Interrogating A Sickle

What a devious curve

You carry. A burden?

I think not. You, batch of breath,

You shoulder it with mastery. And

Still you yank a trailing sack.

You are so versatile! A

Magicked many inhabit your arsenal.

Do you polish it often?

To make the sour swerve of it 

More proficient? Do you

Let it fester? Let it ring with rust 

So it triumphs with more a tear

And a tug than a terminal trim? 

Do you drag in that crumpled bag

Your face, too?

Your comb-over, your

Strawberry scrubs, your mucus and

Glue? 

A priest, a parasite, a private bud

Born to unscrew. 

How do you come?

Some proud plume of smog.

Hooded, hunched like a parable.

Or do you don a cloak more

Chameleonic?

Blending to brothels, to brooding

Leftovers, to frothing water

Weighing down the prize. 

A perfect plundering. 

Do you smile? When you 

Do what you do and you see it

Through

Do you revel in it? 

How foolish, you're always veiled as

The victor.

But I once read in a fat book that you

Let one slip through. The fat book

That leeched, preached on my

Soul for a decade, until it had

Shriveled it down

To a crooked cashew.

Still fragrant enough to attract you. 

Do you wince after every fake rising?

A pillow pristine, sheets solid with

Formaldehyde.

Do not look so shocked! So 

Typically abysmal!

I know you are sleepless.

Your head heavy with one eye active

For every two.

They say repent, repent

For seconds ill-spent but they haven't a clue.

I know you are sleepless.

Omniscient monarch, clutching

Both sun and moon.

I know your lips are tasteless, 

Your heels are beat-less.

No rest, we fragile crops need

Tending to.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH 

Neutrality

These things are foul things.

Mercilessly cunning, erotic in

A way. I play with them, 

Unhook the cage and let them

Stumble drunkenly from

The ivory cradle.

I love them. I find them

Poking me like pins, a cancerous

Raffle, each begging to be the 

Stem. I am tense in a wire

Suit. Erect, stiffened so I cannot

Evade a single prick.

How many times must I

Employ you? How many ways

Can I twist and tangle you to

Mitigate the brutality of

A sunrise? 

Isn't this enough? Is this not a

Testament, a coin revolving mid-toss?

I once believed these black

Blocks would rise solely from that unholy triad,

If not all, than the ultimate.

Lift the magnifying lens, ignorant iris.

Was I incorrect? Deleted drafts of the

Alchemic buffer.

A high, high number.

But I love them. I collect them

Like butterflies that met fate freshly.

My skull has never been so full

Of phantom wings, tickling.

O what a ghastly scab, neutrality.

A fickle stalemate.

Do not dare to make me state his name.

Do not dare to make me debate with a 

Duplicate of my physical frame.

Yes I reference the deathless,

The glittering ghouls that haunt

All print, possess palette, pencil.

But I'll be hanged for my

Redundant return to the crux.

Ribbon rhymes strapping me 

To a tolerable voltage.

Does that not reveal enough? 

I can hardly count the times he

Brings a soiled Spring to me 

And blooms on page, in pixel.

The ugliest thistle. Good god, my eyes 

Ascend and bend to the

Inertia, darting across the spectrum.

It is a cavernous room, packed

Tight as a pipe with all of you.

My innocence stripped by the

Cry of this vicissitude.

One could pose that I abuse as I

Use, but I am 

Prone to argue. Just lean into 

The mirror. 

Lean into it - I'm certain you'll see it too.

You do not do.

And yet you do.

And still you do not do.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

///////////////////////////////////////////////

dversepoets.com prompt, June 5, 2014

"So what do you believe of language? which is it? the best tool? does language fail?

Answer that, or perhaps tell us a time language failed you. or maybe when you found just the right words."

Completed too late to link, but I figured submission was paramount after a birth like this.

Anti-Ballerinas

Do you think the beat drew them

Like flies to foul carrion,

Contorted by world ways?

A string of burnt beads.

Voiceless and glowing with 

Sweat. There was a furious sun that day,

Designated to celebrate something

Insignificant, a plastic portion of 

A collective identity.

Defeated each time the darts 

Whipped from eyes and spandex,

Until the street-feet ebbed to allow the boundary.

Brown and rose oils crushed on the

Canvas of a closed road.

A mole then seemed a gem.

The ripple after ringleader, the 

Brush in jagged motion to grasp

A curve of the hem

Beneath a buttock. This clan of

Anti-ballerinas.

Flat-hand, pheromone.

A pernicious parade is what I saw,

A fluid contradiction. Insignificant,

But it is the idea that they broke.

The multitude may have made

Messiahs, but I doubt

I was the lone acolyte 

Of logic. Another pair that stared

Must have caught the scent of

Tarred wings, lost flight. 

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Betrothed

Dapper youths avoid me.
No blame. Four knuckles
Top four rings on

My anchor arm.
If repellent then I succeed
In tribute to my betrothed.

How romantic, one may
Think, to wed and bed
A being met in childhood.

Strange husbands. Each more
Virulent than the next. The
First I found in my blood,

In the mitts of a white coat.
He over time gained size
Gained speed, whip-quick.

He greets me at our front door
With his red face red eyes smiling.
I am a missile and he never leaves my side.

An organ wailing used to stir
A brew, aversion to stigma
Until I met Husband Two

I do not do the “hush hush”
My catholic cogs tell me to.
He throws a bulls-eye on every thing
And paints my nakedness with fire.

Man made of matches, my
Second husband. I know
He’s groped you too.

He planted the slicing eye
In yours and mine.
Sprouting unconcealable crease.

The Third I've often seen
Crouching in moonless hedges.
My skin still soft he

Wriggled up to me. Serpentine.
Coiled a question mark
A wheat reaper head.

He bolts my feet to floors
In rooms where thousands of doors
Would willingly swallow me
Husband number three.

Piled on a twin mattress we
Make love ironically.
A heaving mass of sparking clay

A gasp I am a male mother
And I propose to the bred dead
Thing in me, the

Rancid Oedipus so
Sickly green. Kiss after kiss.
Who should question this polygamy?


-BENJAMIN SMITH

Personal Pantheon

Up here

The wind does not wastefully

Whisper it

Screams

And races as sharp as shrapnel.

My bust is stainless.

If anything, a twitch of the cheek.

Where floorboards would be sent flying

Mine only creak.

I peer and hear the dissonant

Offspring of the petri dish

Below. Of friction, mobile cultures,

A glow.

The cap hides the stalk that I know

Grows on the underside.

I was down there once, a bellowing

Primate engrossed in the war waged

Every sunrise.

The plate to be pleased. The body appeased.

Another mate dissipates and maps on my

Legs branch like an illustrated fever.

The towels in place,

As Plath’s face hit the grate I

Shriek my first shriek,

Release the first piece of the chalk likes that

Extend on the slate,

Unrolled her chemical tongue in my

Mouth.

Eyes full of white.

Even then I deflate.

I wrenched the broth from me and

The conical mass that I now top is

Coughed up from the mud by its

Own accord.

A horde of columns, a mythical wedding

Cake. With tiers for my fellow, but lesser

Legends.

This fresh mountain built so the one

Looking down this time is

Me.

I have seen them come and go,

A sporadic flow of former

Fresco-dwellers,

The beat pixie that rolled R’s,

Whose syllabic disregard and song made

Skin cleave with ease.

Words of richest art.

Disappeared,

Hung like the towels, the towels to

Dry

By the eye of VonTrier.

“Fashion me a crown of lilacs,

Of lichens and the cheapest pearls” I

Command a crowd of no one.

I am iridescent in my throne of

Lightning.

It is all borrowed, and I am alone

And accompanied,

Simultaneously.

A level lower, relics that reflect light.

Colored chrome.

The pyramids of books I have

Consumed.

The translucent elevator parts and

Here: a can of spray-paint,

Seahorse in tank. Floating files of

Etched discs encased.

A bother, the duality,

But I still tremble, for Venus as a nail

guarantees my margin of

Instability.

Three have descended from the

Cybernetic cumulus to take my seat,

A trinity.

They bestow blindness as they

Demote,

Strip me of my clothes, my power.

Opaque pistol to the throat.

I breathe gasoline into the air I

Detonate bricks rebuilt year after

Year.

But my retina heals, my brain is

Unpeeled and after I let the sizing seconds slip

I sacrifice.

I rip my right arm and toss it to the

Marble I tear my jawbone from the

Concept cradle.

Triune.

They shrink like a sponge.

Cataloged, I sink them in the

Subterranean vaults of my universe.

Magnetic adversaries.

The fathers of all wrongdoing in

My religion.

Babies in sports gear.

Babies bathed in bong water.

One, nothing short of nuclear fission,

Eyebrows that I longed to thieve by mouth

With the force that I grind the pit of a cherry.

I don’t have a thunderbolt to sheath.

My violet skin, I am a lizard king. My

Sopped sockets enter space like a

Cobweb.

My mother didn't dunk me in the

River.

Each in, a soft spot, and I do die.

But with each sugar cube headstone

Sunk behind my chair I

Sew a new skin.

Thicker but thinner, variations when traversed

By a newcomer’s fingers.

I satisfy.

Each tarp is a winner.

I have no temple in the dirt,

No bound account in every translation I do

Not have stained-glass middlemen or a

Congregation.

Either I squirmed ‘til I was free or the agar exiled

Me.

I sled down this Olympus and

Assume the visage of

Antifreeze in standing water, of a

Field of flowers. The denizens,

They infiltrate.

Splatter me mid-rotation,

Conceive in my multi-hued cocoon.

I drip to a pulse-less parking space.

In me they swoon.

So soon they sweep with cilia

The epidermis that I mime.

To blink would be no less than crime.

The armrest crackles. I, browning

Fruit.

I page through the inventory, decide

Upon tooth.

A hadron echo, of marbles in a plaster room.

Rise, Rise.

I coax myself to double-coat in different

Films, to sleep a while within the kiln.

And I bloom,

The cosmological amoeba with infinite

False feet  -   I expand

And

Stretch a network of constellations,

Each fiery diamond brand new.

Each one could have been for any of you.

-BENJAMIN SMITH

Post-Wednesday

A store dedicated to

Distributing filth rags

That I wear like a uniform.

The threshold breached I

Am stormed by a face familiar

And forgotten, from halls ill-lit

And a grouping of years

Stomped deeper than a subway line.

The she, the she, before I

Plucked my eyes out and reverted

To realize I want the fingers of a man

The voice of a man.

I smiled and I lied because I can.

Fiction is my proxy when penned

In the arena of an honest grin.

Even I believed the thick-knit lyric

Launched from my catapult

Until I returned to my cell.

I embraced her while lying, baring

Teeth that must have been

Convincing. She was happy

For me. I was happy for no one

Underneath the teal fur an hour

Later.

-BENJAMIN SMITH

Disputation

My Homunculus

I ached at

     Twenty-two.

Inverted porcupine, mind like stew

I need a beaker, a

     Beaker filled with goo to create

My homunculus so

I thought: this van will do.

This van, not that van

That van is haunted by the driveway

     Where we fell where I fell,

By the swinging scalp of the enemy,

The pseudo-steel ellipse peppered

     With what is left of my

     Family tree

Haunted by the three

Seats that remain unhinged

     The twinge of the act of the entrance

“Tell me you want it” I should have

     let you freeze in the parking lot

This

Beaker is smeared and cloudy but

     It will do.

And “do” it did, but

The job was done in a forest green

Shoebox more often

     Than not

I’d imagine how light footed we

would be;

     I, him,

     He, me,

Vicariously.

I would hear the crinkle and sniff up

my snot and

     Concoct who I would run from tonight.

Buried boyfriend?

     Dear maman?

I had the bloody drum but I was

Atlas and it fit snugly and writhes

Uncomfortably on my shoulders

When was I assigned this role?

That is why you will bear a hole,

My homunculus, you will brave the

Sloping bowl of rock bottom for I

     Cannot

A hole where that hummingbird knot

     would cry.

A handful and I slip them into

Pockets and plastics but the boot

     snaps two and then there

Was you.

She struggled with a can of tea I

Wasn’t allowed to watch her wrestle

     Herself free from her leash we

Watched videos in the beaker we

spoke of sorrow with upturned lips

And flowers blooming from our

crotches we were heavy tongued we

     Was not me.

It was you, my homunculus.

There were so many test tubes the

black sleek eel that collected

pebbles of rain I have a picture of

that night of my fleshy palm

upturned as it became your fleshy

     palm upturned

Your cornucopia beneath the dome

light do not think that I use you

We diffuse the tangled testimonies and

     embark across the concrete floor.

Don’t forget to lock the door.

Snow White V-sweeties and we

glided through the circuit of the local

      mall

I’ve always wondered if when viewed

from a searching helicopter it is cut

like a swastika I feel like it is so it

     must be so

There is no

Manifest Destiny no Sears Tower

     seraphim no Xeroxed “X”

So you retreat and she slides herself

Into the viscous beaker and you join

her in the passenger seat.

     My homunculus.

I think your struts are going out.

Do not think I use you I miss you

     like I used to miss ill-fitting friends

I take the bends and run the stop

signs when I sprint down corridors

     with the hourglass reversed

I’ve seen on green “LAFAYETTE” and

I ride the wave of unpaved

     potholes

But I am not well-acquainted with

     Luck

     She fled in the bed of a pickup truck

She fled in the beaker, once alone

The second time with a mist of arms

     and stubble in my seat.

In your seat, my homunculus

What will you do? I used to sneak

     them as I looked through.

To store them in corners of frames

     Beneath paper and rubble.

How greedy I was to awaken you.

Half-lidded, wise,

My blithe eye fails to recognize

     The black-tipped stake,

Another cell to die. That’s all it would

     Take.

The pennies in the furnace,

Tax return to burn, for who?

Excuse, excuse,

To fend off the color blue.

Not that van, that van is plagued by

the driveway where I felt the ventricle swell.

That van looks, smells, sounds

     like hell.

That beaker slimed in midnight sky 

Like an oil spill. I filled it up with

     numbered tickets for reconciliation.

Triple digit.  The Father eyes his

wristwatch.

I swish and swill

And you yawn and peel the barbed

     wire, feel the barbed

     wire rebuke

You stare into the Goodwill mirror

     But, despite typhoons of bile,

     Do not puke.

-BENJAMIN SMITH

Judith

I feel a splinter of hair under my

Fingernail.

A gift from you, my General.

You cannot see me now, for I

Have done what you have done

And done, and done again a

Thousand-fold feeding the dirt

Til it is red and

Ripe.

But, see, now I am the heroine.

I am immortalized in memory and

Print and passionate spittle.

I am in nearly every household,

Gold leaf, glory Hallelujah.

A page for you, my subordinate,

A book for me.

A spine is severed.

My dress is ruined.

-BENJAMIN SMITH

12/27/13

I built a dam out of stained soft

                Chairs and paper and unnecessary

Unforeseen apologies received to

                Hold you at bay

Friday

And I spoiled myself and

                In return dealt out thirty lashings I

Felt your breath on my skin

Fight or Flight I did not

Fight I hid amongst the wooden towers.

They called me the Chai Guy and the H is

                Branded further into my

                Forehead        here          here 

I wonder what my teeth look like to

Strangers or my debit card all stars and stripes

And scratched with anger Last

Summer I wore them with a dripping doubt

                But last summer was last summer and

                Last summer I was pushing dissecting pins

                Into plush

Perhaps I tossed the cellophane and the

Glittering pinecones into the barricade to

                Fortify.

The tables don’t turn they shiver and clatter and

Somersault clumsily reflecting about the axis and

                You become my friend, shape-shifter,

                Therianthrope, the lean whisper beside me the

Fan belt whistling in my head I

Often fail to realize the oceans you have left

                For dead

I elbowed down a family frame as if

By Fate, the severed thread

                F 8 , F 8 the keyboard chips a sliver from

                The polish as they grow irate

Is your policy out of state?

You straddle into welcome and I cock

My elbow for my bride

                (my groom) an occupied upper-lip clothed in

A prism of foil I pace the aisle and by the time

I say I do I am clutching to your muscled knees just

                Leave me be

I Flee

And with a stop-motion flashing of page numbers

Elude you deep into the labyrinth it is Friday I

                Was saved by an over-priced singular poem

Hardcover

Fifteen dollars the title always brings to mind my

Father’s favorite, the

                Skull-faced locomotive that I conquer three-fourths

                And then flush down the toilet

Fifteen dollars is a worthy price by quality but

Fifteen is the saddest exploitation fifteen in

                Florescent cloudiness

                Centimetric binding and my fist, a fork, devours despair

My eyes have fucked a thousand times

That hung so damp in the post-war air

I blanket myself

                in a handful of dust  in the wake of

                prior Armageddon

Fear death by water I fear death by my

Own steel-tipped fingers

You obey the border, but linger.

-BENJAMIN SMITH