Author: poetryfest

Silver sparks and smoke curls
in my spirit colours of fire,
ribbons dancing on the wind
as I pull it down.

I sink into this concrete that knows me,
remembers my name
calls me home
lays me down
into long-sought forgetting.

My blood sings soft hymns
of a chorus burning bright,
then letting me go.
I am undone
and revel in it.

A breath called relief
forms deep in my once-raw throat.
Sunlight drips honeyed through leaves
onto grass I’ve made my bed.
I am free as I flicker in and out.

Aluminum cradles my craving.
Foil, a comfort food now.
Sighs lift my lungs as my head sags
to my aching chest.
Giving in never felt so good.

There are ghosts here
but I don’t mind.
They stand guard and hold me.
Safe in their arms made of vapour,
I am home.

The hush grows, my eyelids heavy
forming pillows on salted cheeks.
Burn lines are roads to better days
as I hover over this body
I yearn to leave.

My light was out when the message bore
the state of the child’s condition
and brought me kneeling to the floor
and reading what the father knew—
the object as inviolable, though reason claimed we too
would not cease in giving way
when met by forces, I recalled
my own children and imagined they…
Oh, God, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

By light, I sought to reconcile
Esse and affliction
To no unknowing dying child
to each his own condition (human)
through surreptitious bloody trial, the alter on which He too
long ceased in giving way
when met by suffering, hear Him call, Talitha cumi
on The Day.
Oh, God, You can.

I’ve met my share of opponents:

Life of mine, just ripening.
“stay away from sky, man. She’s insane.”
brain of mine consists of insane, I like sky.
until,
I open the cabinet late at night
and with all her might!
a BOOT to the face
goodbye sight.
goodnight.

Life of mine, just ripe.
“brandy doesn’t like you, man. She just thinks you are alright.”
but i saw a different side of her-
some swigs and she’ll fiddle strangers wigs
believe it or not, she wasn’t afraid of giving birds to innocent guinea pigs.
brandy was surely a treat to the boring souls
and could not be beat.

Life of mine, soaring and about to dive.
I went off and met artois.
“artois is so beautiful, mais monsieur! Goodness sake she’s a chain smoker.”
I loved that and i joined
for entertainment she hid cigarettes
En bouche!
the love of a rebellion belgian
grew grew grew
love was nothing new
with regret, I’ve returned.

My life ahead, when mimi comes.
Victory!
she’ll let me know
I have not sold my soul.

A gentle knock, father’s hum, this was the sign, it was time. The house held its
breath as I made my way out of the boy’s arms and childhood bed, marble stairs
chilling my soles, stairs that bruised shins and braved nightmares, now led to
death. Steps in between worlds. Trying to make sense at
eleven days from nineteen. Not a child, not an adult,
forever the daughter who would say, “I was 18 when my mother died.”
Grasping, yearning for structure, for a step-by-step guide for life.
How to deal with a mother withering away when your life
is meant to start, wanting predictability, sense, ABC, 123, at this premature
juncture not meant for a teenager to wash her mother’s pale body,
kissing her curled-up hands. Hoping for two plus two is four, not dry
lips cracking, pee-pads filling, straws exhausting. Life, give me a map not
morphine dripping into her veins. Is there a recipe for death as I
numbed and soothed the pain that will take years to fade. Calendula cream
on sore elbows that held my childhood. Silence. Breath rasping like torn
paper. Gone. Too late. There, a last gasp, raw, defiant, and then forever
quiet. Life over. Mother. Silence surely eternal. But no. Life kept on lifing,
radios played, bread was baked, cars drove to work, a new life ahead of
step-moms and years of grasping for handed-down wisdom only a mother can
teach. Hours at the edge of the bed speaking to her cooling body. Reciting the
unwritten agreement: “I shall eat, I shall survive, honor life, despite the ache, the
void where a mother should be, through years: 20, 25, 32, 41, 52 hours of labor,
witnessing initiations without you. Life shall continue to birth itself, rainbow
xylophone sounds shall ring as your granddaughter finds her rhythm,
You, Mom, her Oma, alive in every story I shall pass on.” I sat starting at
zero by her silent lungs and I shall forever live wildly and loudly in her name:
Anita.

We shared our rhythms
that night at the shore
sure of our love
and sure of it more
when the beauty we created
was born

It’s senior year, let’s go out, it’s our last time!
What’s going on tonight? Should we drink?
Come on…just do a line.

What’s a bedtime?
Please don’t throw up in the sink.
It’s senior year, let’s go out, it’s our last time!

To not take advantage of this would be a crime,
I’d hate for this year to stink.
Come on…just do a line.

These are the best years, definitely our prime.
No, just do it, don’t think.
It’s senior year, let’s go out, it’s our last time!

A tequila shot, with a lime.
It’ll be over before we blink,
Come on…just do a line.

What a year that was sublime!
Everyone comes and cheers, clink.
It’s senior year, let’s go out, it’s our last time!
Come on…just do a line.

For you, there is no sanctuary.
I knew it from the moment I saw you;
Scarred soul, Tired heart,
Eyes the color of the darkest storm.
In reality, you are calamity,
Untouchable, volatile force of nature,
But in my dreams, you are the very flower
That grows from the cracks of concrete.

For you, there is no sanctuary,
But in the house that I have built
High atop the mountains, high above the sea,
You will always have a place.
In the cage of my soul,
I have pried open the bars
And lit a torch
Just for you.

For you, there is no sanctuary,
But I conjure worlds, and for you
I will spin a tale of quietude, of calm seas,
Of warm dreams.
Close your eyes, sleep, and watch me
As I weave your scars into constellations,
Paint your heart with the colors of the sky,
Let your chaos guide my hands.

For you, I have made a sanctuary,
And as long as I breathe
The doors will be open.
Mossy, crooked, weathered, rusted;
In that house, a light will always shine,
Even in the darkest of nights

White man, give me apiece of your mind. A rotten mind, a backward mind, a mind that lures the black, that back bites the black, that oppress the black. A race, that runs late, on a snack, that wakes up late, that turns black late. I don’t want that mind, that rests on black hands, the hands that pick white to sew onto clothes and pillows that the master lains in the bedroom.

The police teargas the always crying eyes, the eyes that once glommed in the home Africa now no longer glowing in the promised white land . Look at me straight into my eyes while you shoot and blow up my black brains. Oh no it’s not black, it’s not white, it’s just like yours it’s just like the rest of us. Why judge me, while I protest for my rights, for what’s rightfully mine Oh ours.

I’m in the streets for Floyd, Floyd spoke, but it landed on deaf white ears, white threatened ears, all lies, we all know that, our eyes saw, of course your saw, the black, the bad, the useless, the hopeless, the get away with, like your master ancestors did. Shame on you, leave me alone, leave Floyd’s neck alone, leave us alone, we’ve been oppressed enough, Floyd said it, till he could no longer more. We can’t breathe, teargas, pepper spray, water cannons, unlike Floyd we blackly say till the white hears.

Why till today, why white man, you can’t breathe right, clear up your nose you will be fine. But not on my neck, take a break white man, you rogue law enforcer. Wait till we catch up with you in the streets, wailing, for our solely forgotten rights. This is our home too, our forefathers told us so. The dreadlocks, ours, the corn rows, ours. Keep it, the death row, that’s yours. The ones before us fought so long, for us, both black and white, why white man why, why not make it white between us.

Fight black man , like our ancestors did black man, for our always forgotten rights black man, like our forefathers for our future generation black man. Oh white man, spare us some free time white man unlike our forefathers white man. Black lives matter, that’s our main goal white man, things should change white man, unlike your white forefathers white man. As we sing, in solidarity, for our lost, for our gone, all for to come.

In 1944
A few months shy of the end of WW2
Mary Roberts, 12,
crossed a train track
several fields
and two stiles
To reach her father

It was mid harvest
Hot
Dust in the air
Earth like concrete
And he was grateful for the sandwich and the cold drink
That Mary brought with her.

It was a Wednesday
An ordinary day
If any day can be ordinary
But tragedy was unfolding
In its deepest
Most painful permutations

The sun beating on her bare shoulders
Mary made her way home
Back across the fields
Over the two stiles
And was almost at the train track
When her father realized that he had forgotten something
So he ran across the fields
Over the two stiles
And was just in time to see Mary begin to cross the track

The train that day was ahead of schedule,
But Mary was oblivious to time and trains
Thinking instead of her baby sister,
My Mother
Whose pudgy hand
She liked to hold
So when she heard the urgent horn
Of the oncoming train
The screech of the brakes as it tried
In vain

To stop
She looked up
frozen in fear
And could not move

Her father
running as fast as he could
Tried to reach her in time to
PUSH HER SIDEWAYS
Anything to stop what was about to happen
But he was not fast enough
And so instead
He witnessed
The unwatchable.

Four years later
The grief killed him too

My Mother grew up
Without a sister or a father
And this grief began to shape her
the empty rooms
the things unsaid
the tragedy
Of that ordinary day
That lingered
Like the stain of dark blood
Soaking into memory
Creeping into the future
Across generations
Until finally
This grief reaches me too

By Emma Gibson