Arthritis

You are raining pins on me,
Contortionist – I never dreamed
You’d stick the arch, the hook, 
Shoots like sturdy stakes;
Folding in and in and in, a letter
Like a leaden foot battering
The brake.

Who hewed these slots? The
Bristled gates of pressure pods where
You could roost.  O the glut of you, marsh,
Manuscript, movement –
You fat socialite, benevolently drenching my net.
As if you were some miracle,
Some mercy worm.

Your face rips to a grin.

Patient raider, the fugitive in a pivot. I
Bathe in flapping puddles untried, tumbling
Through the new, the new, the new.
But you’ve a beak, a beak like a key,
Like a blade, like a screw –
I retract my leg.

The post is in.

Immobilizer! Maturing at my pace – Why
Do you? You were a baby made of
Candles once, globular and glowing, an
Egg-headed irritant. But now you are
Arthritis, diamond birthright. And each
Delivery, an adding of
That acrid spice.

Snaky wraith, your brute braids
Bite at my every opportunity. These
Stirring lynches collar, creep, cajoling me.
I am purple Cerberus, my
Six eyes scabbed –
I do not want to see.



© 2015 BENJAMIN SMITH

(dVERSE Poetry Pub prompt: Poetics - Layers)

Two Dissolving Towels

(2013)

Two dissolving towels draped over

The left flank of a small steel fence,

Not eroded, but discolored, not

Rusted.

The right, sagging, an occasional

Nuisance to shut.

“You have to lift and jiggle it

A bit.”

A camouflaged baseball hat hangs

Where the wings converge,

Wedged snugly to secure as

Much as possible in this star’s ghost.

On a Sunday morning I see this and

Am saddened

That the man who has dirtied the

Towels with smudges of oil

Is not sitting with me, talking about

Baseball.

I do not care for baseball.

He is a coach for my brother’s team.

I expected to see him, squashing a

Half-smoked Marlboro in the ashtray

At the picnic table,

Nearing the end of a Stephen King

Bible.

Foolish, fresh anticipation.

I am twenty-three and still feel the

Need to be cradled, just
A bit.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

The Symptom of Sunsets

Black sky. Bleak sky. It is not enough.

No midnight mask can hide that

Jellied concubine, its rough shawl

Clinging to nothing, and calling for

Everything —

I am dutiful.

I am known to get the job done,

To pry the pickled fizz from the wall,

The floor, the crevices. There is no use in hiding. I will

Find you, metric centipede. I will

Bring you back, bagged and

Starched, ready for my digging

Hand, my heroic stance, thin and headless,

With your shy writhing answering the “whys.”

You are Exhibit ‘A’, Exhibit ‘B’, with a tail of

Ellipsis. Heed the critter, my reluctant flock.
Heed the critter and consider:

How am I to describe the symptom

Of sunsets? I, unoccupied.

A vacuum, a vacuum. A simulacrum.

How do I assign some elemental tag?

Ice? Shade? It is any other day —

The sun is a goddamned mole. The sky is

Emptied of its chip, gold or white.

So am I, so am I. A husk nearly

Dried. I am still. I am

Locked. I am hypnotized.

Here is your proof! The wriggling

Intestine of lenses. Eely threat of

Feeling. The never-level grows more aloof.

There is a certain comfort in

Numbness. A brother whose presence

I cannot sense in it. The conquering irrelevance,

The inherent sadness is so pretty, pretty. 
A pity it will kill me.

© 2015 BENJAMIN SMITH

Pressed Poppy

You are flat, you are flat,
Fixed between two slides like
A germ, firm. Flat. I lionize.
Brother of the cry of the back door,
Brother of the bat.

Trimmed of matter, trimmed

Of fat. Witnessed only in nudged knick

Knacks, or in a touch, a paralytic pressing

Of this, of that. You seem disappointed, though.

You seem a bit detached.

Black concentrate. The same as
In your grandmother’s frames – 
You are monochrome, revolving in an
In-between state, yet to navigate to grip

The knob. There is no knob. Not yet.

A cross-stitch wheel with your thread
A bridal train. It scrapes like a butcher’s babe

And here it is, the rift. Mobile in daylight, twilight,

All light, you walk. O look at those limbs,

Slim, black legumes in a crystal suit.

Ironclad, it accommodates.

You asked. Implored. Now mother moons lend

A poor, poor excuse for a voice. A sharpened sigh

At night, an audible frieze. Flat, pressed
Poppy, the glass is not your crutch. 
It boxed you up all Christmas-like, all

Chinese.

So lustrous, so compact, scalp smoothed

By the stuff of trees.

Dry, indelible, flat. Pellucid, with an upright riddled

Facsimile rightfully cast.  The onus of a

Caryatid, holding up this crust.

It made you useful, little loaf beneath the

Garden. Glassy aftermath – you hang horizons

On your shoulders like stoles, like holes unbidden

In the matte. It heard you ask and ask and

Ask. That swindler. That savior. That ashen acrobat.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Ode

Get out of there.
Siren sans the sea, you’ve stored

Yourself with kitchenware – Oui, oui, you are a 

Remnant woman, papery Miss. Swimming
In packaged smog, a gray goddess 

In a cloud contained. This cave of grays

Is no place for a deity the likes of 

You. I eat each of your moves, unrolling the 

Lines. An archive stacked on the steel 

Shelf, silver rack cooled, as if they still require time 

To cook. What a waste. Varnished, calloused, 
Scarred. For god's sake, put them back in the book.

Isn’t it uncomfortable? Huddled up
Near the back, near the back, arms
Wrapped about your voice, a choir of
Watered screams – Get out, please come out.
You can’t continue bottling my theology. Your 
Grail-head, your lap-chapel. Your hair is a prayer.

To deserve to perch in a
Tabernacle, yes you’ve that badge, that

Patch of grisly gauze. But why will you not
Budge? Look upon my back! The black
Manifesto, square and of skin.

You may take it, you may peel it off

If you come out from there.

Hold it to your breast and nurse it with

Sweet ennui like the mother you are. The ‘a’s 

Will latch fast. It is yours, stitched to 

Me at best. It crisply calls and I hear it. I

Hear it all, your turbulent way of the

Stressed, the unstressed, the pause –
The door is horizontal. 
The door swings down – Shuffle to the side, 

My opal, my gassed Godiva. If you will
Not oxidize with me then I am coming 

In. We will sit on that spindly stage

Together, both in chairs of casserole 

Pans, cookie sheets. Two levels, like
A glimmering bunk bed! You were 

Wise to retreat.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

The Acts

A man outside the pharmacy,
Beside the carmine crust of a
Truck, Asked me if I was okay.
Months ago. I think, I sleep and
Wake on slabs, on slabs
Like rootless rafts - I had forgotten
Him. His trim face deep with
Wise wells. And a billed hat.

There was a rap of pistons on glass,
Pallid phalanges, and the
Coiled hair, manikin fairy, eyes
Mined from a geode. She strode
In unwelcome air, placed the cleaver
In my hand. She did not know the
Hazard, rutted brain, the
Blemished land. We spoke of writing.

Why do clocks look more like Shiva,
Blades of planes chopping days
To a fog of pills. I had forgotten him.
Fire halo, the monocle. Thrashing
Through molasses that is today,
Is tomorrow. Dicing up these acts.

Fonts are fractal, jagged lines each
Stamped with the time. Where is the
Advancement in that? The calligraphy?
Common names: Connie, 

Deborah, Susan.
They are kind to me. Middle-aged
Mysteries I’ll never meet.
They are kind to me.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Curriculum

Rigid; the required set, the tired

Petting of heels on Time’s carpet.

Birthed into a naiveté, dense.

A school of khakis and one single

Hall. One becomes a scab so

Immense that motility is miraculous.

A checkmark, a tally. Tightened

Skin brimming with the fat of fourth,

Of fifth, of sixth. Hand in hand with

An epiphany. 

Skip across the yawn that flanks

Each bank of a universe. Cry over

A calculator and mine, and mine,

Until the searing nougat of this earth

Is a slingshot adept at knocking

The metallic membrane from your lips.

Speak, speak cautiously. Step into

Sects and show them your teeth.

Give it a year, long enough to

Shred the gown, and then return to

Tunnels. Do not linger on “Parental.”

Bore, blind and blissful and hit the

Buried totem, the slender anti-amulet.

And permit it. Permit the whirlwind

To whisk you to cloud ceilings,

Fiery floors. Myriads of men, other

Mothers, other brothers, other

All. It will shift, like cheap plastic in

The pit. Let it twist. It will twist regardless.



© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH