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)

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