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.

Poetry: CARTLOADS by Sue Barnard

Genre: Society, Rhyme

 

(with profuse apologies to John Masefield)

 

Elegant young lady dressed in black Versace

gliding around Waitrose with a leisured ease,

with a cartload of oysters, mussels, truffles,

fillet steak, Bollinger, and Stilton cheese.

 

Smartish young accountant still in office outfit

trudging around Sainsbury’s on her homeward way,

with a cartload of pasta, chicken, houmous,

pitta bread, Camembert and Chardonnay.

 

Shabby hungry student rushing back from lectures,

dashing around Tesco in her faded jeans,

with a cartload of cider, Cheddar, pizza,

sliced bread, sausages and cheap baked beans.

 

Sue Barnard

Author and Editor at Crooked Cat Books

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NOVELS:

The Ghostly Father: Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Nook, Apple iBooks, GooglePlay

Nice Girls Don’t: Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Nook, Apple iBooks

The Unkindest Cut of All: Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Nook, Apple iBooks

Never on Saturday: Amazon

 

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Poetry: BE BRAVE by Felicia Smith

 Genre: BRAVERY

 To be brave is to be courageous
So, be fearless and be bold
Be unafraid to take chances,
In pursuit of your pot of gold.

To be brave is to be daring
Be undaunted by the inconceivable
When you are confident in yourself,
The impossible becomes the believable.

To be brave is to be assertive
Self-assured without a doubt
So, don’t worry about anything
Because it’s all going to work out.

To be brave is to be unfazed
While you work to achieve your ambition
Stay prepared, and trust the process
And watch your purpose come to fruition.

~Felicia L. Smith~

 

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Poetry: I AM FREE TO LIVE by Paul M. Onder

 Genre: Family

 I am free to live.
I am free to love.
I am free to forgive.
I am free to be me.
I will live free from man.
I will live to love.
I will live to forgive.
I will live to be me.
I love me and all that there is.
I love to live.
I love to forgive.
I love to love.
I learned to forgive to live free.
I forgive to love.
I forgive to relieve pain.
I forgive so I can be me.
I am a Child of GOD!

 

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Poetry: Gravy Train Drip by Don Beukes

Genre: Political

 
Implosion confusion citizens losin decay disruption fake faction no illusion anarchaic mismanagement they don’t dare say it but we know it misfed masses chew on promised molasses the need for upliftment infectious their leader his ravenous hounds their nemesis how to sweet talk this deepening the apocalyptic political gravy couldron abyss who to dismiss let’s fight this corrupt cancerous spasms deepen our country’s evolutionary chasm creating an ever widening crevasse how to deal with this the people first clench your fists in realisation the leaders plotting perfecting our damnation our rainbow nation infected false oracles elected wake from your sedated slumber or eternally regret it racial dischord still playing a dangerous note remove your visionary peel gather to once again cause our nation to heal allow the next generations to soar weed out the political flaw or would you welcome a future accusatory war? Time has long since passed for robotic political cultural obedience it’s time to remove ravenous festering fiends stop moaning and amass once again to remove a system failing let’s cause a final incision now is the time to imprint your desperate decision extract the political vermin infecting you with a gold dust slime filled old revised simmering sermon do not neglect our human intellect rise my people rise once again to fully exercise your right to change the current order squeeze out failing fodder tighten their rotten collar rise my people rise halt their obvious demise your actions might root out unscrupulous political factions ensure you do not become miscalculated human fractions once again unite and if you must even usurp to stop the ongoing rotten gravy train drip rise my people rise the time is now any means any how liberate once again a nation still on the mend…

© Don Beukes

Author of ‘ The Salamander Chronicles,’
 

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Poetry: Silent A by Nicole Long

Genre: Motivational, Society, Inspirational
 
They call me Silent A—
Who am I? They ask and don’t ask
Slithering into a discussion about
School, politics, what happened on the news—
While everyone gazes for a reaction,
Do they look concerned? What are they thinking? Do they know?
But you can’t seem to get out of the dazed,
Confused state I put you in.

I come when you least expect it—
In the middle of a bar,
The music pumping, juices flowing
Through your body.
The heart starts pounding,
Panic sets in like a
Storm crossing the horizon.
You look around, making sure no one notices.

In the middle of the night—
3am as silence fills the air,
Coming off of sleep meds and
Mixture of Vodka Tonics and Merlot,
Anything to keep the mind
At an altered state of nowhere and beyond.
But I’m screaming at you,
The toxicity won’t keep me away.

I’m the one who kills—
Friendships, relationships, your purified mind
Keeping you away from what you love,
What you don’t love.
Standing in that darkened corner,
Waiting for that next high off of me.
They call me Silent A—
You can’t see me, they can’t see me, but I see you.

 

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Poetry: Brewstorm by Anmol Chitransh

Genre – heart break, heart ache, relationship, hurt.

Everyday there is a desire
When will my heart conspire
Against my belief
That love is not a relief

My medulla swore
To fill me with hate
To the core
Just for my sake

Heart is shattered enough
Cannot break me more
I will break down myself
Just embrace my core

Dont come so close
This soul is rusty and old
Not shallow and bold
Still naive and amateur

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Poetry: THE LONE WOLF by Sebastian Arenas

 Genre: dark/sad/pain/love

 Hungry and alone the lone wolf hides.
His love fled as she lied even as he tried to be at her sides.
Wounded he licks away the blood,
Now the dark surrounds him as he sinks in the mud.

Pure tenacity allows him to survive.
Pure anger fuels his need to stay alive.
Purity of mind has now lost its shine.
Purity of heart no longer resides in his bloodline.

The cold gnaws at his bones,
Deep inside the void, pain wants to be known.
Unrelenting agony fills his howls.
Unrequited love manifests in his growls.

He lets it all out to the moon,
The only thing that sympathizes with his tune.
The lone wolf is always meant to die,
Yet this lone wolf is meant to defy.

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Poetry: LIVE TO GIVE by Jacqueline Miller-Audeh

Genre: Loss

 Waiting seemed to be the norm
They never thought how it made her feel scorned

Many times she did not understand
So all she did was take a stand

She would stand no matter what for what her heart felt was right.
After all everyone knew she would never have enough to really take flight.
But she could fight till the end
That is how time taught her spend

Some wait a little while live the life of dreams.
She waited and still waits to have a life free from there seems

She wondered if it would be ever happen
You know the basic things that make a life.
The things that she could only admire and know would never be in her life.

Funny how they never got enough
Enough of trying to teach her tough.

Tough was not her lesson.
She had and learned enough.

No one ever thought about love or compassion.

Those she knew too well
But, they too did not stay too well
Only her heart would swell

Still on she waited….
I hope she gets a little resemblance of life.

For living is not to be a strife.
She need a life to live.
Not a life to give.

 

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Poetry: Otherness by Shirley Jones-Luke

 after Alex Dimitrov

We’re on the moon. Years ago, I knew I couldn’t
save anyone. Despite that news, I made sure that
I tried to save anyone thereafter. But it’s easier to say
it than to do it. The moon doesn’t love you. Without
anyone else, I am just a room devoid of life. It is almost
impossible to exist without deception. Do you love me?

I must tell you that I’ve failed at loving you. You wanted a
deep, passionate love from me, but I could not give it. I know
that people need to be loved. But right now, I see only hate. I hear
only hate. I feel hate growing in my heart. My country is confusing me.

Our money is not infinite like the oceans. But even oceans lose their currents. Water runs dry.
Banks fail. Our money is better off under a mattress. Besides, we don’t sleep in the same bed
anyone. We haven’t in years. I don’t miss the warmth of your body. It went cold when my heart
did.

We must refuse evil. We must not abandon our hearts. We must end the worst of life, the
debased, racists, religious terrorists and the elite. They exist because we allowed them to. They
exist without love. Their love is warped. But we aren’t pure either. There is still coal inside us
diamonds.

I wish this otherness would end. But there seems to be no ending. Our love struggles onward,
life support, breathing tube, ineffective medicines. Oceans are dying. The rich continue to get

richer. The poor labor with only love to sustain them. What will sustain us? Something beyond
this otherness.

 

BIO:  Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and a writer from Boston, MA. Ms. Luke has an MFA from Emerson College. She was a 2016 Watering Hole Poetry Fellow. Her work was shortlisted in poetry by Adelaide Magazine.  Shirley’s poems have been published by Adelaide, BlazeVOX, Deluge, ENUF and Fire Poetry.

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Poetry: Autobiography of the Poet by Indunil Madhusankha

 
I am the poet
carrying a luggage of roles
all of which I play with equal interest

I am the talkative lover
who knocks on the door of your heart
and having entered,
bursts into a torrid tete-a-tete
with your inner self
and sings fantastic flirtations

I am the justice in the court
betokening perfect impartiality
and never guilty of distorting the truth
None receives the least pardon from me
for any offence

I am the policeman
following the thugs
with a baton
and filing a case against them

I am the overpowering magician
My virility, more ebullient
than that of a gunman or a swordsman
In case they can only kill a person
Yet I influence the latter
and charge the battery of his heart

I am the labourer
digging out moth eaten rubbish mounds
and recycling them

Yet, I am the poet,
the very slight poet,
still struggling for perfection.
 

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