Category: new poetry

Read Poem: UNDER ONE BIG SKY!, by La Gina O. Gross

My sky is cloudy filled with nebulous clouds and ominous linings threatening to destroy any light!
Under my sky, I see the homeless … digging, searching, clawing for filthy pennies, dimes and nickels in sidewalks, alleyways, graveled streets and in muddy, puddles that are sunburned chocolate.
Hear the instruments playing?
See them dancing wildly, without consciousness screaming loudly in silence saying:
“I am cold”,
“I am hungry”
“I am poor”,
Please Give More!
Do You See Them Under Our One Big Sky?
Or is your sky filled with frivolous shopping, mall hopping,
and self to self- selfie swapping. You proclaim they could
Live Better! Be better! Do better!
So you just better throw it all on black and let the roulette wheel spin and spin … until you see beauty under our one big sky.

Under my sky, I’m shuffling youthful teens to their destiny with our eyes closed.
“Straighten your ties”,
“Straighten your lies” and
“Straighten your attitudes”. “
“Go straight home”, “Please be safe” Never argue with a cop, when you’re stopped …
Comply, Comply as you reach towards our sky!
“Reach for the unseen to get the things you will see…
Please boys and girls- Listen to me!!
Do You Hear Us Under Our One Big Sky?
Or does the chatter of the young bother you?
Do you hope they don’t follow you?
As you quickly pass … Do you ask?
What dreams can I help you fulfill?
Is your hope a part of my destiny and will?
Are you our future?
Do you see a future?
Can we truly hope for a future under our one big sky?

Can we share it? Do we dare it? Could we bare it?
Or do we continue in collusion, disguised by confusion, just to make the same conclusion?
If our hearts take the risk… Maybe, we could exist-collaborating, participating, anticipating and
Yes! thanking our God for being the ALMIGHTY under our one big sky.
I pray for our grace so we can stand face to face without blaming each another….
Realizing Suddenly ….
We were just separated in fear, so let’s wipe our tear;
We Now Know Why we’re Here!
To serve each other because we deserve one other.
Let’s hug and embrace!
Open our hearts and trace …
Our colorful, contrasting footprints colliding into our skies and creating a million rainbows UNDER OUR ONE BIG SKY!!

Written by La Gina O. Gross

Read Poem: FEELINGS ARE NOT THE ENEMY, by Chisala Kataya

I came across lost paper,
the waters washed it ashore.
The letters on it a fervent thing,
I could hear the whispers,
in my ear I know they witnessed me feel.
The shaken boys screams inside me aloud.
Say see the face,
stay clear of that darkened yet glowing smile.
Says it’s that ice that burns wild like dragon fire.
That it’s that dark essence that eludes your senses.
It’s the smile already fallen from grace into depravity,
nothing you can take any further than the darkness it already is.
She the siren whose voice never sleeps,
my mind her orchestra.
She plays the blues.
In this house,
my fragile house made up of too many broken bricks.
Stained, without colour,
a plethora of dark corners that should have never existed.

I see the journey ahead,
then count the steps like my upward thoughts would make me forget about my fall after.
Like the sound of her voice was never the right note,
like she always made sad music in the words that she spoke.

The winds that blow from the East remind me of sad places.
Desolate,
abandoned wastelands,
ghosts of things that were and were not.
Fires that burned bared skin,
but not the ground long enough to make them known.
I get cut in places they never realise have been cut before,
like the smile I’d give them was just a distraction.
Like the feelings inside,
that danced around were the real enemy that I’d tried to ignore.
I’d ignore the mirrors,
the broken ones too,
anything that would reflect,
because I’d feel enough darkness inside to wanna see the raging war.

I smile,
like good guys should.
And pick up the lost paper,
that these waters washed ashore.

Read Poetry: Sestina: THE DANGERS OF THEY, by Steven Fortune

Now I’m cornering the refuge of a definition;
algorithms made a rat of me, I’m guilty by association.
What’s an era, what’s a generation,
when the stats are kept so tight?
Where’s attrition when the compass swindles sight?
Who appoints a winner in two claims of divine right?

Duelling definers spar for geist diviners who adjudicate degrees of right.
The spectacle uncovers risk in seeking refuge in a definition.
The impasse hammering estrangement between its weight and volume compromises sight.
Is there such a thing as affiliation, even self-association,
in this era of hermetic numbers exercising its serenely tight
monopoly of flexibility on morals of a generation?

For those who have no interest in the generation
as a spiritual fraternity, there’s a claim on what is right
in the fine print of a war’s declaration statement. Money won’t be tight
forever for the soldiers or the sympathizers. Genocide will rock the definition
that endorses all manner of association
bent on prying all the pixels out of what passes for enlightened sight.

They aspire to equivocate the trust of individual sight;
they are waging eye-candy campaigns of paring down to a clique a generation
fixing to resign itself to avatar association,
for eye contact will be declared a superfluous right
in the effort to uphold the most convenient definition.
The dissipation of a noble leader’s traits is promised by the visual dissection of the leaders; the probing slices deliberate and tight.

Division of the physical enables the enforcement of a tight
command on conditions for the social. Torn between the sight
that fuels my observations, and the canon definition
of a people’s progress, I refuse to personify a generation
selling out consensus celebrations of right
to legislators celebrating easy conformity through practical association.

Indebted to identity, and tantalized by the deals of the grand association,
the ties of binding – once an easy source of solace – now are tight
beyond my grip’s ability to pick apart the right
from wrong directions on the moral map comprised from raw sight.
Is it even relevant to who’s a member of a gypsy generation?
One no longer plotting recourse to refuge in a definition?

Ghost association I invest in graded sight
until the tight constraints of a compressed generation
suffocate a sense of right with a state definition.

03 08 19

Read the TOP POEMS from APRIL 2019

Read Poem: Anger………….., by Janet E. Blackwood
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/04/01/read-poem-anger-by-janet-e-blackwood/

Read Poem: SLEEP MY FRIEND, by Kat Lehmkuhl
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/31/read-poem-sleep-my-friend-by-kat-lehmkuhl/

Read Poem: I FELL IN LOVE WITH COLORS ONCE, by Kristen Corbisiero
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/31/read-poem-i-fell-in-love-with-colors-once-by-kristen-corbisiero/

Read Poem: Inna Bflat, by Sharon M. Musgrave
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/29/read-poem-inna-bflat-by-sharon-m-musgrave/

Read Poem: LET THIS DAY, by Katarina Jovcevska
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/28/read-poem-let-this-day-by-katarina-jovcevska/

Read Poem: ASPIRATION, by K. Exum
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/28/read-poem-aspiration-by-k-exum/

Read Poem: TWO WAY, by Maria Juliet
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/28/read-poem-two-way-by-maria-juliet/

Read Poem: Life and Times of my Cigarettes Death, by Samantha Broesky
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/27/read-poem-life-and-times-of-my-cigarettes-death-by-samantha-broesky/

Read Poem: NIBBLES, by Sebastian Hales
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/27/read-poem-nibbles-by-sebastian-hales/

Read Poem: Where the Tears Go, by J Hirtle
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/26/read-poem-where-the-tears-go-by-j-hirtle/

Read Poem: Creamy Sky, by Elaine Alibrandi
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/26/read-poem-creamy-sky-by-elaine-alibrandi/

Read Poem: Before It’s Too Late, by John T Leonard
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/26/read-poem-before-its-too-late-by-john-t-leonard/

Read Poem: SEMANTICS, by Mary Lynn Archibald
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/25/read-poem-semantics-by-mary-lynn-archibald/

Read Poem: Censorship, by Sahar Ajdamsani
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/25/read-poem-censorship-by-sahar-ajdamsani/

Read Poem: DARK LOVE ODE, by Kat Lehmkuhl
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/25/read-poem-dark-love-ode-by-kat-lehmkuhl/

Read Poem: LOVE THAT LOVE, by Leah Gitome
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2019/03/24/read-poem-love-that-love-by-leah-gitome/

Read Poem: Anger………….., by Janet E. Blackwood

Consuming rage, piercing arrow, internal fire emerging pain
Wasted lifetime experience offering no gain
Unexpressed festering rumblings replayed constantly inside
Questions left unanswered swelling anxiety over time
Unresolved fermenting cancer, ravaged spirit, torn soul
Screaming matches inside belied by calm frontal repose
Warped thinking, crushed spirit, hardened withered heart
Uncontrolled anger’s bitter harvest singes each part.

Read Poem: I FELL IN LOVE WITH COLORS ONCE, by Kristen Corbisiero

I feel in love with colors once,
They’re bright, attractive allure,
Drew me in time and time again,
Fingers dancing on the edge of my heart,
Caressing and sighing, teasing laughter echoed in my head,
Colors drew me close, whispered beautiful things,
I saw stars in so many different perspectives,
Saw the sunset everyday and each time gasped with the portrait that bleed into the sky,
I fell in love with all the colors,
Never questioning why,
And they all broke my heart.

The day I saw things in black and white was when I met you,
When the colors had drained me dry,
Taking whatever they could,
I still here the haunting laughter and my heart lurches.
(And it’s shameful that I miss seeing the sunset,
How the stars shone, the way the night sky bled)
The black and white, though,
It was so dull, simple and so transparent I wondered what caught my eye,
It wasn’t the vivid imagery it drew in my mind,
Couldn’t have been the thrill or excitement,
But…something still made me stay.
(Maybe I was trying to heal the mess colors left smeared across my heart)

Black showed me there was so much more to my darkness,
How shades of grey told a story,
How the midnight hue told an endless story across that same night sky,
How the white bright stars shone in a new, different way,
Colors had bled me,
But the comfort of black and white,
Of you,
Made me learn to create my own colors,
Shining bright and bold,
Mixed with a touch of your own color pallet.

Read Poem: Inna Bflat, by Sharon M. Musgrave

(Poem about being a single mother)

It started with a simple dream

A single mom, an apartment on the lake

and a blue computer screen

Two Ikea colored filled rooms

Seagulls singing songs in the late afternoon

Just below the balcony on a bed of grass

Unblemished was the set of her new beginnings

But she didn’t know, not while she was living in it

All she had was where she’d been

Her eyes focused on the computer screen

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

He’s got a blue electric motorcycle

and he zooms through the kitchen

Then he swishes passed her swiveled chair

She feels the cool breeze of his creative air

and she just sits there

Gone are the solidified words which so passionately

possessed her just a few months ago

Gone are the concerns that kept her from her desires

The things she couldn’t see through

Not while she was living in it

And so it was born, a plan

Because the dream is all she had in the first place

So off she went left the shore for a temporary apartment

A step side ward, while onward she worked on the side

An old stove full of someone’s lonely past

A broken pool in the basement, a small dark sauna

Not the aqua blue the fresh waves that she longed for

She slept alone and rode the night

Because this side turn produced many of fights

but she needed this as they say, to build character

She followed the tricycle down the path

Where she once walked to find solace on the water front

Which clothed her with the rays

Enough to fill the early morning bike ride to the day care up the road

Her little boy in the back seat singing songs like

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Beautiful day, Beautiful Day, Beautiful Day, in the neighborhood

Then there came another side turn, and I say side turn

Because when you’ve got goals there are only side turns, no back turns

Then she took a dive because she loves diving into things

Because each flight is a good lesson

She learns that what was once a struggle becomes food for thought

So out of her new soulful encounters she was able to progress

You see finding herself has become her major accomplishment to date

Because it lead her to what truly matters

SHARON MUSGRAVE
Websites/Stores

http://www.sharonmusgrave.com/

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/outflow/id401094345

http://smarturl.it/ShasArchivesCD

https://www.instagram.com/sharonmusgravemusic/

Read Poem: LET THIS DAY, by Katarina Jovcevska

Let this day passing by in wisdom and strength to someone be a friend be a hero and stand with a goal build your life step by step, day and night don’t lose yourself in lies be honest and fair and don’t pretend Let God fills your path with love and light.
Be a man and you will deserve everything you can be a crowned king let your belief have wings and see, realize what for is your sacrifice does it worth be all of this make a step in new century because you know what you want you feel the pain of the people in the middle ease with a smile only for a while accept no defeat and take deep breath, don’t sleep lead, teach and be the best go on, searching for from the east to the west write down your own history with a dream for victory and mark the time for the first time because you are that special kind with a brilliant mind.

Katarina Jovcevska
Kumanovo,R.Of North Macedonia
Some of her work you can see on:youtube:Katarina Jovcevska”Nobody Like you”,”Inspiring song to change your life” and “Factory of dreams”;facebook;soundcloud”Secret desire and I’m on fire”-Katarina Jovcevska;bandlab,www.macedonia.co.uk