Author: poetryfest

Shot through the chest, it looked pretty grim
His world growing ever more dim
Sticky blood started to pool
Who knew the world could be so cruel

He reminisced about the past
It seems nothing ever lasts
He remembered all the mistakes he had made
Growing all the more afraid

Still so much to do, so many stories untold
He never got the chance to grow old
Did he do enough in his life, will he be remembered when he’s passed
He thought of the wealth he amassed

He had no warm memories, no one to put in a locket
Just the cold hard cash in his pocket
He still couldn’t buy comfort when he kicked the can
He died a billion dollars to his name, but still poorer than the average man

the brink of a nose, beckoning
fingers dampened with sweet vanilla extract
while the tongue regurgitates the bitter liqueur
venom of mama’s milk and cookies

the outreach of limbs, hankering tendons and all
this daddy’s girl of a claw machine, clambering for comfort
while the pupils of his eyes shrivel in withering sights
predator of papa’s unzipped mind

the grippling of pleasure receptors to that scarlett nectar
dimples rippling to orbs at the knees of euphoria
before her kiss takes your breath away for a second too long
cannibal of neon desire

the laying of your skin against mine, and
the shutting of those longing eyes, oh won’t you
let my fingers worm themselves into your soft ears, and you can
touch, and lust, and thrust, but never ever trust
this sleeptalk to leave you with
secrets that belong in daylight

your fingers peer into this peephole of a mouth
wander this pink welcome mat of soft and shallow buds, oh

please, won’t you do me a favor?

do not dare venture any farther into this tunnel
contorted and inflamed with antique imprints of screams
when your tracings slip from my gums
do not ask the secret to these sharp and jagged teeth

catch a whiff of decadence, carry no promise of spoonfuls

let my hands keep clean, reaching than clawing
for exhilaration be a craving, never a longing
set me free baby, won’t you promise me,
you’ll find another lady for this male fantasy.

The house remembers.
That’s what the old woman said
when she handed me the keys.
She looked at me
like she knew
exactly who I was grieving.
Exactly what I was trying to bring back.

It’s his house.
Was his house.
Ours, once,
before he disappeared into the kind of silence
you can’t call back from.

I came here
because something in me believed
he might still be waiting.
Not alive.
Just
here.

And maybe I was right.

At night, the bedroom smells like his cologne.

Not strong, just enough to stop my breath.
The record player spins without prompting,
playing the same vinyl
he played the day he said,
“This house has a heart, you know.”

The third step creaks.
Always the third.
He used to skip it.
I never told him I liked that sound.

Now, the house skips it too.

Sometimes I hear him calling my name.
It’s never loud.
Just behind me.
Or below me.
Or inside the walls
like he’s pacing
and waiting
and watching.

His clothes are still folded
where I left them.
But last week,
one of his sweaters was on the floor
like someone wore it
and changed their mind.

I saw him once.
Or something that looked like him.
By the mirror.
He didn’t move.
But his eyes were mine
and his mouth didn’t smile
the way I remember.

This house
knows I want him back.
And it’s giving me pieces
like scraps of a dream
stitched together
with grief
and something darker.

The house remembers him.
And now,
so do I.
Even the parts
I tried to bury.

But it’s not him,
not really.
It just wears his voice.
Wears his shape.
Wears my want
like a key.

And I think
it’s waiting for me
to stop noticing the difference.

She is looming over you like a false god,
your room a temple where all the dead girls pray,
clawing at the ceramic of their skin for divinity
leaking through the scraps.
If you were to pluck every scar from your skin,
uprooted from their field cloaked in bitter soil,
could you create a mural?
They’ll burn the crust of your youth
and carve from your ashes a martyr.
This place is a wasteland,
a silhouette marred in smoke,
but tonight the dim light sits flush against her face,
her laughter like the ocean is alive within her chest,
like bullets folded on her tongue;
something almost contemptuous in her gaze,
disdainful,
yet still prettier than any statue
you’ve ever defaced.
This charred touch is the only thing
the two of you can share, because after all,
how else can you hope to cradle
someone who does not want to be saved?

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