Author: poetryfest

Oh yay, yay — to poets we say,
Let’s raise our pens and shout hooray!
Whether you vibe with Maya’s grace,
Or stroll through Poe’s dark, dreamy place—

Poetry speaks when we have no voice,
It soothes our hearts, it gives us choice.
It lifts us up when we are low,
And lets our deepest feelings show.

From ancient Homer’s epic scrolls,
To Rumi’s fire that stirs our souls—
To every poet, near and far,
I honor you, bright guiding star.

So here’s to verse, both fierce and free,
A gift of raw humanity.
Let every stanza, rhyme, and line
Remind us: words are so divine.

Years of betrayal
26 years to be exact
Holidays, vacations, children
Since the day they met

A long time coming
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
It didn’t hurt any less
Or make it easier to stop

On their family vacation
Cheating with him as she slept in their bed
Destruction was eminent
She slept in oblivion of the devastation that loomed

She felt completely hopeless
Worry about her children set in
Would they think less of her, would they judge
Without him she knew she would be better for them

Anger and rage
Sadness and loss
Change and growth
Forgiveness and peace

Forgiving was not for him
She deserved to be free
Enough time was wasted
She was beginning to see

JR

stand on the shoreline of the now forgotten sea.
The quiet humming of the waves is drowned by the
Music of innovation in the city that never sleeps.
The waters brush against my feet in a plea to remember—to never forget.
Outside this quiet space is a world that battles for perfection; a creature birthed into sentience,
Consuming the old to create a new.
We create knowledge that surpasses our understanding,
Gambling with fate one idea after another.
Our leaders are blind, soulless creatures grasping for more.
When will it ever be enough?

I fall to my knees, one metal and one flesh.
With each journey we pursue away from our lands,
We fail to see; our waters are poisoned.
We should have known our end was near when our future generation failed to recall
A world filled with flourishing greenery that once surrounded our homes.
Gone are the days we prayed to a god in earnest.
Now, we create our moons.
We have forsaken our bones and skin,
Sacrificing limbs for better, faster, stronger modifications.
What differentiates us from the machines we create?

Immortality stares us in the face,
Our newest adversary is aging.
We ignore what we fail to see; the trees have fallen.
The waters brush against my fingers.
I dig deeper, metal and flesh colliding.
My reflection stares at me, more silver than skin,
As I unravel underneath the glare of our artificial sky.
The soil is dying.

You can’t bury someone who still walks.
Not really.
You just carry them,
like a stone in your throat
you’ve trained yourself not to choke on.

I was only a child who finally spoke,
her only response was no Christmas for you,
like joy was a leash
and I’d finally pulled too hard.

I didn’t cry.
I calcified.
Everyone says grief is love with nowhere to go,
but what do you call it
when the person still has a phone number?
A pulse?

She was never mine.
Not really.
She loved others
but me, she avoided
because I saw too much.
I stood too tall in her shadow.
Wouldn’t shrink.

The last time we spoke,
I told her I loved her.
I meant it like a eulogy.
Then I let the silence close like soil.

I grieve her still.
Not as a mother.
As the ache
of having one
who never knew how.

Crimson leaves drifting
Echo the warmth of our love
Falling with the wind

Blood-red autumn leaves
Drift like whispers in the wind
Fading with our love

Beneath the willow
Our shadows dance in the breeze
Roots entwined as one

a sophisticate
the girl with the cigarette
she drops ash like tears

Chinese philosophy is of profound significance,
Every word contains an abstruse construal
For example, the word ‘progress’ embraces:
A walking radical, followed by a well.
The meaning is to step ahead and jump into a pit [well]
That’s progress!!!
’T enunciates the consequence of progress is:
Trap yourself in a well
And then get desolated from the world and beyond
As a frog at the bottom of the well, or rather ‘dogmatic Ye
Lang’.
China’s real estate industry has prospered so greatly
This is a touchstone of Chinese language philosophy
of ‘progress’
The quintessential model till date!
The higher education sector has also advanced so significantly
Other industries shall have to wait!!!
The ancient glyph is from ‘隹’, which refers to a bird.
The essence of ‘progress’ in traditional Chinese
Indicates: move forward and move upward
That’s the meaning of progress
Known to me to date!
Once I asked my most revered teacher:
“Teacher, how is this progress?”
Teacher: “Well, I’d speed up my efforts to improve you
Make you step into well is my solemn responsibility too
When you walk out of it on your own, then you’ll succeed.”
My teacher has already left for heavenly abode,
But now I could guess his such a recondite meaning, so deep.

May God be our witness to the love I hold for you.
A love born from pure innocence,
Where time vanished as your soul danced with mine.
Through your brown eyes, you saw me—
My flaws, my softness, my scars.
Your wisdom poured through me,
Your voice still echoing in the chambers of my mind.
The world faded when we laughed like children,
Moments now written among the stars.
Your music, your language—our cultures entwined
In something holy.
Tienes mi corazón.
Can you hear my cries?
They say fairytales aren’t real
But mi amor,
what else could you call the time I spent with you?

Attachments
If a girl sends you
a song and you don’t listen,
you are in trouble.

Hands
Drove to the salon
for a manicure, just to
be touched by someone.

Gladly gave you my life,
Like you’d given me your hand.
Laced around the blade of the knife

Indistinct, our blood mingles.
A Tragedy, they say, offhand.

The only speaker of a language unfounded,
A couple months of fluency
Deigned to echoes of anguished antiquity.

Now, I cannot talk to the girl I died for,
Only the manic wake of our suicide pact.

A second body beheaded, a phantom limb pain.
A gunshot wound to a chest that belonged to you and you only,
yet still wasn’t yours.

Every intensive surgery, every attempt to erase it all is wasted,
A pathetic copay to your apathy.

I find myself right back at what I told myself was the end.
What a mockery, isn’t it?
What kind of an end is it if it’s the starting point of my realization that I will never be able to
bury what I like to think of as dead?