Author: poetryfest

Once a goddess.
Now, she slowly gasps for breath as she chokes.
Chokes on our smoke.
Flaring Lungs, Forests Burned.
Plastic Face, Plastic Sea’s.
Dazed memory, Pollution.

The bacteria spread their infection,
Through her veins. She dies slowly.
Even though she rains and floods them,
They mutate and attack.
Yet they claim they are children of the holy.

There used to be stars.
Now, there are pointed fingers.
The same fingers that dictate and declare war.
Wars that destroy the homes of children.
Once sitting there with the toys,
Now, hit by the noise.
Beirut. Baku. Budapest.

“Is there life on Mars?”
Bowie asked it like a prayer.
We made it a plan.
As if we deserve another world to ruin.

We rid the sky of stars,
Similarly to the over-priced products
We pay for to rid the pimples on our face.

She was a goddess once,
Green limbed and river voiced,
Hips like the hills, lungs of the forest,
Heartbeat in the tide.

Now she coughs in silence.
Oil pools where blood should be.
Plastic chokes her throat.

Beaten down,
Abused and assaulted.
Similarly to us down here, but we are cared for.
She’s all alone.

The moon turns away.
The oceans climb the stairs.
Even the worms seem tired.

No stars.
Just fingers.
And none of them
lift the sky back up.

(for my father’s son, Vova Chechotkin, 33)

Father told him.
not too high,
not too low,
As he gifted the waxed wings
and released him from his cage.
As if the world ever listened
to a father’s fear.

He wore thirty-three on his back,

And he ran like he was racing the sun with his baseball bat.

Strange,

How the number stayed with him,

right to the end.

He laughed like nothing could touch him,
a sound brighter than the sky.
He didn’t look back.
Not once.

I saw as Father tried to steady him,
guiding, following, warning.
But he found his wind,
(a wind that would carry ghosts)
and made it his own.

Father watched.
He always watched.
Through the storms,
the silence,
The slow climb back
into the bright light.

And when he finally flew,
free, clear,
No ghosts clinging to his heels.
The world reached for him,
and took him too fast.

Soon enough,
He fell from the great height.

They still say
He had so much ahead,
But Father saw
How far he came.

That flight?
That was everything.

And sometimes,
When the sky is too dark
And the world feels too quiet,
Father speaks out to the moon.

“Careful, son.
For the danger of fun
can quickly turn into memory,
of the boy
who flew too close to the sun.”

These smart primates have surprised me
with the way they dream up changes
and bring them about with nimble fingers,
grasping tools hewed from all the materials
found from my surface deep into my crust,
living plants and flowing water cobbles,
metals made molten a million years ago,
rocks compressed as I shift and groan,
metamorphosing into marbles and schists,
coy crystals sparkling in my crevices,
and oily remains of carboniferous plants.
These humans find them all, exploring
in packs, swarming over my surfaces,
diving into my most turbulent waters,
shimmying into my caves and up my mountains,
oddly undaunted by my proudest features.
The humans chop, peel, spill, poke, shave,
pluck, tear, gore, mash, and mutilate me
beyond recognition. Yet, inside, I remain the same,
steadfast in my core and buffered by my mantle,
the human attentions only skin-deep.
When the people are gone someday, finished
with trying to shape me to their favor,
having extracted and exhausted
the resources they need,
I will still be humming along, dancing circles
around my Sun, and sending bursts of magma
to my surface, doing my own kind of play,
making new rocks and rivers and rainbows,
remembering how clever the people were, yet
so short-lived against my four and a half billion years.

I found a girl, five foot three,
voice a tremble, off-key melody,
but sweet, like wind through tired trees.
She danced through luxury stores, sang in
queues, and made the world hush. I had
my heart, but not much cash,so I stayed
in shadows, swallowed by receipts, alone.
Love, priced out. Affection isn’t tax-free.
They say diamonds last forever—get her one.
But diamond is just carbon; pressed and
punished. We are carbon too. We are
love shaped by pressure. Yet the tills
don’t ring for soft hands, for poor
men who feel deeply. She left.
The world applauded silence.
We are the prize, not what
we can buy. But no one
wants a broke flame.
No spark. Just
longing.

Across the night sky stars are scattered carelessly;
the tears of heaven
fallen through the golden bars,
lost to our sky forevermore.

Burning bright in the sky,
they are visited only by the sun and moon,
isolated in their collective exile.

They glint and glimmer, winking at me from above.
I see them untethered and unbound,
brilliance sewn across a sea with no end.

One by one I watch them fall,
streaking across the canvas for one blazing second.
They disappear from sight
off the edge of the painting
vanishing into unborn dreams.

The only time I see you now,
Is at night behind heavy eyelids
I would sell my wasted soul
For one last look at your face

I can still remember our last night
Tangled skin and spirits under moonlight
A pale sunrise chases the dream away
Now alone in this half-empty bed

The grief threatens to smother me.
A life without you isn’t acceptable
I plead with the gods for relief
I find it in the woods

I visited a woman with a bent nose
A laughable caricature
One of her eyes is milky white
Like the moon under cloud cover

My mind is telling me to go home
But with you gone, I don’t know where that is
The very meaning of the word is now in question
Everything feels gray and faded

So, for nine days, I ate the woman’s black, unleavened bread
And drank the sour muscadine’s blood
And threw out all my salt
My clothes reek of decay and rot

Midnight sky is angry on the ninth night
Like it knew what I had done
The thunder renders judgments
On my unholy and blasphemous rite

I see you silhouetted in the lightning
Making your way down the hall
Past the pictures that we hung
To the bed we used to share

I feel the knife before I see it
It sinks deep into my chest
Creeping death comes over me
I have damned myself

It is then that I finally see you
As my eyelids grow heavy
I sold my very soul
For one last look at your face

For Jed

Why I went back
that black night,
after they cut you down,
as yellow tape lashed and whipped
like a torn sail in a storm,
after rain scoured the pavement raw—

Tell them
the window was unlatched.
Tell them
I slipped inside, shadow-thin,
crawled back through the dust,
through the whiskey-hickory musk
of your absence,
for one last look.

Tell them
I took your hat from its hook—
the sun-bleached ball cap,
mesh lined with the salt of your sweat,
still cupped to the shape of your brow.
The last thing you took off
before
taking
your life.

I watched the smoke leave her mouth
Like a river
Rising up towards the moon
Disappearing into the sky
Her eyes twinkling at me like the
stars above
With every beat of
This meat in my chest
I think-
I love her
I cant help
But to smile i
Love everything about her
I love
Intertwining with her and
Everything we do
I love how we
Bloom together
We’ve wilted
Together too
I love loving her
Her is You

Sitting high above the clouds on her pedestal
A queen, watching over her disciples
Watching as they admire her from below
Waiting for the sun to return to her once again
Putting every single soul in awe of her beauty and prestige
Of her peace
Her stillness
And her ability to shine through all the hours of even the darkest nights
Many souls left only to hope and wish to be allowed closer to her
Even if it means to switch places with the sun
Setting the world on fire just to exist nearer to her
See the sun has the sole privileges to bask fully in her presence
Fighting off any others who even lay eyes in her direction
A perfect duo
Both lighting the way through the journey of life
But their love is forbidden
A force keeping them just far enough apart as they try to find a way through it
only occasionally allowed to come together
Joining into one
Casting a lovely silhouette
An absolute awe invoking picture of their partnership
Appreciating every second that they have as they brush against each other
Holding on for as long as they possibly can
Regardless of how long, even a million rotations of the earth
It’s never enough time spent with you
My moon ❤

So what if I die?
leaving behind the old
murky water in the fridge

So what if I die?
A half tank of gas
All those damn emails
This is what it means to be alive

So what if I die?
Who will watch the dust
Collecting in the corners of the room
I didn’t sweep when I was there

So what if I die?
Might as well
Take another hit or a sip
Think of all the sad songs
I’d miss

So what if I die?
Do I really want to know?
There’s a quiet answer out there I’m sure
Loud enough to keep me here

So what if I die?
Will I face the consequences
for all my sins?

Pray for me.

Take care of
All my things.