Giving my life for the cause, the greater good
But if the young ones die, the ones responsible for change
The only thing left is the old white men on the top
Violence can’t bring peace, only loss, hate and revenge

Remember humanity

America the nebulous, we cannot yet define thee,
America incredulous, your dreams of wealth do stymie.
America the infinite, America the cruel,
your hunger indiscriminate, you belch out sweat and fuel.
Thy holy ‘City upon a hill’ is a mountain o’er the rest
where water flows up and slakes the thirst
of billionaires and their jets.
Thy American Dream of a white picket fence
was truly fool’s errand dream,
for the suburban mother Benzo diet
belies a deeper disease.
For the cost of living is a free man’s soul,
and as he toils away his every night,
his dreams begin to invade the day
and divorce him from his inner life.
‘A free man must choose his way!’
was the first American dream,
but how can he embrace the world
if he drowns at your capitalist teet.
In America the plentiful, there’s enough to go around,
just drown the pleading poor with that pop music sound.
And when you see a forlorn face stepping off the train,
remember in America all bootstraps are made the same.