To celebrate Poetry Month, the E. H. Butler Library is showcasing SUNY Buffalo State University students' poetry. The poems created by the students are distributed in the library and featured here.
Congratulations to all featured poets!
(poems listed alphabetically by poet's last name)
How do you know you're in love?
Is it because your heart flutters around that person?
Or is it because you look in their eyes and see a life together?
When you are around them do you feel comfortable?
Do you hide yourself from them?
Do they care about you?
How do you know you’re in love?
Are you in love with the person or the objects they get you?
Do they support you?
Do they make you feel like the only person in the world?
Do they lift you up and make you feel like you can do anything?
Do you miss them after you just saw them?
Do you sacrifice for them?
How do you know you’re in love?
-Anonymous
Alex Mads (2023)
we tangle our bodies
we kiss each others lips
we talk about nonsense
then we sleep
and then we wake up
and we tangle our bodies
and we kiss each others lips
and we talk about nonsense
A Buffalonian Waiting for Spring
Alexis Needham
Look! Look! The sun is out!
I say,
As I stand still.
Face up,
Eyes closed,
Arms out.
I say,
Remember the boisterous smell of blossoming flowers as sun rays bounce along their bosoms
and blow a blissful bouquet of buzzing fragrance
into the spring breeze?
The algid air aches my lungs with angst as I inhale.
In,
out.
In,
out.
Floating clouds of fog seep out of my mouth and frame my face back into factuality.
I say,
Remember the trembling desire to read, to write, to explore, to create, to learn, to be?
The willful wind whips my face with wrath as I look up.
Clouds move,
by,
and,
by,
and,
by.
Until they cover the sun once more.
I feel,
Ideas annihilated with each bitter breath brought within.
Vanishing into nothing as the veil of warmth withers from my body.
I recoil.
I look down.
The sun is gone
By Maryam Nelson
These yellow eyes
That wander
Across time
What lies they tell
What dies
behind their veil
Every time the predator kills
This lonely heart is
Broken to bits
but injustice is hardly simple
When the murdered begin to murder
themselves
Nothing is clear
until it becomes so
and I am dying by my own hand
But do not see it
My eyes don’t tell
Their eyes cannot see in mine
What is so clearly veiled
These yellow lies have forgotten
how to tell time
But Time itself sheds tears for the eyes that have forgotten how to
by Maryam Nelson
a camera on a lifeboat whirs and shifts I became the camera when the
ship crashed I didn’t know how to put the pieces of myself back
together and so the camera helps them to keep afloat While
simultaneously pulling me under
(Our ways of coping end up killing us)
But it’s their lens that killed
such a fragile thing
in the first place
a girl dies
but everyone on the shore only cares about saving the flesh while her
soul drowned at sea
(Her ways of coping drowned her further)
They pushed and she pulled herself under It was their cracked eyes
that became her camera and the whirring caused the pieces to shift
Further apart Her heart adrift Her lifeboat by the day, clicking out
to sea (see)
SOMETIMES
Rodrigo Prieto
sometimes I feel like I am better than what I am
maybe I am
maybe I am
sometimes I feel like I am worse than what I am
maybe I am
maybe I am
sometimes I feel like I am the only one in here
maybe I am
maybe I am
sometimes I feel like I am the owner of the world
maybe I am
maybe I am
arrive like I arrived
crazy is crazy
step like I stepped
so that you believe
Krista Regan
The color of my love is pink. A pink like the mother color, like passionfruit and passive
aggression, or like bittersweet bubblegum pops. The color of my love is a pink like the slow
fade of red watercolor- a bleeding diluted pastel- muted and melted down into the purest
primrose. A pink like the sweet cheek flush from a featherlight or a fiendish touch. Think of the
palest and prettiest pink at the end of the most painful day. Think of a baby blanket, berry
blossom pink, or think of a pretty pink oleander bouquet. See the color of my love and think the
pink of a night sky, painted as a bruise and burning hot summer nights into early fall. The pink of
a sky that brings you back home, where the stars hover around cerise carnation clouds, but still
they spill pink champagne acid rain. the color of my love has entranced skies and
souls, and unwittingly stained them my pink.
Krista Regan
I find that tonight,
my reverie runs
me ‘round to you.
Through boundless affections
and transcribed confessions,
a celestial connection was born.
Balletic in its blind devotion,
and eloquent in its expression.
I find that tonight, as I think of
you, I think only in amaranthine
admiration. When I search for a
place I ache to spend my days,
I can only envision your face.
When I listen for whispers in
the wind, I can only find them
replaced by your mellifluous voice.
And when the mantras of our mornings
bleed into the gentlest notions of night
time, I think only of all the letters you
used to write and leave, and then I
wonder what it would sound like if you
were still here to read them all to me.
Krista Regan
love in the way that the moon loves the earth;
slow, yet consistent. phased, yet unwavering.
give the love that will linger at dusk and still
shower you in long-time luster-- leaving you
alone with the notion that every time it goes;
it will come back home again.
Krista Regan
I hope the thought keeps you up at night,
that all my girls like to fight, not think twice—
they come at you first, impolite and precise.
I hope it makes you sweat once you wake,
that all my girls like to fight, like to shake,
and they’re not much longer willing to wait.
I hope it makes you ache, makes you shiver,
that all my girls like to fight, stand and deliver,
and not one of them is ever going to quiver.
I hope that it makes you change your mind,
that all my girls like to fight, and got time,
to walk and to talk and to ruin your insight.
I hope you’re absolutely shaking at the thought that all my
girls are gonna fight against your assault—
I’ll bleed for what’s mine; keep your fucking hands off.
Yamilla M. Tate
I am broken
Beyond repair
Cracked romantic vase
Shattered stained temple glass
Beyond repair –
That’s a good thing.
Yamilla M. Tate
Cold air hits my body
and reverbs, echoing from head to toe.
It finds a home; solace in me.
Yamilla M. Tate
And I hope
You remember me
In your drunken nights //
Just as I remember you
When the wind lifts my skirt up
Yamilla M. Tate
To love is to willingly become a martyr
[To have an unknown un/natural expiration date]
and I am far too selfish.
Yamilla M. Tate
The moon in the sky:
it’s beams like a torn bride’s veil
light upon the trees.
My lover’s face a pale moon –
a tear mixes into blood.
