Author: poetryfest

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man—
not just any man,
but the one who waits in the quiet corners,
the one who does not rush to claim,
who lets the music rise and fall
before he dares to reach.

I have waltzed with fools and shadows,
spun dizzy beneath reckless stars,
given my hand to fleeting smiles
and mouths that lied sweetly in the dark.
But the last dance—ah, the last—
I keep close,
tucked in the secret chamber of my heart,
untouched by clumsy hands or careless charm.

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man
who knows the weight of waiting,
who understands that the final song
is not a hurried thing,
but sacred—measured in heartbeats,
in the hush between breaths,
in the knowing glance across a quiet room.

For the first dance is for the eager,
the bold, the untested.
The second for the curious,
the hungry and the hopeful.
But the last—oh, the last—
belongs to the patient one,
the one who stays
when all the music has faded,
when the lights are low
and the floor is bare.

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man
who knows this truth:
that the final step, the final turn,
is the only one that matters.
And in that moment—
when all has been spun, spent, and stilled—
I will rise, smiling,
and offer him my hand.

For the last dance is not for the world.
It is for him.
And for me.
And no one else.

your face is a peach
in this softened coral cloud
of dimmed lights and no fuzz
there’s no pit, no pare

your lips curve like the moon
a waxing gibbous softly smiling
to cast lights and shadows
across your tilted jaw

you’re wrapped in silk
but there are no sheets
just pointedly curling legs
and dancing pastel fingers

so when I close my eyes
I feel your vined limbs
wrap me up, tangling
like ivy through my mind

I have brown eyes,
Because I come from mother earth.
I get around, just like any other dirt.
My daddy stay gone like the wind,
And that is why the sun will shine and he be’ (Annie B.) smiling.
And when it rains, you can feel his pain.
And that is why mama cries, and she can make anything.
And that is why my eyes R brown.

©™Midheaven Subconsciousness©

ICE doesn’t only come
in the dead of winter –
but also when
the early summer
sun was meant to grace
the dappled green trees
in the parks, when children
clamor for lazy days
spent lolling on sparkling
beaches, the books
they borrowed last week
irreparable and evermore

covered in sand – the food
trucks gathering in lines,

reminding us of our

more acceptable hungers –
the afternoon stretching on
for an eternity – a million more
lives to live in pages
laying on dark shelves
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
the librarians post, you know
it’s bad, when the librarians
encourage you to resist…
tuck your tarjetas rojas next
to your library cards – and keep
both close to your heart
three branches across the city
of angels close their doors

to PROTECT
the PEOPLE
they SERVE

if they’d come today –
how sad to say, the library
was not a safe place
across the country, the world –
third spaces cry
In solidarity –

the library is for everyone…

except you

(This is in response to the three LA Public Libraries closing their doors, to keep their patrons safe, during last weekend’s ICE raids)

my initiation deepens
I sit and listen to your yesterwounds

nothing has changed
everything is changing

deep change goes by many names.
the songs are different?

the words are the same
the times polluted.

the ground still shakes
and there are shards falling

sister, we are still here
after the witch hunt
sister. we are still becoming

buried burgeoning I would
like everyone to start screaming.

my hands tremble when I speak

press the megaphone so close
to your lips, you almost swallow it

to hear my voice over the wind?

over “YOU BITCHES”,
over women are not a struggling class
over the call and response

OUR BODIES ?
OUR CHOICE!
WHOSE STREETS
OUR BLOODY STREETS.

I press it hard to my mouth
to replace that century old lump
they hoarded in my throat
and o p e n

pour liberation
and after the rain sleep
in your body at war

all the women in us so tired
lying perfectly still gathering

gathering heartwood for new fires
to dance to burn

to build in the ashes

The wind is persistent. That is the first thing I notice about this new house. It howls off slanted
rooftops, blows off shingles, transforms this place into something I cannot recognize. Even when
I am in my kitchen, sipping tea, I feel unwelcome, and I suppose that is fitting, because I never
wanted nor planned to be here in the first place.

It is sad, when small things die.
Silently known only to you, small delicate things, the light of the morning not yet seeing it as
it slowly fades away
fully ripe it falls out of mind like a fat berry into a hungry river
the death of an idea is such a surrender, not to defeat but in a slow fading of its finer parts and
words
until the fading impression is all that’s left
the silent and delicate nature of small things leaves our lazy eyes to rove on as curious lamps
to more happy matters
to have breathless curiosity is to miss the subtleties when they fade.

The long standing… Of imaging. Dreams, fantasies. That once dead….the notion of limping…
Into what’s done, over … what’s said.

Conceptualize. Bred activity that revitalizes. How one chose to occupy multiple spaces. Just
through solitude and not doubling down … upon mental races.

Frowning on, the abnormal vocational changes.. which doesn’t speak on the most compelling
emotion , that allows one true power to reign in.

Authenticity is the essence of purity and originality. Once the lid comes off, the world doesn’t
have to be ready…

Because, everyone is equipped with a frequent electricity, which pulsates… ready to free the
inner child, being… soul.

Flee from what doesn’t integrate. Things aren’t personal, those viewpoints … only takes.

Know the difference …between life’s tests… or God’s contests, before it’s too late.

t was in a small town in the Midwest,
Where the following story once took place,
Between a woman and a man.
Each night, she held a cross close to her chest—
Praying just as hard as one can.
Every day, he kissed the sides of her face—
To be married soon was their plan.

One morning, he went away on a quest,
A family member was very ill—
It had now been several days.
In the living room, she now tried to rest,
As the sky became a gray haze.
From inside the house, the thunderstorm still
Made her worry in many ways.

She walked through the dark house to go outside,
As small insects swirled around her oil lamp—
The floor felt warm beneath her feet.
She opened up the front door, and then sighed—
The summer air was dense and sweet.
The humidity made her skin feel damp,
While she stood in the summer heat.

The rain began with a heavy downpour,
And over the garden she spread a sheet—
Her budding roses were covered.
She wished he was home like never before—
Her heart would then feel recovered.
Without her, his life never felt complete—
A true love he had discovered.

As he rode through the woods upon his horse,
He stopped off for a moment for a drink,
And saw the creek had overflown.
On his journey back, he still felt remorse
For having left her all alone.
While riding down a path, he tried to think
Of any ways he could atone.

Now, her long wait had finally ended,
As she saw him emerging from the trees—
Keeping his promise to be wed.
From the saddle, he quickly descended,
Repeating all he had once said.
He leaned down and brushed the dirt off his knees,
Then removed the hat from his head.

Upon his return from another town,
They embraced—no longer broken-hearted—
As crickets chirped a nighttime tune.
The heavy rainfall had helped to cool down
That warm summer evening in June,
And the cloud cover in the sky parted
To reveal the strawberry moon.

1.

night after night, sunken ships dream of a thousand, pale hands
reaching up from the bottom of seaweed like insects gorging on
bodies bled into god’s great scalp

is this a train of too-many-images? I myself get lost in them, despite
my clamoring – for sleeping, for waking – my mind remains a lost chamber
and what falls apart in me

falls moondark like motes over thick patches of snow –
will never be found there – it scatters even further and I must confide now that

I never lost faith in the world, and the rivers that lived here never shut over me never
dragged me below never – drowned me but somehow

hunger stopped – when? loneliness started grafting its
long webs across the human gut where life is home and now nothing
Grows in its place, I hope it is not
my fault, isn’t it?

2.

invisible as the hard work of being alone – preparation
for home or for work, for bills, for humiliation or failure – preparation for
whatever is to come next, even dreams, those endless

wandering corridors and strange hallways where no one is there to open
a door or heed a call, eventually
the body tires trying to make sense of it, of lining up all these various tasks
while putting derangement into neat order

and the world wheels on, unfolding in a dazzlement of countless tales,
a history of spellwork, dragons and crickets and hags and bees – do you remember
your childhood? the fact of fireflies? the looming trainsounds that
fell off the horizon? all of this disappears,

bones bare in the soil, here and there, something chewed on and spat back out –
one must prepare for the final exhaustion, the moment when the spirit is
too tired to stir again, and shuts its sweet eyes forever

3.

swept and abstract as
the misty wings of dragons

the spirit, exhausted by
necessity- hidden in the

wardrobe shut against the world –
in the mind’s blank fog, not even

spring registers, but I remember
dreams, the emptiness of waking

in the middle of a longing soon to be
forgotten come the sun’s

bleak recognition – that old, tired question
pulled apart into pieces behind the chariot:

why am I thus and not otherwise?

4.

thundering fawnhood, stinking river-mulch
I arrive at the river where you loved me,

I count the empty spaces between my fingers where
on the mossbed my

hands stay open in the long wait
for rain to fall, for dusk to harken each
moment into each moment

sometimes when I am like this, I shut my eyes and wish
at the sky’s bottom another ocean where the birds swim – places
where humiliation does not exist, I go there – I touch the sea’s end where my imagination

tangles like feet in seaweed
like a gnat lost amongst the fallen kingdoms of spiderwebs, like
something not me, how long will it last?

woods my imagination grows home into
life far away, further than the green outside

the heart’s
sputtering
windmill – then decay

5.

green distance, blackbird soaked
the cemetery’s steeple scrapes the sky down to a fog’s pallor

in centuries away, my pulse thickens the woodland hum
and I am neither fearful nor lonely, what the seawaves shape

into the cliffsides is as familiar as my own hands, I am like those
that lived and died below this great tree that hugs the

hillside carved so deep with graves and their etched stones – my loves
and I, we walk the narrow stepways before the sun sets blue dark

at the water – their bare feet leave proof as deep as the world
we dance on the heads of giants –