Category: Uncategorized

Narrated by Val Cole

READ POEM:

Two weeks before you died-
You were joking, laughing, and seemed alright.
I thought you would be fine.

We talked and joked and watched the skyline-
From your hospital bed at half-light
Two weeks before you died.

As the day wound down, I saw no sign-
And when we finally said goodbye-
I thought you would be fine.

When we left, it seemed to be benign,
I knew you would put up a fight
Two weeks before you died.

I believed it wasn’t your time
Oh, how I wish I knew your plight,
I thought you would be fine.

I got a text on the phone of mine-
That it would be your last day and night;
Two weeks before you died-
I thought you would be fine.

Voice over by Val Cole

Voice over by Val Cole

READ POEM:

After much deliberation, Radu concluded his name was Merlin.
Merlin was the greatest wizard of all.
Radu had first been Houdini, the Master of Illusions,
But all that magicians worked with was perception after all.
Reality remained unchanged.
A wizard, on the other hand, could cast spells with their wands.
Radu had two Magic Wands instead of one.
To double the power.
Radu and the wands were inseparable.
He also wore his Cloak of Invisibility all day long, even late at night,
Between the crumpled tattered sheets.
It had become his second skin.
The wands and the cloak became his fighting arms and armor.
His mother disagreed. She called them willow twigs and filthy garbage bags.
But Radu’s faith was strong.
Magic could make everything and anything real if one willed it hard enough.
All wizards had to do was twist their wands and say the magic words.
Abracadabra, the bills, paid, the electricity and water on again.
Hocus-pocus-preparatus, food, steaming on the table.
Otipy-motipy-poof, Radu’s sisters home as well.
Hax pax max Deus adimax, his father’s heart beating in his chest again.
When Radu’s father was alive, he would swing his children one by one.
Merry-go-rounds would make the girls sick.
But Radu was fine.
And then, unlike his sisters, he had the wizard’s tools to keep him home.
But Radu’s will grew weaker by the day,
So the wands lost all their magic in the end.
Then he turned his face to Jesus.
Jesus could put food on the table.
He had multiplied the fish and bread
And turned water into wine.
So Jesus might just as well turn paper money into real money
Jesus had even brought the dead to life.
Wake up, Lazarus, He said,
And Lazarus woke from the dead.
Radu believed that resurrecting his father would be an easy task for Jesus.
If Jesus could do all that, Radu was going to be Jesus.
For only Jesus could convince his mother not to sell him.
Some buy retail, others wholesale goods.
Children would go solo or in pairs.
Radu’s older sisters went in pairs.
His mother shipped them two by two to England and America.
Radu was the last one left.
He would go
Solo.
$1,000 was the asking price for an 8 year old.
Negotiable.
New born babies would be more expensive,
But Radu was already old.
When his time came, Radu begged and pleaded
But in vain.
Just like the other four already sold.
Two other babies were growing in his mother’s belly after all.

Voice over by Val Cole

Read POEM:

He wasn’t adopted but made,
Not in a womb but psyche.
My son was a misborn,
I never met his father.

I was still married to my past,
Yet I nurtured my son.
Who feeds on my thoughts,
Sparing nothing at all.

While I drained every day.
He bloomed to a manchineel,
He bore the fruits of my toil,
And the apples made me blind.

I sought peace in my past,
That I wished never existed.
I untangled the cobwebs,
To fine, shiny, silk threads.

And I spun new thoughts,
That kept alive my past.
My son fed on the thoughts,
Blinding me day by day.

I was reduced to two eyes,
Bright, that could not see.
The beauty and vibrance,
Just a breath away.

I was reduced to an ego.
To keep my son alive.
I weaved new shiny palls.
At the cost of my idyll,

My son was an evil,
Who killed his mother.
Guilt is my lucky bastard,
Though I never dated Sin.

Voice over by Val Cole

Read Poem:

I arrived at a destination that was far away from home.
It was more like isolation. I felt alone!
Drowning, watching water surround me on every side,
called my parents every day and often cried.
I searched for ways to escape this place,
because with each passing day, a little more of my joy died,
but I kept praying for the loneliness to subside.

This place had me rooted in an abyss of despair.
I started to think that no one cared.
I found myself chained in depression,
searching for signs of regression,
while battling crippling questions,
navigating the lows that lead to suicidal ideations,
wishing that my heart and mind would enter mediation,
and that all these feelings were just a part of my imagination.

How could I let myself get to such a place where I was left feeling alone this way?
I thought I was stronger! I can’t stay here any longer.
I have to make a change!
It’s time for me to rearrange my thoughts, for not from trying,
I found myself pondering. Is this all that life has left?
Should I stay or should I go?
At this very moment, the answer would deliver my parents a devastating blow.

I don’t undertand the point
What is the point
What is MY point
I am at my point
About to burst at any point
About to cry at any point
At the knives point
I make one final point

selfishness is paradise

in this or any previous life

to please oneself the act sublime

to be oneself alone divine

to get one’s own more than one’s due

and most of all – not think of you

It doesn’t matter how I start out these poems
they end up as laments for my strays—
the ones who wandered off and the ones
who traveled to New York or to Chicago,
where my childhood bestie ended up.
The ones I know died; ones I imagine speak to me—

the musician who blew his head off
with his therapist’s gun and the poet
who tried to save me from history.
We’re not in touch but I keep them
in living memory with the gymkhana pony
who went to glory with her head in my lap
and my granddaughter, atomized on a two-lane
by a lumbering eighteen-wheeler.

What a dinner party we have when I call them
to the table, each beloved face shining with appetite.
And you, others, so many dead or dying, whether or not
I know you, all I write now is your elegy.

Drinking carnival lemonade on a hot summer day
Walking miles through the desert in search of water that isn’t there
Falling asleep in the car as a kid on a long drive home
Pushing a boulder up an endless hill like the sister of Sisyphus
Getting a letter in the mail from a long lost friend
Disarming an atomic bomb with a blindfold on
Letting crisp night air flow into an open bedroom window
Realizing you left a candle burning all night by accident
Sharing an umbrella and feeling the soft rain on your shoulder
Fighting a losing battle in a war you don’t understand
Driving back home after a weekend spent away
Biting the cracked skin of your lip until it bleeds
Stroking the soft ears of a dog that doesn’t like anyone
Trying to find your keys when you’re already running late
Hearing the song your dad used to sing on the radio
Forcing a feral cat to sit quietly in your lap
Tasting the homemade brownie batter on the mixing spoon
Waking up crying from a dream you don’t remember at all
Stretching your restless legs after hours spent on a plane
Grabbing hopelessly at your loose paperwork as it’s swept by the wind
Seeing your favorite movie for the first time in a small hometown theater
Running into a stranger you used to love in a grocery store
Finding an old love note hidden in your favorite book
Leaving your childhood home when you move to college

Taking that first deep breath after diving underwater

Pressing a loaded gun to your head in a game of roulette

Allowing familiar hands to wrap around your neck

Hoping, against all odds, that they won’t squeeze