Author: poetryfest

I was alone in a house full of people
Away with my mother in a room we shared
She slept the days away and nights she was gone
My entertainment became my own
I played card games alone
Cheated my wins
Imagination carried me through my years
Far and quietly within my corner
Dolls told my stories
Tales of tragedy and sorrow
And the triumphs that prevailed
With all the dramatic silence I could muster
Don’t get me wrong
I loved playing with others
I was a social child
But I was alone
My family felt unknown to my world
So I pulled out some cards
Shuffled them well
Set up a game for two
And played till I fell

Across sunsets everlasting
in a world untouched,
I loved you at first touch.
As close as pages in a book
with lyrics to our hook,
sing me our song.
With you in our world I predict no wrong.
Just us and air,
living in a locked stare.
Seeing me past blemishes and flaws,
deeper than the cause.
I wish we could live in this pause.
Seeing you seeing me
sipping on what we could be,
asking if we should be?

Damn, how could we, not have fallen in love
way before first loves and first times.
Go back and meet me before heart break.
Save me from myself that time,
so i wouldn’t have to question myself this time.
Am I being true to myself this time?
Because this time,
Her,
With you,
And with me,
Love can be something less cliche than eternity,
always brief but never temporary, forevermore.
More so forever and more,
the two of us L O and V E.
Hello and be with me.
For 3am will never be alone again.
No more because of 3 I am alone again,
but just us two.
Truthful and together,
whole and free,
you completing the completed me.

Can we dance together?
Every movement we make can be a romance
and we can fall more in love with every second of every motion
And I love you in motion,
too forever to be stand still
but don’t get me wrong if we stand still i can love you still,
and in silence.

Let’s just smoke my love,
so we can fall more in love
by falling from a high.
And I hope bye will never be words passed
through tongue and teeth,
because I feel like we are still living in the ‘hello’s’ and never let ‘go’s’.
And if we are to ever let go
I want this to be how we recall.
I want us to remember that we had our forever,
even if it will be ever so brief.
Just know that for me,
I truly believe that this time it’s real,
and if not next time will.

Letters to a lover from a hopeless romantic

We burn along our strange green planet
Warmer and warmer the streets singe
Above us, an impending doom gleams
It reaches a hand down
We believe it will only ever loom
Still, it is there, and it will appear
Hope dims to the trees that sing
Summers reach heights to the winters that freeze
Everything becomes a far away dream
Fading away into its own esteem
Seeds of a pomegranate tree dig within our earth
Achingly awaiting to grow in vain
Like a curious cat, I sit watching it try to bloom
It’s all we can to while waiting to be consumed

The crack in the surface of a shell

The awakening that your resilience cannot keep you here

The anticipation grows a fever until it is something nameless and running across a sunset you thought was home

Your sensitivity as a child was always passed off as a faceless creature

But now that it is grown, you wonder if you manifested this darkness into reality by waiting patiently for the fall of a foot’s shield

The crack in the morning sky is a reminder that not all are weeping, half alive, drowning in an ocean of solitude

Not all are still surviving and exhausted as you

You are a woman but no this grief has turned you into a child, hasn’t it?

You are just a thing with rage and sorrow, stumbling into your mother’s arms and praying once more for a miracle

The crack in all you know has bared its teeth

And here you are learning to live again

Learning how to breathe against a fire of loss

How trauma becomes all you can relate to, all you can answer to, all your bones understand

How the normalcy of even a morning coffee feels foreign against your lips

Today, I thought
the sky looked like
nothing so much as
the inside of my
thighs, clouds like
stretch marks ribboning
thin and wavering
grooves across evenings
I’d forgotten could be so blue.

A genetic predisposition.
My skin running like
cheap nylons,
fissures so gradual
I’m shocked to encounter
them and a little
surprised to find
the banded skin
inside the rifts
is as soft
as clouds.

Sometimes I like to think
that the stars watch us, too.
They look down in awe
at the pockets of light we’ve created
along every city street—
as if to say,
“We hope you see us, too.”
I like to imagine
the stars staring in wonder
at the dark expanse of a rural night.
They make constellations
out of each and every porch light.
Sometimes I like to think
that they yearn to be closer to us, too.

I woke up
looked into the mirror
and my youth was gone.
But there wasn’t a single
laughter line in sight.
Just a smooth canvas,
with empty
m
e
m
o
r
i
e
s

The Felon President
Chomps down cow flesh

With cheese and fries.
His penis throbs for virgins.

He commands an army
Built on hate and power.

Staffers demand
Destruction and blood.

His tanks grind asphalt
Rolling past

The White House.
This proves he’s special,

An old boy
Planning retaliation

Against rivals
Crowding the Earth.

I. Sterile Field

The bodies don’t speak,
but they suggest.

Each morning,
I unwrap their silence
like a gift no one wants,
toe tag, chest split,
drain what dreams remain.

They smell of cooled iron,
of memory.
One still wore lipstick.
One still wept
from ducts that shouldn’t function.

I reach into cavities
with gloved grace,
plucking organs
like rosary beads.

Behind the mask,
I hum
not melody,
but rhythm,
to keep time
from folding inward.

They say we are sterile.
But the bodies remember.
They always do.
They follow home
on the undersides of fingernails,
in the breath I exhale
into my sleeping wife’s mouth.

II. Tupperware and Tendons

Dinner is overcooked,
chicken, dry,
sliced too neatly.
I stare at the cut
like it might twitch.

My wife says
her elbow hurts.
I imagine an incision
along the medial line,
just a peek
at what screams beneath.

The fridge hums
like a morgue drawer.
I reach for silverware
and touch only clamps.
My wife blinks.
She smells faintly
of antiseptic.

I clean the counter
in concentric circles.
A ritual.
A ward.

In the kitchen window,
my reflection is gowned,
gloved,
face shielded.

Behind me,
the hallway pulses,
soft light,
a tray of tools,
another case
to open.

III. Autopsy of a Living Room

The carpet is too red.
Too textured.
I kneel
and test for viscosity.

In the lamplight,
my coffee table reveals
its inner anatomy,
bone beneath varnish,
capillaries of splintered wood.

My wife lies on the couch,
half-asleep,
head tilted
at the perfect angle
of a post-mortem cranial block.

She doesn’t stir
when I whisper,
“Y-incision.”

There is a click.
The ceiling fan spins.
I don’t remember turning it on.
Its rhythm matches
a saw I haven’t used
since Tuesday.

Somewhere in the walls,
fluid moves,
not through pipes,
through veins.

I lay back on the floor.
The house breathes in.
So do I.

And finally,
we share a pulse