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 Poetry: The Struggle, by RJ Britten

Genre: Personality

Imagine for a moment a room filled with creative people.

You know the types, the real creative people.

The ones who wear their personality out loud.

The ones who have messy hair or even colour it purple, and perhaps have shoes that match or

A bright multicoloured outfit catching your eye causing you to stop and consider

Why?

Then there’s me.

Plain old simple me, who,

walks into the same room,

With my plain clothes, short styled hair and a slight smile to cover what’s happening inside.

You see,

I’m a hyper creative, a real hyper creative.

If I was to allow myself to let loose what’s inside, I would feel a little scared you see,

It’s my creativity.

Untamed and wild like a dust storm of ideas engulfing a traveling caravan of thoughts,

Whilst swimming deep down

into rich blue pools of water inside my own soul as a ravenous feeder, who’s not quite content until he’s well and truly full.

If I was to let loose my creativity,

I would feel a little lost you see.

It can be lonely out here,

Rolling on an ocean of artistry at the perils of my own self identity.

So I find myself hiding, not showing off my person but telling of my being, quietly.

So maybe there will be a day when, I feel it’s ok to let loose a taste of colour, to wear a shirt that shouts loud enough for all to hear, but until then,

I’m just content to be plain old simple me.

– RJ Britten

Read Poetry: Pain is my anchor, by anonymous.

Genre: dark/depression

Pain is my anchor to life

I believe there is no truth in joy

That sorrow is our reality

The most alive I have ever felt is when my heart aches and my insides try to pull at my soul

Trying hard to sever ties with life..

Sorrow is not an absence of joy,

It is intoxicating and rich, like old wine..

It is the womb of creativity

I feel high in this low

Nothing but my body , my pain is real

All the times I had ever laughed, had “fun”, they were illusions

Like magic tricks, fascinating but false and hollow…

Pain is what helps us see through the fog of fake friendships, empty promisses, forgotten lovers, fallen heroes..

Pain is , the essence of life

Rich and intoxicating , like old wine.

Read Poetry: Hate Groups by Gladys W. Muturi

Genre: Peace, Humanity, Social Commentary

Dear Hate Groups

Why do you hate us?

What have we done to you?

Are we your targets to get rid of or grow attention from the media

I am woman made not to hate

I have a child, an innocent child who doesn’t understand the world yet.

You say, “Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group” and yet

Unarmed black men and black women get shot by police officers and get away with murder

While We get blame for crimes we didn’t even do

Can’t we just get along?

We’re not your enemies

We’re your friends

We don’t have to fight

Let’s teach our children to love not to hate

If it weren’t for God, he would’ve never created us in different colors

Can’t we just be kind?

There’s no need to fight

Let’s endure each other

Embrace each other

Give hugs and kisses to each other

Sing Kumbaya in perfect harmony

Accept each other whether we’re black or white

Can’t you see? The Point is….

The world is different, we’re different

Love,

A Human who loves Humans

Read Poetry: Wonderful, by J.S.T Louise

(after watching Lee Camp interview Eleanor Goldfield)

Golden fields, we’re all sunflowers
Dandelions, clover, and milkweed.

Dawn is passing and the soils tilled
And soon the worms of us will multiply
Into awakening the settled stardust gifted
From the eve of time in which we sprung
Into existence.

Hell’s an invisible tsunami wave
Of Constitutional burning Bills with surgical
Divided poison spitting lies. It’s here. It’s here
Knocking at our door, every hole, all the windows
Are broken. The door is opened wide
And an invisible bully is holding his joy stick —

Into the sun we shall fully see this beast is nothing
But a small percentage of men dressed in kingly
Play clothes, parading a trail of militarized
Jesters and fools, like a house of cards they
Laid down the order of their finest suits
Saving the smears for a bombshell-ed dessert.

Boom.
We threw a grenade of dirts
Mixed with seeds,
But the police took them away
Because someone in the party typed
“Bombshell grenade” on a pocket-device
Causing a trigger of emotionally robotic
Police. Help!
She said bombshell!
Badahboom. Baby

Freedom doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s just all up in your mind.

Read Poetry: Love (Maya), by Puneet Sangwani

Tender touch onto a wounded Smudge;
A Radiant Smile spreading Sun-shine.
Dear Mother’s midnight trudge;
and her plight to the almighty divine.

An up-to-the-last-minute journey;
Scars of a lonesome battle,
which they vehemently call as suffering
towards the end, a worthy companion.

Musings of a Sad artist
Tunes of a stringed guitar
Munificence of an old gardener,
watering the tranquil flower.

Love is all but one.
Confidence of everything or none,
The song I wrote for you;
your smile that beamed back.

Read Poetry: COLD SONGS, by Olabisi Akinwale

It’s the secret of life
To die, with blood flowing in your veins
.
We lost a sister to the songs in her throat
We knew she would not survive the whips
From nights when the moon burns her pride to ashes
And days when the sun mocks the radiance in her eyes
.
On many faces are birds with broken nest
Flying to the ends of the earth- where death is the only hope of
bodies, running from their own body
.
Somewhere in this verse
Is a boy burning with cold fire into strange tongues
His father was the man you met on your way home- walking on his head
The man you saw numbering his days, with sad numerals
The man who said God exist only in fictions, forklores, and in non
existing worlds
.
Life is a sorcerer, her languages are too complex to be spoken by
women, yet to die with their seeds growing in them
.
This song are the dirges
– in the mouths of boys who murdered themselves and ran away
– girls, in the confluence where blood and history met
– in the tales of a father with ten sons, having none
– mothers, seeking the life in a world different from theirs
.
There’s a voice calling you home in poems like this
Skate on their surfaces- it’s god’s art in dark places
.
© Olabisi Abiodun Akinwale
Undiluted Poet
#UndilutedPoetry

Read Poetry: The twain that never cross parts, Okah Obinna Joseph

Drowning in sounds of figmented imaginations
Nope it’s a bad nightmare of incarceration 
Torturing me with scars and tears 
As I fright back into my shell of fears 
Reminiscing good times 
Scathing our cherish, dreams and memories 
With haunted sacrifices 

I lost myself changing for you or else ? 
While you changed for someone else 
Oh no ! you bought me a bitter sweet 
I’m not a wailing wailer for meat 
But this bitter pill is really costly 
As thou faithfully betrayed Bostly 

A vengeance of forgiveness
Is the magical agony of kindness
Oh Love and passion ! 
What a cruel combination !
Dear time shower your miracles 
Please don’t fling me away like a rag doll just like the team of Heracles 

I’m drunk to stupor 
Because my saviour is liquor 
Just two minutes to rebuild the glass 
But forever to rebuild my breathing flask 
My emptiness only has hate 
Like wounds of the diabetic gate 

No ounce of mercy 
In Bovary and madam Stacy
There’s no moving on
The end is all one 
I hope the twain never cross parts 
As breaking romance surely sparks

Read Poetry: Agony, by Sujoy Bhattacharya

An apathetically toxic sound entered my mortal
visual organ .
Dandified with the foppish arrogance of cosmic
supremacy the
sound reverberated in my frozen heart preserved
at the core
of Antarctic effigy emanating sigh of vacuity .
Dead dynasties
delineated perpetually flapping flag of time studded
with space spacious !
Flippant cosmic rays cooing with the dead stars –
corpse love !
Coffined human love taking a flimsy phantom
figure was
pouring elixir -stolen from Egyptian mummies.
My amputated
organs scattered over the oceans were reading
the inscriptions
of time over the tapestry of space dew – drenched!
My severed
tongue was licking languidly the spilling psalm of
humanity !
Millions of mouths were chanting dogged dogmatic
doctrine
to establish monuments of ephemeral discourse .Lonely polestar
was politely polishing the rusted metal deity of
compassion ,
so that it could radiate again the theory of relationship!

Read Poetry: THE MANSION OF RUSSIAN CREEPS, by Fadrian Bartley

On the remote island of Russian creeps

A cast away washed ashore wounded and weak

Upon awakening such place he has never seen

Not familiar to his eyes, or has he ever being

Struggle to stand, and from his feet he bled

With the buzzing sounds he constantly heard in his head

Stranded at the shore no one seem to be at bay

No ship approaching and no one coming his way

Unconsciously he fainted, fell to the ground,

And woke only to find himself chained and tied down

To a basement in a mansion that’s where he was

With antique items and dirty old rugs

Swiftly and quietly appears a mysterious girl

With the appearance of what seems not from this world

In front of a huge mirror she stands combing her hair

While the lost victim sit quietly and trembled in fear

As she brushed her hair with a sweet humming from her voice

‘’What am I doing here? he yelled’’

You are here for a reason,

And You are here for a choice

With her hair reached to the ground,

By then the humming stops and not a sound

Struggling to free himself from those fetters and chains

The flashing of lightening along with the pouring rain

The child began to laugh and this is what she says

‘’On Russian creeps you stranded for days’’

‘’You are still asleep bound in this maize’’

Here is the mirror where you will find your way’’

As these words spill from her velvet lips

He saw an imprint sign carved on her wrist

Angrily he shouted ‘’let me go, let me go’

She replied ‘I scream those exact words before I die seven years ago’

Her tears became dark, And black as charcoal

With her hair falling out, and the face grew old

Her skin began to fade while he watched fearfully and lingers

And what remains of her was only a ring that fell from her dead fingers

A shattered mirror blast in pieces

While her scream echoes, and all that there is began to depleted

Struggling and shouting but no one could hear

Down from the basement is all a soundless fear

Awaken from a dream, a dream that’s what it seems

Terrified in himself he wonders what all these means

But the occurrence endless and seems to follow

Through the dreadful catastrophe and sleepy hollow

There were noises in the walls

Of little children running through the halls

From his bed he ran to look

Taken with him a cross hidden inside of a book

Looking around in expectation, but all was only a strange phenomenon.