Author: poetryfest

Call me weird, suspect, out-of-touch. Talk about how pathetic i must be when i send you unsolicited messages through social media. i don’t blame you. Ignore me, as you will. Tell your friends how desperate i must be. Warn people to stay away because talking to me is like feeding a stray dog. i’m not mad at you.

You’ve never walked in my shoes. And i’m glad for that.

Once, i saw a young lady, early twenties i would guess. She had a scar. The scar reached from ear to ear. Around her throat. She was on suicide watch. And i wondered, How bad can it be? How bad can it possibly get?

So i reach out, as only i know to. Reach out by the available means. Reach out to people more connected than any in history. Where access to each other is as close as buttons on a keyboard. But nobody is there.

So i think of the young lady and her scar. And i feel pain, because i wasn’t there.

Once, i saw a man, mid-thirties i would guess. He had no legs. He had no arms. He was placed on a motorized cart and left out in the desert heat, to beg for change. But he never spoke. Never opened his eyes. i walked by him daily, as did thousands of others. i never put change in his jar or spoke to him. Nobody did. He made us uncomfortable, so we looked away. We looked down or up or at anything but him.

So i think of this man. And i am sad, because i looked at everything but him. It’s okay to make fun of me. To laugh and warn others about my desperation. i don’t blame you and i’m not mad. But please don’t hurt the next person. They aren’t as strong. As stubborn. Don’t look down or up or anywhere but in their eyes. Sometimes, that’s all they need.

So i reach out to save my life. And that’s not your concern. Not that it matters, but i’ll be okay. i’ll be okay because of that young lady on suicide watch and that man in the desert. i’ll be okay because i want to give their suffering meaning. i reach out to save somebody else.

So i reach out because you are not alone. Because you should know that if i can be okay, you can too. Because whoever you are… i’m there. Because i’ll look at you and nothing else. I love You. And You are important.
And keep reaching out, no matter what they say about You.

The End

There is nothing to discuss – there was no country.
A nation is equivalent to paper weight.
Everything goes into dark and rise into dew.
Magneting soils instead irons – the true nature of chemistry impotence.
Lying in state of emergency and doom.
Surely, forwardness is a lacking merit.
Attempts to nullifies dust brings empty ground.
And, squaring manners of unfortunates.
Yet, everything flows like honey,
And everything lessons go down against her days and hurt the holder more.
Excruciatingly endowed with matter of time and lost,
The nation is highly fruitful and appreciated.
How is life bearing the unfortunates with hollow and sorrow of time?
All knowledge has been washed into the deep sea.
And why should ideas of moral men suffer lost in the deep sea and that of the immoral men find
Safety on dry land?
What is building in this space of things?
Then, life is meant for the coward nation.
Only the sun knows when it is convenient and erected
To punish the ill-fated ideas safeguarded on the dry land.

All the innocent cry are heard from behind and are distributed as touches of entertainments and Suffer blockage whenever it is read and seems as a noise – this is when dedicated to think on their Harass enterprises.
But surely, dragons shall arise from the deep sea to destroy all that have been cooked badly.
This happens as the moral beings continue in their manners despite all temptations and what have You.

Why should the dry land sold out unknowing to the host?
What is left to discuss once transacted?
Should we go on a run that wouldn’t talk of gain and limit?
This is highly unlikely in the land of the known.
Hence, humanity has lost his sense again.

In all, life owns no one anything if we don’t learn to appreciate goodies;
If we refuse to chase it away, and what again?
We shouldn’t count hope on justice where we don’t have a nation.
We shouldn’t have to bargain for what goes out of sight in a bright day.
And, we should go in search of the justice before it goes dark for no one knows how justice is Recently painted.

So, we hear day and night how things can never work according to wishes, but can work to answer The fate of humans.
However, human fates and wishes never give rooms to one another to work on their respective Choices – this simply means, life is too subordinate.
We only account for our time and efforts as these can somehow explore the fates and wishes

We sat on the living room couch,
the TV flickering in front of us.
For a moment, I glanced at the window—

The glass shone like a crystal ball.
I saw two ships drifting toward each other,
pausing as they met,
then slowly pulling away.

I felt a sudden gust of wind,
blowing leaves in between
two gravestones
and, a river slowing down, taking a breath
before being cut in half by an old tree.

I saw flowers in a meadow raise their heads
in denial before surrendering to the winter.

I saw it all.
Then turned back to the tv.

Sleep – you used to be one of the good guys,
used to give me lots of zizz and fizz.
But now – it seems – you’ve gone your own way.

Baby, don’t you care,
don’t you care for me no more?

Are you out there – somewhere – laying your head
on the salacious lap of a good-time girl – out for the count
on her sticky settee or snoring loudly in the thorny shrubs of suburbia.

Sleep – can I tempt you back
to me
with a soothing cup of Chamomile tea?

Sleep – come home – immediately. I need the rationale of your R.E.M.
to rescue me from baleful Buddhist chanting,
from the night after night monotony of white noise,
from the stomach-churning stench of French Lavender.

I need your help to recalibrate the present – fine-tune the future,
peel my eyes off the fractured walls – obfuscate the ceiling cracks.

We are creatures of the night, you and I, so let us lie down
together again
in safe surrender and snooze until the Blackbird sings.

Sleep – I miss you so. You were the A to Z of my psyche,
my midnight highway to the spirit world. I miss the sageness
of your graphic nightmares: the neglected ghosts,
the unremembered memories. But, most of all, I miss
the warning bark of the brown and white dog and the unexpected
visits from my father – so alive – so familiar – so welcome
in his Burnt Umber tweed – striding through love’s ectoplasm,
arms outstretched – announcing!

‘There she is,
there’s my best girl!’

I’ve lost the memory of you
In rainbow painted skies.
There is no turning back –
The love echoes are so far away
deafening my heart and soul.
A last kiss, a permanent heartache,
an everlasting missing piece in my psyche.
I fall asleep and dream of you forever…

The constitution was my shepherd. I should not have wanted
(if lawmakers had abided the law rather than fear being primaried).

The constitution now maketh me run from ICE arms:
it deports me over troubled waters.

Its aberration in the small hands of a bloated man
depletes my soul, for he leadeth us in the path of
divisiveness for his ego’s sake.

Yea, as I walk through the valley of oligarchy,
I fear evil, his retribution a rod against my back,
his staff of toadies seeking ways to disenfranchise.

He devours my freedoms at the behest of mine enemies:
he batters my head with truncheons, my blood spilling over.

Could goodness and mercy restore our rights?
Surely an enlightened electorate could evict
this false lord from our people’s house.

Once,
There was a poor little boy
Not poor in coins,
But in comfort.
Not poor in food,
But in love.

He had a mother
Who held a bottle
Tighter than her children,
Who traded bedtime stories
For silence
And babysitters.

She didn’t know
The sitter wore a smile
Like a wolf wears fur
Pretty, but hiding teeth.

The poor little boy
Was left in that house
Again
And again
And again
His body learning
What his mind couldn’t name.

In school,
When the word “sex” was said,
He tilted his head
Like a puppy chasing a sound.

“what’s that?”
He asked, honest,
Small.

The class laughed.
A boy yelled:
“when a penis goes in—”
And the teacher turned,
Just in time
To hear the poor little boy say,
‘oh, I’ve done that heaps of times at home.’

The room froze.
The teacher didn’t.
She pointed to the corner,
Not the pain.
Punished the words,
Not the wound.

He grew into a teenager
With shame in his bones.
Carrying hands
Taught by trauma,
Not by consent.

He touched someone wrong
because someone had touched him worse

The school system failed him, just like his mother failed him.

He grew up
But never out
Of the ache.

Years passed,
He wore cologne,
Wore muscles,
Wore confidence
Like armor
Over an abandoned child.

He became a man
Who never let women leave
Not because he loved them,
But because he feared empty rooms.

He cheated not for thrill,
But for survival.
If one left,
Another would still be there
To say
He mattered.

But he didn’t believe them.
Not really.
Because how do you trust
A kiss
When your first touch
Was betrayal?

He told women he loved them,
But didn’t know what love was.
Just that it sometimes came
With skin
And silence,
And left
Without warning.

He hurt women
The way he was taught love feels.
Then hated himself
For becoming the echo
Of someone else’s crime.

He’d lie awake sometimes
Beside a warm body,
Colder than he’d ever felt.
Wondering
If the boy inside him
Was still screaming
In the corner
Of that first classroom.

Wondering
Why nobody came.

He tried therapy.
Walked into the office
With trembling hands
And sat down
Like a guilty child.

He said,
“I don’t know who I am
When I’m not being touched.”

He said,
“I think the first woman
Who loved me
Was trying to erase me.”

He said,
“sometimes I don’t want to exist—
But I’m too stubborn to leave.”

The therapist said,
“you were hurt.”
He shook his head.
“no.
I was made that way.”

And still,
Some nights,
He dreams of the sister
Who said “I got you”
And didn’t.
He dreams of the girl
He hurt,
Who looked at him
Like he was the monster
Under her bed.
And he wonders
If the monster
Had a mother
Who drank herself numb.

The poor little boy
Never really left.

He just grew taller,
Learned to flirt,
Learned to fake charm
And hide the rot.

But when the lights go off
He’s still there,
Knees to chest,
Waiting in silence, for someone
To come back,
And mean it.

But in the silence, all the things we didn’t learn, remained.

Because all he ever wanted
Was for someone to stay
After they saw
Everything.

The basement smells like
rust and hush money.

Grandma says it’s the pipes,
but the pipes haven’t worked
since granddaddy disappeared.

There’s a bible on every stair.
Salt at the bottom.
A mason jar of teeth by the furnace.

The washing machine hums
like it knows a secret.

We don’t go down there.
Not since Mama came back up
with white hair and a limp.

Grandma keeps cooking
like nothing ever happened—
says men always find their way
into dark places.

We just don’t let them back out.