Author: poetryfest

It’s a small language in a big universe, spoken only by two. We invented these words. We gave them meaning. Our tongues became fluent unwittingly. The linguists and archaeologists all agreed that our dialect was ancient. Nanoscopic. All two of its native speakers have been carbon dated. They prodded at the excavation site, at our fossilized alphabet. They studied our once intertwined bones in labs and lecture halls. They asked themselves the question: how does a language die? They answered: when no one’s left speaking it.

It’s a small language in a big universe, spoken only by one. As the sole survivor, I tried to teach the world our otherworldly lingo. They’ll never know about the spaces in between the letters. About the spaces in between the spaces. About the shape your heartprint made next to mine. About how no other brain arranged syllables in the same manner as you. About how no other brain ever will. About the trill of our dueting laughter. About the silence of a Harold Lloyd film. How does a language die? Once upon a time, I swore I would immortalize these texts. I went out kicking and screaming, snapped my ribcage in half to make room for the mutating thing in my chest.

How does a language die? Slowly but surely. Mouths are scheduled to decay and they intend on taking their kisses with them. How does a language die? As a neon blip on a dark radar, a fleeting thing of beauty. How does a language die? In the fashion of an upside-down bouquet, of brittle petals pressed between pages for preservation. How does a language die? On a fucking Tuesday. How does a language die? With its throat pulped in between your white-knuckled hands, the sputtering of its final gasps rhythmic with its myoclonic twitches. How does a language die? Lonely in the throng, grief lost in translation. How does a language die? In its frilly Sunday best, the last pair of knees glued to the last church pew, the last ears to hear the last hymns, the last time you said I love you.

The Earth staggers down the darkened alleyway,
Wobbling from the hits;
Body blows from the sun,
The Atmosphere unable to block.
The Ice melts—increasingly;
The Sea overwhelms—angrily;
The Fires burn—unapologetically;
The Rivers run dry—continuously;
The Soil wilts—dangerously;
But people don’t care.

No, their eyes are focused on distractions;
Elections, with no viable options;
Porn, with no satisfactions;
Crap, with no limitations;
War, continuations;
While the Earth, needing but not getting, satisfaction.

Heading toward catastrophe,
Like a river boat going over the falls,
People partying unlimited,
Unable to hear the Earth’s calls.
As it staggers, shakily,
Into on-coming traffic….

The story of David endures.
Biblical boy versus giant allures.
Why this tale evokes glee
Owes to simplicity
As defying a giant assures.

America and China conflict.
The young one decides to constrict.
In a world of appeasement
One acts up for a reason.
Which the powered condemn as too strict.

The giant that’s challenged is real.
It whips its own people to heel.
Using force without measure
Stealing lives, blood and treasure
The giant may yet come to deal.

I never understood the phrase “deafening silence” until your departure, until our bodies no longer inhabited the same sky. Until I understood that our last words to each other were just that, the last. That they were our goodbyes. Until I gazed at a stranger and realized that you each had the same eyes.

Until my ears rang from the sound of grief, when melancholy robbed me of its dichotomous enemy, as a shovel pierced the ground beneath my feet. In this soil, that is now your body’s home. When the sound of dirt stained by death made the hairs of my body stand still
as yours lied
idle, alone.

It was not deafening,
but deathening.

As we all felt the fog of the dawn, beaming against our skin, when moments after, we swallowed libations of an unnamed
and unknown elixir, tasting of the bereavement within.

When you first departed all I could hear was everything, just as I saw.

A fallen angel on someone’s doorstep on our way to you. A clock paralyzed, like your legs, at 9:32. In our home, I heard reverberations of the machine that couldn’t keep you alive. The chatter of the TV that you never turned off, I can’t remember, was it channel 5?

I felt your hair. Still in my brush

Still.

I saw expired food, untouched and unconsumed by you,
leaving our fridge empty once thrown out, as our hearts and
stomachs were.
Though not our minds,
for they were still trying to accept what was now true.

I never saw any of these things before, not until the color scales of my life were no longer stained by you, or yours.

I watched the illusory sight of a lightbulb in your room flicker in the afternoon. I watched the clock draw past 9:32, as I watched the sky finally change its hues.

Only this time,
I knew that it was you.
Because you painted the sky blue

Each day represents a turning page, and a blank slate
We get to start over each day if we choose to, isn’t that beautiful?
We take what we’ve learned from previous chapters and implement them into our next one
Each day is a new start, we get to write our own story, even if sometimes we feel like it’s already been written for us
Some things are inevitable, plot twists will happen, the climax may not always be what is expected
We get to choose who we keep and who to let go of
Sometimes characters will be there for a few chapters then leave, doesn’t mean they weren’t an important part of the story
Some will stay through thick and thin, no matter the storm or twists and turns that arise
We get to choose to restart again and again if need be
Isn’t it beautiful how we are the authors of our own story?

I got new glasses that have yellow lenses. They sit a bit crooked on my face, but I couldn’t pass them up. Besides, they get the job done…sort of. They don’t protect my eyes from smoke and dust, but they look really cool! Everyone’s wearing them. Some people try to get the filter off, but it was added years ago. You can’t remove some things that’ve been engraved for years –– Yellow lens…is there anything as flashy?

Because you couldn’t keep your feelings hidden for more than a week. Because I caught all the times you were staring at me, but you pretended not to. Because I saw the way your eyes softened when you looked at me. Because of the intense chemistry I originally tried to deny. Because of the tingling I felt whenever your arm brushed against mine. Because I couldn’t help but smile when we spoke. Because you were patient. Because of the pointless arguing. Because I tried to push you away, but you wanted to stay. Because you said you wouldn’t leave unless I gave you a reason. Because I couldn’t stay mad at you no matter how hard I tried.

Because of the way you couldn’t help but listen whenever I spoke. Because you remembered that cherry blossoms were my favorite. Because of the way you remembered everything I’ve ever said. Because you said I was “like a flower that stood out, that you couldn’t snatch just yet, but always wanted just for yourself.” Because you called me “adorable” whenever I “stressed over nothing.” Because you noticed parts of me that I always thought were overlooked. Because you said I was “purehearted” even at my worst. Because you knew I never had a safe place to land, so you became that for me. Because you called me out for my “bad acting” when it came to showing my true feelings. Because you simply just laughed every time I got mad and called you a jackass.

Because you called me “beautiful,” and for the first time, I actually believed it. Because being wrapped in your arms made me feel safe. Because of the way you played with my long black hair. Because of the way you could take one look into my eyes and understand me like no one else. Because you understood the deepest, darkest parts of me and still said I was worth everything.

Because you pushed me in a way that no one else ever has before, and in the best possible way. Because you never made me feel like a burden. Because you brought out my vulnerable side. Because you brought back that childhood giggle I thought was long gone. Because you brought back the version of me that’s a romantic and loves the color pink. Because you helped me fall in love with my naturally curly hair again after seventeen years. Because in the short four months we shared, I started to like the version of myself that I became whenever I was around you. Because it was simply just you.

Red suns
Over a burnt
Horizon
Culling life
From glass land
Sands of time
Shattered
As innocence
Crumbles
And cries
Out for reprieve
Assassination
Of all that
Resembles human
Severing moral
Ties and proceeding
To the lion’s den
Believing to be alive
But only a walking
Corpse
Harmony conducted
By armored weapons
Of self-appointed
Saints
Eating the Garden
Scraps flung
Off the table
For disillusioned vulnerable
A chess match
For financial supremacy
And the club is
Exclusive, exempt
As carnage paints
Itself across a
Desert canvas
Blood is a sea
Washing the feet
Of survivors
And a weary world
Watches on,
In debate,
In uneasy trust,
In quiet,
In unrest,
In anger,
In disgust
In favor
And those
Wading through
The rising tide
Gasp on thinning air
God has withdrawn
For only the just
Are given
Room to breathe.

Pity the people who pity the party,
who pick on the poor,
who take a poke and a prod at the penniless.

Peoples, plentiful as you—
the man beside you,
and the man you think you see above.

The prince pours pints of purple piss on the paupers;
presidentially, he pours onto—

Wondrous women went wandering with the willows—
wildly witted woman, walk wayward
to wilt and wine with the wizened.
We won’t wish to wash away our wonderland,
So, walk right by, on the world you wired to fire.
Witches wise and rising, going westward,

watering the woodland for the we and the wee on the way.
Wear out your wailing whimsy and collect the waif,
for I cannot wind our withering alone- watch.

You’ll find the trolls triggered,
tripped on and over the tomb.
Then the truth will trudge forth,
for this is leading them to that.
The tasteless and torturous take to tame a man who mends and bends his amends.

The men who won’t pay mind to my merit.
Merely mortal are we,
and might man be morally evil? Eyes rise—

Everyone is exempt from eternal exile
in the eyes of a non-earthly individual—
an equal opportunist
who eats and feasts with the sky lords.

Let us not lose sight of the lucky.
Lucky is the lad lying
in the lair of lunar lights,
looking on the lowly, lumbering laborers,
letting out a lion-like laugh.

Ah, the abundance of apathy
athwart the Americas.
Apart, the awry ones—
a part of the apprehended.
Almost all are unaware,
apart from the astrals.

Oh, the oppressed ones—
onward to the oracles!
The obtuse and obedient—
let us put out their obituary,
and only the objectors
will be outed to oblivion.

Rare riders of the righteous horse
through the rubble,
to the ruins of the roaring rain.

Rash are those reaping rewards,
who are rightfully rabid.
Radical is it to remind the restless
of the once right-minded,
roaring roof-toppers.

Eager ears, ebullient
for equality’s epithalamium,
each awaiting the earthlight,
an exhale and its epiphany.

An earnest expressionist,
our effervescent educators—
rest easy, to the visionaries and the envisioned,
eliminated by economic enthusiasts.

Now know nativity, nurtured by a cycled nursling,
neglected by the nightlight.
Hush now, nascent one—
come November, he will need
the stark and naked avengers
to kneel against the Nile.

Even the knights engorge on the nation’s neglected,
Their noses nestled as their knees go necrotic.

A Ney will trill as once before,
when they said long ago—
and again—
nevermore.
For it is the nearness of the ending
and the knowing of the null.