Author: poetryfest

In the fields where horses gallop and children laugh
The world that surrounds us kindles a flame
Leaving us in the heart of chaos yet to burn
And immorality yet to be forgiven
For the cries of the weak is not heard
Tyranny of the king is what reigns over all
Where are the ones who’ll fight back
Who are the ones that shall bear this toll
From amongst the weak is what sheds light
From amongst the weak shall bury us all

And let’s not forget that hospitals,
while healing, are still a place
of violence. Subtle violence.
The bandage stings. The medicine
rips memory off bone. Syringes
kiss and needles like
to cuddle you
asleep.

But the men in this rehab are trying
to learn this violence
intimately, differently, the way a bee
only briefly mistakes a hand
for the most beautiful flower.
They believe there’s hone
inside, and give
their lives believing
so.

God bless this antiseptic anger.
God bless this hospitals blues
and pinks. And God bless
the emblem of health, the two snakes
wrapped around a staff, their tiny
penetrating fangs hidden just
out of our sight.

Echoes of the Ancestral Heart,
Creating sensations in my wrists.

My wrists’ nerves pumping.
Whisper in my ears, persists.

Whispers into echoes of woes,
Tightening the noose around my wrists.

Echoes of woes into clear voices.
Tightening the grip of sharp tiny metals that pierce my wrists.

Voices into maniac yelling.
The voices of Ancestral Heart in my head:
whispering, echoing, wailing, and screaming.

The goddess Melancholy telling me to cut it.
Get rid of it.

Urging me to cut it.
Get rid of it.

Convincing me to end it.
Cut it, get rid of it, End it.

Oh! What a view it is
When I look
Outside, out of my window
I see some trees over the wall
And the beautiful leaves.
Oh! What a view it is

I look up and see
The bright blue sky
And the white clouds.
Oh! So many birds and trees
And a house
I would like to know who lives there

And finally, it rains
Making everything green

Oh! What a view it is

Tuba Fatima, 9yrs
June 2024

June: day after day
Poets illumined my way
Blessed soul stirrings

Political division,
The war of whose rights matter more.
Or as it’s so often referenced,
Right vs left.

Whose lies are we instructed to swallow
for the next 4 years?

Safer borders or better economy,
Restrict immigration or restrict use of
pronouns,
Which is more logical?

“Pronouns aren’t up for debate” – they say
So why are so many young trans people killing
themselves?

But no – “Pronouns are the issue.”
Meanwhile, planes take off – carrying
deportees back to starvation,
back to the wars we sold them.

“Logic,” they insist,
as the bodies pile up on either side.

Bury me in a blue sequined dress
with a plunging rhinestone neckline
to be looked upon in a bedazzled open coffin
lit by a hot pink spotlight under a white tent at night.

Prepare me to sparkle for eternity
a joyful unceasing beacon in the afterlife
restore the light that was quenched from me
release me from the dark.

In a faraway land of epicurean delight
Lived a legendary man who made sandwiches right
He would travel the realms to prepare for kings and queens
For what he put inside the bread were magic and dreams

His sandwiches piled high with meats from ceiling to floor
No one had ever tasted anything so glorious before
Hero to all for his marvelous belly stuffing treats
No one could challenge him or his incredible feats

At home he had a beautiful wife with golden hair
As well as a boy and a girl so cherished, oh how he cared
So lucky he was why would he ever want to venture out
Many wished they had such a beautiful family to tout

Yet restless he was wanting even more fame than he had
Was he willing to leave behind being a husband and a dad?
But ego and greed can be such a terrible lure
So, one day he set out saying he would be back for sure

From home he would roam to uncharted islands unnamed
He was looking for a mythical ingredient to enhance his fame
Searching near and far he would leave no bush or rock unturned
For he knew the fanfare, which he would receive upon his return

This ingredient he sought a rare spice he hoped to locate
Hundreds have tried but no one returned or knows of their fate
He knew he was the one to solve the mystery ahead
So onward he went “fame and fortune will be mine” he said

As he was wandering around an ogre stepped in his way
As he tried to pass, the ogre said “you are here to stay”
Inquiring “what do you mean please allow me to go by”
The ogre held firm “you are trespassing on sacred land is why”

This amazing sandwich maker was beginning to get scared
He knew he was in trouble by the ogre’s evil stare
For the first time thoughts of his family entered his head
Why had he left behind, all which he loved for glory instead

As the ogre took him away and locked him in a cell
The sandwich maker longed for his family back in the dell
What will I do he said, how will I escape to get back home?
Or will I be left here out of false pride to die all alone

They will think I left them with no intention of return
All I wanted was to be rich giving them all that I earn
Now all that I wish for is to go home to my family
Ogre I am begging, I learned my lesson, please set me free

What lesson is that the ogre said with a curious glare
All that matters in life is the family I left there
I thought Fortune and fame would provide their wildest dreams
But I have now learned our love is all that matters he beamed.

The ogre’s eyes now dampened drenching the land with his tears
Said to the sandwich maker go home right now, get out of her!
Hurry away before I change my mind and never let you go
Be what you learned, tell your wife and kids that you love them so

So, as he journeyed back to everyone, he’d left behind
He wondered what type of reception at home he would find
Would his wife become mad that he came home with empty hands?
How about his children with no gifts from this faraway land?

There before him the dell, as his house came into view
His wife on the porch so pretty, he was ever so thrilled
Their eyes met, falling into each other’s arms, holding so tight
His children joined in making everything so magically right

The Sandwich maker grateful with his family at his side
He went back to making his delights for all who stopped by
All along he had everything anyone could ever need
Family, love, and respect from all, on that he would feed

POEM:

In the sole required text for that Intro to Western Civ
State-college course I took as a freshman, in the chapter
On the 19th century Industrial Revolution in England,
I saw farmhands by the dozens streaming up the street
From a black iron gate, their agricultural work rendered
Obsolete by mechanization, migrants from fields of grain
In the West Midland countryside who’d sought employment
In the city to support their families, creased hands and faces
As smeared with soot as the chimney-sweeping children
In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience,

No longer rewarded for their labor by a soft pink layer
Of cloud on the horizon, in a dimness lit by oil lanterns,
In grimed bib overalls, black boots, and flat cloth caps,
Clogging the thoroughfares of the first big city to build
The “Satanic mills” derided, in Blake’s anthemic “Jerusalem”
For spoiling the beauty of “the green and pleasant land,”
Only to emerge, in the grainy black and white photograph
On the facing page, from a gray mass of slurry and steam,
In silhouette in the cobbled street like a herd of black sheep
After the 12-hour workday in the Birmingham factory—

Predecessors of my grandfather, my uncle, and my father,
Who lathed sheets of metal and labored in tool and die
For a coal-mining machinery company in Columbus, Ohio,
For more than thirty years each, who showered at work
And shot the shit with buddies in the locker room before
Car-pooling home in one or another of their shiny sedans,
Entering the house by the same door they’d left by at dawn,
Leaving behind in the locker at the shop clothes as greasy
And yellow safety helmets as hard and bright as those
Of their African American and Appalachian workmates:

Fabricators in the shed, forklift operators, and shippers
And receivers on the docks who routinely lost their fingers
Or got bonked in the head with a beam swung by a crane,
Yet who remained as proud of the things they produced,
Shovels, dozers, scrapers, loaders, excavators, draglines,
And universal cutting machines for fossil-fuel exploitation,
In spite of the deleterious eventual effects of pollution
And the unknown connection of coal to climate change
As the rough Brummie blokes at the end of the workday were
Of the practical things they made in those Birmingham mills:

Textiles made from the cotton of slave-camp plantations
In Asia and the Americas, cast iron from the coke of ore
Mined in creek-beds and forged in coal-burning furnaces,
Steam engines that “freed the manufacturing capacity
Of human society from the limited availability of hand, water,
And animal power,” sulfuric acid, a hybrid of copper
And iron known as “vitriol,” responsible for the modern
Chemical industry as we know it today, for the DuPonts
And Dows, the Chevrons and Monsantos, that make such vast
And inexpensive quantities of indispensable necessities,

Fertilizer, detergent, insecticide, and batteries, antifreeze,
Rust remover, petroleum, and paint, if not also responsible
For the raging epidemics of cancer that began to ravage
The reproductive organs, the breasts, endometria, cervixes,
Uteri, vulvas, vaginas, and ovaries of women, not to mention
Their lungs, livers, pancreases, lymph nodes, stomachs,
And brains, when the Forest of Arden, celebrated
As a retreat from civilization by Jacques in Shakespeare’s
Comedy As You Like It, was surveyed by greedy speculators
And clear-cut, like North America, for firewood and lumber.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I heard your voice
like thunder through the air.
Before I could think,
before there was a flinch
you appeared.

The storm doesn’t scare me,
especially when it sounds like you.

Regardless of what things look like,
you soak through my skin.
I don’t care how heavy my clothes get.
I don’t care how hard the wind blows.

It doesn’t push me back.
Whichever direction I walk
they all point towards you.

Like I belong in the middle,
somewhere closer to you.

I walk in you
until I am the only thing you see.

Before the thought of flinching
at the sound of your voice,
I remember
you are what and where
lightning kisses.

Before every storm,
there is a breath
that caresses my face
sweet and warm.

Soon after,
you appear.

I eagerly wait
for the sound
of your voice.