Medicated

Each day, near seven, I 
Crash. I plummet like a fork,
A gargantua robed in brass and
Bone. The trail is black, I do not
Know of a home. 

So I hit the plastic sea with a scowl.
My velocity, a handicap as

I sink, I sink; not a thousand but a 
Billion leagues down, to the room where
I can do nothing. Nothing but think.

I am sick to death of chemicals. 
Ovoid vectors tinkling down the 
Chimney of my throat. I can hardly 
Stand to lift my mitt to deposit - is

This my hand? No, a mechanic’s

Sweat pearls. They cause this

Diagonal landing, a

Warranty to dive deeper each time.
They hurt me when I hit. Which came
First? They hurt me but they bless.

Symbiosis in a mangled dress.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Departure

for Karina Dubisky

DEPARTURE

It is light, the
Filament coined to fasten. A lithe

Wiring, fingertip to fingertip.

Wrist-wrapped, wander-worn. It is dirty,

Flung across a winter, a summer. Repeat.
Repeat, repeat.
The calendars are molding. There is
Damp wood and needles, interest

Accrued under our feet.

Around the hipbone, like a rogue
Brooch. Not a dragging, but
Floundering steps, from downtown

Lot to parking garage.
I am a telephone pole, and
The men don't sleep, they must,
They must extend the cable. Invading
The hypothesis. They must encroach.
Such a secondhand ligament.
But it is far from thinning and

Far from sagging. It often fools me.
Me fools me. The wagging water
In the desert that snaps back to
Land. A remarkable wrecking, with my
Medulla chaining me before saucer                                   

Eyes and all that's not mine, the
Procession paralyzed. Monkeys
In the middle of swing. I do not know

If my mouth is full of sand.
I cannot specify what is lounging

On my tongue. An emptiness? A
Mark of miles? But my face is salted, clearly labeled.
Heart hands wrung out every sparkle
In preparation. We are not grunting in
Gasped galleries. We are not drowned
In that yellow light yet. But, God,  we could be.
DaVinci's dinner is not for us. No, we
Chose a cardboard table instead, with
An atmosphere defined by an inch of
Glass, blocked.
Epoxy and a cat. The sweep
Above your lash.

This is a manual. This is how to end
A pinch of the whole. What number is
It for you? How lengthy is the summation

Of your type-written role?
It meets the morgue; we cry, but
Now it is renewed. A screaming signature
So the undone seconds of an
Intermission are redone. And we are
Back to number one.                                                             

O umbilicus, do not let the knot fly
Through. It is two, it is two. The cord
Will be galvanized ─ our bellies
Withdrew. Mutual permission to
Gird them in steel. A flattening
In the field. The porch, the dark parlor

Now taped off. A terminus
For pilgrimage. A million Meccas.

Shrines noisy with the
Parroting of you.

I love you, I love you.
Your flat bleats it's siren song. A
Melody of manipulation, of maturation,
And in the harmony is a promise.
A future wine-kiss. A madam, a
Tarot table. A surplus of this,

Of this, of this.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Until You Marry It

When you pull the nose, the 

Cheeks, the lips ─ the rest comes with.

Perhaps a white sheet, perhaps a 

Paragraph. Eight point. Hieroglyph. 

A padlock now pried. And peeks 

At word peaks. I've tried, I was one

To excavate and sigh on 

The vacancy. I have done it, have

Hung my white flag. Fruitless 

To 'what if.'

No more. No, I lift it with intention

To lick the last pulp plate dry.

Mouth black, eyes swung back

In absorptive pollination.

It is a commitment, a vow

To bow before a seeming stack of

Syllable trash. And a contract

Sealed with neurons to last, to last.

A laugh. I needn't be so shy. It

Parts so willingly.

You find it dull. You find it’s skeletal

Sentences dripped with drool.

But leafing turns to biting. Turns to

Gnawing, rolling rapports round your

Jaw. A ravenous clang of page after

Page between fang. How wondrous ─

The simplicity in adopting the maw.

The blank screen graced with place

And face, all framed

In hazy milk. 

It is the transmutation of it, from 

Soporific to sermon. A foot of dust

On the bible ─ these ones bear

A far more spiritual shock. You view it as

Chore, until your spine snaps at the

Spin of it. Until you swallow it. The angle

Alters, trot to rocketing, and the

Climax is your climax.

Huffing, wet, wallowing in the mess.

Commas and capitals. Lap laden

With the win of it. 

It is in every tome, a seed of

Sinew. It is a mirror.

Its peels stink of your fingers

In the end. And your veins have

More than ventured, curling about

That of a vapor. You tremble, you

Can barely sit. Trauma-dropped,

It is cooing at your feet. Refusing

To blend. You think a

Book is bad until you marry it.

Until you've carried it over the

Threshold. Wood. Or plastic.

Or pile. A heap, a heap, be it

Costly or cheap. Until you bury

It. Not at the midriff, but at the zenith,

Where it banters on and on

By telegraph. You welcome it

In that anechoic grotto. It is so

Bad, until, sub-hair aware, you 

Triumph in the fail to parry it. 

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

The Shirt that I Named

It has been five years since I
Dropped my eyes in a tinted vase. Every
Thing azul. The crook of your
Arm bruised blue. And the
Shirt that I named Ophelia.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

The Anvil

A cube was never meant to make one
Shrink. The atrophy. Made mad by
The mad. The matriarch. O medicine woman,
Why can't you lift the anvil? Under the crippled
Canopy I can hardly think. 

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Pyre

Gather it. Gather it all.
The big and the small trinkets of
Time chiming with salt.
Get the kindling. The folder, the photo.
I do not need it. This is the point,
The basis of the repeated rite.

Arrange it nicely. I am one for
Presentation. I want my feet orbited
By these rotten mementos. Now,
Strap me to it, as if this were
A proper one. I will be the boy witch,
And you will be the Puritan.

Be still. Let me go red. Not a trickle from
My mouth. Not a single flinch from
The soles I once tread upon.
I go red. I go black. I go back to
Ash Wednesday. Orange anger,

Blinding, with a thumb tilling
My forehead.
I do not need reminding.

They simplify the chore of it by
Brushing, rushing my ravaged

Infrastructure to dustbins.
Asleep, dreaming of the tunnel I

Bore, still glazed in afterbirth.
I grip the column for support.
The first was of Herculean struggle.
But they saw me go, swift as a

Plague.

I surface from the marsh of a two-year
Waltz. A wobble, a skip from a vat of

Horned hunt. Still caked, I am

Plucked up by chance, and I meet a

Pair of hands that are undeniable.

Let us not cower this time. Let us
Ruin the lot. Drag the feather,
The beaded tether. Drag the sofa

With breasts to the center. You!
You take the can, and damn it all if

You leave a dent dry. I want to see it
Blazing sky high.

When I signal, lock me in. You won't
Hear a peep from me in the din of

Old castles crackling. This should
Have been the first method to

Contemplate.
Nip it at the cage. A wick capped 
By a tiger lily,
I conflagrate.

In the air I reconstruct from the

Spellbound soot.
A mint me, poised on a balcony of

Wind. I take it in: the charred scar of

A former house below. No, do not
Slow, you must hurtle toward the
Consequent cataclysm.

A thousand snowflakes, a milligram

Snap, a twining of punctured

Tentacles. I beckon them.
Sire, Sire! We have readied the fire.
It is a glorious mound, all digital and

Dynamic. And it glows with the same

Measure of expunging power that I

Desire.
An exemplary pyre.

Take me.
Ankle, wrist, like a couple
Double-Dutch-ing and I am but a rope.
Just do it! I want to be wrapped
In the same decorative curvature
Of a valiant motorcycle.
Their creases ease and I
Ride the parabola, landing 
On the ruby raised rug.
They do not miss.

I told them I won’t scream. I won't
Even hiss.
I am a man of my word, and
I let it lick, lick.
Away with bacteria congealed
Since infancy, since the last roast.
Relishing a molten malignancy.

What is this! Don't sweep, let him
Prove it on his own. Beneath a
Primped pile of ashes.
Almost like a magic trick. A trap

Door. My claw pushed through, one

Talon streaked in black, in blue.
I do not cough. The residue is slick
To me, a perpetual log.

A head with an absence of hair,
And a rib cage clear enough to call

Mountainous! A few more lines on
A skin so thin that even the softest
Glare or punctuated pass could fall
Straight through.
Lips set as firm as stone. Brows

Fused down to an underscore.
Anew.
Anew, and a brain straining against

Figures and phrases to subdue.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Lilith

I do not find it fair
That a woman clad in
Lures and baubles,
Pulleys and
Levers should bear the
Offspring. A boy blistering
With curiosity. Of the two of us,
Which is clever?

Each in our own way,
I presume. I can craft
Malleable mechanics of a bitter tongue.
She squats at an invisible
Loom weaving webs of crones.
A sullied spider.
She denounces where they're from
Despite their helix hoisting through canal.
It is a temporary platoon, never
Forever.
Which is more clever?

I tasted gold in a garden,
Wet grass on my feet of folly
And found a classifier
On bench, a jittering cheek on his
Shoulder that was mine.
I felt the sculptural smoothness.

Warmth. A bliss I didn't want

To know and didn't want

To miss.
The wench superseded me.
You see, this is reversed.
The entirety is a misnomer.

I do not find it fair,
And to be frank, I am wise.
I pierce the guise she lurks behind.
An obelisk of immorality
Towering, towering, and I stand
Glowering, wishing she would fall,
Splintering to the pure plasma:
An innumerable expanse of broken

Porcelain wailing "Daddy. Daddy,"
That rally up into a rampant flood
Of shrews.

I overheard you say that breast feeding
Is the most maternal.
Daughter of the mud. Void verses,
Tripping over the most infernal,
Sweating, panting pigs left in your wake.
You left the tree, yet
You won because you were fertile.
And then you lose.

Where are they stowed? The
Other ninety-nine. I only saw one
Crawl on me. The first bee of
Spring scaling paint chips.
Why did you curse
Him with skin?
The product of your most frequented
Stance. Horizontal. Below.
You screech, and then you go.

Vile succubus. I do not care for your
Long, dark hair or your exponential
Chronicling of affairs ─
I wish you were dead.
Your nursing of locusts and slugs,
Your face that curls without concealing.
"She fled. She fled."
Genesis is on its head.

To be Eve stretched
Through the wormhole. Me, me.

How many species can you be ?

Araneae, Serpentes.

Fruit, Mute feeling
Cast at me past the foot of a bed.
What a look in those eyes. What
A provocation of dread.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH