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.

Read Poem: UNDER ONE BIG SKY!, by La Gina O. Gross

My sky is cloudy filled with nebulous clouds and ominous linings threatening to destroy any light!
Under my sky, I see the homeless … digging, searching, clawing for filthy pennies, dimes and nickels in sidewalks, alleyways, graveled streets and in muddy, puddles that are sunburned chocolate.
Hear the instruments playing?
See them dancing wildly, without consciousness screaming loudly in silence saying:
“I am cold”,
“I am hungry”
“I am poor”,
Please Give More!
Do You See Them Under Our One Big Sky?
Or is your sky filled with frivolous shopping, mall hopping,
and self to self- selfie swapping. You proclaim they could
Live Better! Be better! Do better!
So you just better throw it all on black and let the roulette wheel spin and spin … until you see beauty under our one big sky.

Under my sky, I’m shuffling youthful teens to their destiny with our eyes closed.
“Straighten your ties”,
“Straighten your lies” and
“Straighten your attitudes”. “
“Go straight home”, “Please be safe” Never argue with a cop, when you’re stopped …
Comply, Comply as you reach towards our sky!
“Reach for the unseen to get the things you will see…
Please boys and girls- Listen to me!!
Do You Hear Us Under Our One Big Sky?
Or does the chatter of the young bother you?
Do you hope they don’t follow you?
As you quickly pass … Do you ask?
What dreams can I help you fulfill?
Is your hope a part of my destiny and will?
Are you our future?
Do you see a future?
Can we truly hope for a future under our one big sky?

Can we share it? Do we dare it? Could we bare it?
Or do we continue in collusion, disguised by confusion, just to make the same conclusion?
If our hearts take the risk… Maybe, we could exist-collaborating, participating, anticipating and
Yes! thanking our God for being the ALMIGHTY under our one big sky.
I pray for our grace so we can stand face to face without blaming each another….
Realizing Suddenly ….
We were just separated in fear, so let’s wipe our tear;
We Now Know Why we’re Here!
To serve each other because we deserve one other.
Let’s hug and embrace!
Open our hearts and trace …
Our colorful, contrasting footprints colliding into our skies and creating a million rainbows UNDER OUR ONE BIG SKY!!

Written by La Gina O. Gross

Read Poem: FEELINGS ARE NOT THE ENEMY, by Chisala Kataya

I came across lost paper,
the waters washed it ashore.
The letters on it a fervent thing,
I could hear the whispers,
in my ear I know they witnessed me feel.
The shaken boys screams inside me aloud.
Say see the face,
stay clear of that darkened yet glowing smile.
Says it’s that ice that burns wild like dragon fire.
That it’s that dark essence that eludes your senses.
It’s the smile already fallen from grace into depravity,
nothing you can take any further than the darkness it already is.
She the siren whose voice never sleeps,
my mind her orchestra.
She plays the blues.
In this house,
my fragile house made up of too many broken bricks.
Stained, without colour,
a plethora of dark corners that should have never existed.

I see the journey ahead,
then count the steps like my upward thoughts would make me forget about my fall after.
Like the sound of her voice was never the right note,
like she always made sad music in the words that she spoke.

The winds that blow from the East remind me of sad places.
Desolate,
abandoned wastelands,
ghosts of things that were and were not.
Fires that burned bared skin,
but not the ground long enough to make them known.
I get cut in places they never realise have been cut before,
like the smile I’d give them was just a distraction.
Like the feelings inside,
that danced around were the real enemy that I’d tried to ignore.
I’d ignore the mirrors,
the broken ones too,
anything that would reflect,
because I’d feel enough darkness inside to wanna see the raging war.

I smile,
like good guys should.
And pick up the lost paper,
that these waters washed ashore.

Read Poem: D0DG3 TH1S, by Asanda Sigenu

i write this in a drunken state with a sober mind and clear conscious
my distaste in the lie of Political Correctness feeds me lies in my dreams as cringe at every sound through my walls
so here i sit, with nothing but utter disgust at everything around me
and yet this thought of this letter sweetens my discord with all

And so

To you, you degenerate and low life

You who feeds on her undying capacity to love and forgive
You who feed her sweet nothings and rotten somethings covered in fragrances
You are nothing but a piece of filth
You are lower than filth
Preying on her naivety, of your false exterior of goodness
You are not a people – you are lower than the worms that crawl inside rats

The mere fact that you are unable to look within and see the disgust that i see is enough proof that you are what you are, sub human
Death would be to good for you, for this life you live is more than anything hell can conceive
No devil has ever been more debased and vile than you

You look at that innocent face and see nothing but your own desires being fulfilled
Your words are a poison no one should ever be subjected to but subject them you do

Spreading this disease you call reality when in truth it is but a mere perception of what you were subjected to in your own youth
Like a rape victim who denies what has happened to them your psyche has been morphed and tormented into the very thing you hate, a predator

Why do i even bother to say this you wonder, i say what i say so that you know who it is who will hunt and stalk you
Who it is that will watch you and follow you, prey on you as you prey on sheep

For as you i was subjected to the tyranny of madness but now my eyes washed clean and for the first time i truly see
In life you will torment them, so i will torment you
In death you will find no rest for i will follow you through to the ends of time

I am no hero and no heroine
I am the vengeance of innocence, arisen from the depths of a broken heart

My word shall be the last you will hear in the morning and first you will hear in the night

I shall be the demon in your shadow reminding you for all eternity of the evil you have done

Read Poetry: Sestina: THE DANGERS OF THEY, by Steven Fortune

Now I’m cornering the refuge of a definition;
algorithms made a rat of me, I’m guilty by association.
What’s an era, what’s a generation,
when the stats are kept so tight?
Where’s attrition when the compass swindles sight?
Who appoints a winner in two claims of divine right?

Duelling definers spar for geist diviners who adjudicate degrees of right.
The spectacle uncovers risk in seeking refuge in a definition.
The impasse hammering estrangement between its weight and volume compromises sight.
Is there such a thing as affiliation, even self-association,
in this era of hermetic numbers exercising its serenely tight
monopoly of flexibility on morals of a generation?

For those who have no interest in the generation
as a spiritual fraternity, there’s a claim on what is right
in the fine print of a war’s declaration statement. Money won’t be tight
forever for the soldiers or the sympathizers. Genocide will rock the definition
that endorses all manner of association
bent on prying all the pixels out of what passes for enlightened sight.

They aspire to equivocate the trust of individual sight;
they are waging eye-candy campaigns of paring down to a clique a generation
fixing to resign itself to avatar association,
for eye contact will be declared a superfluous right
in the effort to uphold the most convenient definition.
The dissipation of a noble leader’s traits is promised by the visual dissection of the leaders; the probing slices deliberate and tight.

Division of the physical enables the enforcement of a tight
command on conditions for the social. Torn between the sight
that fuels my observations, and the canon definition
of a people’s progress, I refuse to personify a generation
selling out consensus celebrations of right
to legislators celebrating easy conformity through practical association.

Indebted to identity, and tantalized by the deals of the grand association,
the ties of binding – once an easy source of solace – now are tight
beyond my grip’s ability to pick apart the right
from wrong directions on the moral map comprised from raw sight.
Is it even relevant to who’s a member of a gypsy generation?
One no longer plotting recourse to refuge in a definition?

Ghost association I invest in graded sight
until the tight constraints of a compressed generation
suffocate a sense of right with a state definition.

03 08 19