Author: poetryfest

We were so close in that bed
I couldn’t help but breathe you in.
I hovered my hands over your skin
moving from hot to cold,
chasing the goosebumps from
one end of you to the other.

You held me like you meant it
and that was all the permission
I needed that night.

You don’t even make sense sometimes.
You stutter, you flutter,
all over me, tripping over
steps and phrases.

I like how the words taste in my mouth
when I answer your
stupid, vapid questions.
You weirdo.
My favorite 2AM.
Come here.
Breathe me in.
Finish the perfume on my neck.
I sprayed a little bit more when
you weren’t looking.

I think noones gonna forget
that first kiss.
A fire extinguisher
between us could not stop
the tension and attraction.
It was intimate
and almost immediate.
Like we were meant to do it
all along.

That sofa will forever hold you.
Like how you held my head and my hand
while you kissed the fucking moles out of my lips.
It will always stay with me,
how you gave me that incredible weight
of loving and leaving at the same damn time.

Hope is the thing with feathers,
shot down in my Daddy’s yard.
Blur of Red on White, a dove
fallen from frostbit window. It is a
gray overcast Morning, the day
after the funeral. From a carriage
Death lifts off his Sunglasses to
watch the Bird fall. We are in my
room and I am writing a Poem of
a Poem, so it’s not really a Poem
at all. Sue, do you hear it, too?
The call of bird song, early into
the Mourning. It is Golden-wrought,
A Muse. In the dark to me it whispers,
“Psst. Dickinson, you’ve really got to
stop isolating yourself in here. You
have no Friends, and it is Sad. Please
see a Doctor. Also, become Famous.”
My Muse sucks. But I keep writing
and I keep writing. The bird is buried
next to me and when I die. Remember
my Feathers go to You, Sue. And also
make sure to Close your Windows. Birds
seriously like to hit them Blind.

Once, or maybe twice
When I remembered how
You started fire
Howling in that midnight way
We read about in books
And calm within the kindness
Pressed and turned to roll
In recompense
The clemency sought out
Would never burn you from within
But lie awake and wonder
Once, or maybe twice
When I remembered how
Your hands caressed
The long and the invisible
While reaching out for God
Or something close enough
To break your heart and leave
You weeping out from joy
In heated beds of doubt beguiled
All misplaced, regained, removed
And locked up safely somewhere
Once, or maybe twice

Always irate
Never chaste
Laying waste
Like, cut and paste
Ever-present
Incandescent
Incessant depressant
Acting prepubescent.
Sour
Acidic
Trauer
Bromidic
Bitter
Bullshitter
Yeah, I hit her.
Created a stir.
Not really a blur.
I concur,
Your mind is as solid as vapeur.
I’m trying to with it, but I just might spit it.
You’re potent, my Sweet Lemonade.
Now I’m sure the pulp of my chest will mature.
My wrath, I will choose to detour.
Though I’m secure, I’ll fight with fervor.
You better cry for an ally.
My Sweet Lemonade.

You were always such a pig, all that was missing was the apple between your teeth.
You know I secretly loved it, even with the denial on my lips.
The laughter twinged with truth; we were the only ones in the loop.
I named you Piggy and you didn’t mind; you didn’t even try to change my mind.
Your protest, call me whatever you like “as long as you don’t call me late for dinner.”
Dinner, our favorite thing to do, you chopping vegetables and me criticizing everything.
I love who you are at the end of the night.
I let you hug me with all your might.
You love me the way that God loves the church and that’s alright.
I named you Piggy and you didn’t mind.
I love that because you were mine.

What happened to you?
What happened to the girl who’s curiosity was its guide
Who explored the new ideas of the tide
Who was so unafraid to be who she was
No matter who thought or looked
No matter who judged or dared
To tell her that what she was feeling wasn’t fair
What happened to the girl that stood by her ideals
While recognizing how the world was hurting the people she loved
Who fought for love, who saw that God did the same
Who empathized with the worst
Who prayed for better times
For immediate change instead of immediate sorrow

A youthful girl of music and whimsy
Met with mixed feelings making her dizzy
The embers of the world’s end around her
Jumping into the flames like she’s asked to
Not questioning the burns on her body
As her skin melts away to oily gasoline
That contributes to the fire birthed in empty promises
You’d never ask why the flames were there in the first place nor why you were told to jump into them
The notion of questions a danger
Yet perhaps you do not see
The notions of obedience a heavier danger
A larger weight breaking away the muscles of your heart
Each vein and artery bursting into a bloody river
That drowns you, stealing your breath and your voice

No more melodies to sing
No more harmonies to attempt
Nothing left but sheet music crumpled up and thrown away
You think the fire will bring you warmth and will warm the skies until the rain comes and cools
it all
The rain is not coming
The fire is boiling hot
And as it spreads throughout the forest
It burns us all

I’m disappointed and upset and angry
Angry because I know this is not you
Upset because you cannot oppose it
And disappointed that you’d even think that way at all
I know you won’t vote.
I know you can’t escape
I know you think there’s no point to oppose
What happened to the girl
With music in her heart
And curiosity as her guide?

The girl who asked me to swim
Because she was curious
The girl who asked me about my identity
Because she was curious
The girl who asked me about my struggles
Because she was curious

That girl is dead
Buried away in a grave her own family and system put her into
Suffocating her alive and breathing it thick dirt and moss
Until her lungs did not know what true oxygen was
Only inhaling the fake breath that their new fostered child would breathe

Perhaps deep down
I believe I did not do enough
And feel that, although I did not grab a shovel
I did not bury you away
I still see your blood on my hands
Each and every day.

What happened to you is a simple question to answer, but complex in nature
What happened to you is that you died
And reborn into a cacti to pointy to the touch and uncertain of what would be said
Rather than the flowers that cacti grew
You were reborn into spikes
Prickly and sharp
Yet, deep down, that girl that was a flower is somewhere in there

I know that right now, and possibly never, that flower will never see the light of day.
And when it wilts, what then?
What happened to you?
What will happen to you?

You keep me,
as if I were a monk
inside the monastery of your heart.

You keep me,
as the deepest secret dwelling
in the darkest part of your heart.

You keep me,
as the quickest sentiment sent and meant
to strike passion in your heart.

You keep me,
replaying inside your brain
like the melodic memories
of the best musician of every genre
playing the chords of your heart.

You keep me,
on your fingertips
like a gust of wind
blowing from a second-floor window.

And now that I am gone,
you must release me,
as life has released me inside your heart.

There’s lots of rain outside; been raining since
I woke. And now I sit and write, and hear
the gentle tap each drop produces when
it strikes our roof. Just rain, no thunder near,
no flashes in the sky; just water pouring
free from clouds, all thick and wet, pale gray
and yielding only so much light to shore
up dreams of sunlit afternoons. A day
when hugging cups of cooling tea is all
I plan to do, along with digging through
a book stack, waiting for its turn to fall.
For just as rain falls from the sky, so too
my words fall from my pen, and merge to pools
upon the page, for splashing in by fools.

10/12/12
10/19/12

Anger is the antidote for those scarred souls
Who know the impact of their pain but not the source.

Smacked by the branches of injustice,
They put reason to the side
And chop indiscriminately at all the trees around them –
Forgetting that so long as the roots remain intact,
The branches will always grow back.

Innocence is irrelevant –
Guilty is the charge
When rage is the judge
And the injured be the executioner.
The branches suffer for the pain they reflect,
While the roots take shelter beneath the surface and denounce
The machete-wielding madmen who swing in all directions,
Certain beyond all doubt that each swipe
Brings them closer to the thing they call progress.

Then, when limbs grow weary and trees stand bare,
The madmen delight in their destruction
And applaud their actions all the way home.
While the slain branches lie atop the soil,
Becoming the fuel that those roots need
To grow branches once again.

On this unseasonably cold June afternoon
my door to the balcony frames
a grid of windows and doors
in the building opposite.
We are Harvard, they are Yale,
I wish I could tell you why.

Through the cherry tree leaves, its blossoms thinning,
my daily surveillance: a magpie nest
and a boy at his desk
working at his computer.

Formatting spreadsheets and decks,
clicking menu perhaps only to feel hungry,
or looking for escapes from cells —
maybe a trip to Cornwall?
The weather there must be lovely.

Once, he looked up and at me.
I looked away,
straight into my screen.

Cornwall must be wonderful
this time of year.