Author: poetryfest

Submit your Poetry to the Festival. Three Options: 1) To post. 2) To have performed by an actor 3) To be made into a film.

Poetry Reading: THE YEARNING, by Ken Allan Dronsfield

Performed by Hannah Ehman

Poem:

In a lifetime spent yearning

through which came wishing and dreaming

within many splendid, unquiet enthusiasms

a voice murmured back the word, prayer!

I was needy and you were solicitous,

my mind always straying to paradoxes.

Instead I uncovered brazen devotion,

the perkiness brought such euphoria

and so I screamed, ‘Is that a blessing?’

Mattering and assaultive within theodicy

Urging and purging within my slyness,

shyness or otherness, I could not awaken.

Tossing its ghost into all desires,

‘It’s that barrenness,’ I muttered

Quirkingly back into my memories

craving the eccentric, eclectic fantasy

the yearning, an essential evanescence

an evolutionist laughed at me in retort.

‘It’s that piety,’ I whispered.

The saintliness simply smiled.

Read Poem: WHAT TO GIVE UP, by Bee Smith

Just give up your fear for Lent this year.
Hold up your hands.
Surrender your terror.
Feel the bands of panic
loosen in your chest.

I know. I know!
It’s not the best of times.
But just think about all those
forty days without your silent fear.
Better than cutting out the beer
or chocolate, though
you might think you are
on the path to career suicide
seeing as all these seem to be built
on daily doses of lethal
intimidation.

Think of it as answering
the hero’s call in the desert,
braving storms, fighting demons.
Accept no imitations.
No cross would be too hard to bear,
no thorny shard would prick your resolve
to its conscience’s very quick.

You’d shrug off tax demands,
VAT, NCT, and all those other levies
apocalyptically breaching the banks of some Mississippi.
Nothing would faze your glacial gaze.
You would be as serene as the fat Buddha
sitting in your garden, all smiley
transcendence of suffering’s meaning.

Is fear the fire in the belly?
Or is it what gets us out of bed each morning?
Does it turn us into rabbits made of jelly?
Or acolytes fawning over bullies,
subjugated by every bellow?

They say the colour of cowardice is yellow.
Or is it the purple of our bruised pride?
Is it more a slow brown stew?
What do you hide? Is it
your leaden defeat and inaction?
The spilt blood of your rage’s actions?
Have you considered Agent Orange’s
decades’ long legacy?
Have you noticed the seeping
of septic envy? It seems that fear
can make up a whole rainbow coalition.

Can you give up fear for Lent,
maybe just for one year?

Bee Smith facilitates Word Alchemy Creative Writing Workshops in West Cavan and is on the Irish Art Council’s Writers in Prisons panel. Her articles can be found widely across the blogosphere. She is the author of “Brigid’s Way: Celtic Reflections on the Divine Feminine” available as an ebook on Amazon. BrigidsWay.

Read Poem: LOST AND NOT FOUND, by Aris Xarchakos

Drinking

smoking

observing life

I am lost in my senses for months

watching the sea for hours

watching the sky for days

burned by the sun

lying in a rock

nirvana

found myself dead

lying in a rock

died like a lizard

lived like a try hard

gone as a lazy rebel

far away

alone in a beach

sand in my body

eyes open without moving

watching blue sky

I am returning where i came

I am free

I am nothing.

Read Poem: WONDERLAND, by Susie Golightly

I’m the new broad in town, so let me introduce myself:
Susie Golightly; been rhymin’ since I was twelve.
I never thought a skinny white girl could rap off-the-cuff.
I wasn’t like the Lady of Rage who rocked tough and stuff.
I used to rap in front of the mirror into my microphone hand,
“Me, Myself, and I,” and “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”
But I’ll never forget that day I heard his whiney voice say,
“Hi! My name is… Slim Shady.”
I was hooked in an instant, drawn to his wit like a magnet.
A lyrical genius, spitting out nonsense that made sense.
I was no longer afraid to express myself.
Had more words in my head than a 40-foot bookshelf.

GoGo Rusha was born, and then Susie Golightly.
Both personas were known to bring life to the party.
Susie boozy slippin’ everyone roofies.
Life was so surreal it felt like the movies.
Sleepin’ all day, slangin’ all night,
higher than balloons, livin’ the circus life.
I’d seen more criminals and crazies than a penitentiary,
realized my life was a waste; too rudimentary.
So, I got out the game and back into college.
Earned my M.A. and gained book knowledge.
Half street – half geek,
could’ve been a cop on 21 Jump Street.

A Girl, Interrupted – my personality disorder: petulant borderline.
I’ve been corrupted, like Tyler Durden, got two beautiful minds –
Call me the Madd Rapper, lost in a land of jibber-jabber.
Fell to the bottom of this hole and I can’t find a ladder.
So, it’s home sweet home in this underground rap pack,
And I’m keepin’ the Beat alive like my hero Jack Kerouac –
Doo be doo be doo, it’s the hepcat crew –
bringing it to you on the ones and twos,
makin’ the scene, livin’ life on the brink.
Droppin’ bomb beats six feet deep,
‘cause society condemns what it doesn’t understand.
Escaped the callous world into this wonderland –
This place is so dope, think I’m gonna stay awhile.
So, pass that hookah Absolem, and let’s smoke some freestyles

~Susie Golightly

POETRY MOVIE: AS MY OWN BREATH , by David Dephy

Narrated by Val Cole

Editor and Visual Design by Kimberly Villarruel

Produced by Matthew Toffolo

After centuries of living with nothing, but my love to you, friends,
I found myself surrounded by the luxury of feelings and I am safe
now, I am alive, I am breathing again, but where were you, my friends,
when I was broken? I am calm now, but where were you my friends
when the emptiness encircled me and I was afraid? Where are the friends
when I need them most? I was yearning for knowledge, but from this
day on, I don’t want to know a thing except for, will I be able or not
to love you again, friends. Maybe everything and maybe nothing that I
have given or maybe not given away will ever be really as mine, as my
own breath? Hello friends, I found you after centuries of living with nothing
but my expectations — our life is what our expectations are. I thank you all.

David Dephy
January 2, 2020

Read Poem: Love Everlasting, by Oscar Wager

A haunting tale of love and life,

About a husband and his lovely wife.

Her life ended in a flash,

She was too young when the car crashed.

After her death, she watched over him,

One day, he went for a drive on a whim.

The car broke down on a lonely street,

It was wintry cold, and the car had no heat.

Some time in the night, he saw the lights of a tow truck,

And he couldn’t believe his wonderful luck.

He flagged the driver to the side of the road,

And asked the cost for the car to be towed.

They hooked up the car and climbed into the cab,

Without another thought of the tow truck’s tab.

When they stopped at the garage, to drop the car off,

Mention of the bill made the driver scoff.

He said the woman that waved him down the road,

Had paid the bill for the car to be towed.

This caused the man some confusion,

There was no woman with him; it must have been an illusion.

When the driver described the woman that night,

She had red hair, green eyes, and was dressed all in white.

The man pulled out a picture of himself and his bride,

And asked the driver if SHE had paid for the ride.

The driver agreed that she had flagged him down,

And she had been standing on the outskirts of town.

The driver took the man to see the exact place,

And when they arrived, he held his hands up to his face.

It seems that the driver had talked to the bride,

In the stretch of road where the woman had died.

“The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.” — Art of Quotation

“The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.” Carrie Mae Weems, photographer

via “The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.” — Art of Quotation

“Every creative act… involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs.” — Art of Quotation

Every creative act… involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs. Arthur Koestler, author, book quote from “The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe“.

via “Every creative act… involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs.” — Art of Quotation

”It is the ability to determine consciously what it is that interests him, and why, that differentiates the artist from the art student.” — Art of Quotation

”It is the ability to determine consciously what it is that interests him, and why, that differentiates the artist from the art student.” John F. Carlson, painter, author

via ”It is the ability to determine consciously what it is that interests him, and why, that differentiates the artist from the art student.” — Art of Quotation