February 2012
2 posts
1 tag
2012 so far...
Updates may be a little sparse in the coming weeks due to a couple of different (i.e. lengthy, prose, big ideas) projects I am working on. I am also trying to find time to get back into some creative photography so we will see how that goes. A clamor of words, Ben
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When I was young, I saw the world from the Interstate. Ever since, I have been trying to write what that felt like, looked like, sounded like. And the truth is, most of my dreams have been in backseats. Books, and Gameboys, and oldies radio. I never drive. I only ever ride because it feels like home.
January 2012
6 posts
1 tag
Pollen
Is this speaking in tongues? Am I doing this right? Your kiss in my lungs, My hands on your hips, We swayed all night long. I could have caught the humming bird That beat inside your chest If you weren’t so distracted With holding your breath. And you could have kept the great white shark That swam in my neck Disguised as the lump in my throat Holding back everything I wish I would have...
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Mirror, One Man Human, Being At this moment I am twenty-one year, eight months, and ten days old My name is Gamel, Benjamin I stand five foot, seven on the good days Hair, brown; eyes, brown Faint brown freckles I wonder if she ever noticed My skin is pale pink My ears, small; chin, stubbley; nose, prominent, yet unintrusive (A gentleman’s nose) My hands are normal, but my fingers are...
1 tag
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Ink Blots
This life It can sing to us And other times it takes a swing at us Hits the unprepared, right-side of our heart Leaves us bruised like the fruit that got us exiled from Eden It must have tasted like God It is why we wear snakes in our wrists That twist like tornadoes It is why I write like this Frantically searching for the sonnets in my arteries It is why I only bleed back ink blots It is why we...
101
Two bobby pins A DVD I borrowed months ago One hundred poems I wrote about you That you never read I am trying to clean you out of my room I am trying to keep you out of my head I am trying to start anew But I still sleep in a bed you once called your’s
December 2011
4 posts
Ripple
So I will hold you still, Press my lips to your collar, Kiss the fire from you, With our fingertips tangled in each other’s hair, Our knees between each other’s knees, Tongues and teeth and breath and cheeks. Necks stretched back bare Our throats uttering nothing… But each other’s names I was no weaker than the raindrop That caused your heart to ripple.
I long for the day when I quit buying lottery tickets and start taking pictures for a living. I long for the day.
I. My whole life, a smoldering love My honest love, a smoke, a sickness The way I wander, The way I wander. II. Her, a spark, a flame, An ember, an ash. The way she kept me warm.
1 tag
There were winters I wanted nothing But to sleep ‘til Saint Patrick’s Day Just so I could wake up and drink And stay drunk ‘til the Fifth of May
November 2011
2 posts
I Will Write You
If you brought me lips I would kiss If you gave me hands I would hold you Bring songs and I will sing you Bring books and I will read you For money I will spend you For beds I will feel you Fuck you Tell you you’re beautiful If you bring me shoes I will walk with you Dance with you Run away with you Give me a piano; I will play you A canvas, I will paint you A pen and I will write you Into a...
1 tag
12
We are all so proud
Of the things we said we’d do
And never once did
October 2011
4 posts
1 tag
The heaviness settles in my chest Walk away Runaway Realization You were never bound by my assumptions Never trapped in my imagination You were always free Always free
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I was famous before I was old So I never grew gray Never had long beards like the philosophers of old Their wisdom flowed like a river The river flowed like God I am a vapor These words, Not even ripples
I haven't written in so long.
Two jobs and no adventure makes Ben a bad writer.
September 2011
4 posts
Her hair twisted dark and tangled Sporadic and mathematic Like a side-winding snake
I was a baby in a basket Floating on the rivers, she found me Fibonacci sequence of my love I was left in the sun To warm my blood She licked her lips The fire hissed Sending sparks slithering up my spine I followed her all the way down From the mountain the borrowed me Where the bush burned but was not consumed...
1 tag
A mouth without words, Is still a mouth My hand without your hand, Is still my hand Or my fist clenched Holding tightly, Holding nothing, Remembering nothing.
1 tag
Cut your hair, Sleep in the daytime, Forget about it.
She says she ain’t never seen Savannah But she’s got sweet dreams Tennessee In the back of her breath When she tells me “Welcome to Graceland”
August 2011
5 posts
1 tag
We dedicated our hips To the electric chair You know, we never killed nobody over nothing we couldn’t not have done ourselves.
I keep a birdcage in the corner To remind me why I sing It is never anything but empty Because all these dreams They flew away And all these hearts Were broken anyway That is why I lined the cage With notebooks of poems Where I lined every page With places called home So that everyday I remember where I came from Everyday I remember why I sing
0010
benjaminbombix:
I do not want to die trying.
You look like a poem I wrote Years ago So I swear I will try my best to tie a knot in God And pull heaven down Because I am still not a strong enough man To carry you there I am only a boy Who can fly two kites at once
July 2011
7 posts
A soldier in the song came along marching Saying “I have seen the rising tide Bow humbly to the moon I am drowning in an ocean Of words I said to soon.”
And I was there With a blanket stare Floating on what was left, A future of infinitives, A century of participles, I was barely there Incoherent extent of my voice I was learning to love you dearly I have been silent so long I learned to speak...
Darling, do not break your back on this There are still too many syllables between our kisses Forget forever the words that ruin love Be like a ghost Whose name I still don’t know
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I am still learning what it means to be a man. I am still learning what it means to be. I am still learning.
Hymnal
Sometimes Those old gospel hymns Still rattle in my backbone I have been carrying them around Since my feet hung off the pews But these days My hands only seem to hold on to rock and roll These hands Are heavy with metaphors Sometimes my shoulderblades Seem to buckle With all the words locked up in there
But your hands span like a piano Your earrings dance like tambourines I have seen pipe organs...
2 tags
I do not understand why all these girls get stuck in my head.
2 tags
And in October we were poor. Starving like artists. We were poets, and musicians, and writers, but we spent our days as waiters. We ate the gourmet leftovers from the backrooms of our temp jobs. We took home the flowers to remind ourselves what beauty looked like. We chased dollars down dead ends in the form of contests and lottery tickets. We looked for things we could get for free to sell for...
2 tags
He lives like a man who does not know how he wants to live, except to live free, whatever that means.
June 2011
5 posts
benjaminbombix
While walking to the car in a thunderstorm, I wondered what it would be like to be struck by lightning. “How tragic,” they would say. Yes, but oh, how bright, how alive I would be.
Brothers
We were boys back then. We lived for the summer then, Like the way we live for the weekend now, Those few months of freedom tucked hot between our semesters. We lived for fast bikes, late nights, afternoons that sweltered forever, The stray dog the neighborhood adopted. We all fed him the crusts of PB&Js.
We lived for the cutest girls in the county, Because by June the school lines did not...
Balance
Do not balance your dreams like a checkbook. Instead, be an acrobat with nothing to lose. Don’t look down. If things don’t work out There will be a net catch you.
0003
benjaminbombix:
“…I am not a rich man; I just have these dream I call plans. But I do not have plans; I just work, and write, and sleep my life away.”
Riggatone Bones
I followed and found you in the wingtips On a bright bounce of sky. Your shape-shift of the apex, Appalachian hills and dulcimers Clanging like a Daniel Boone tambourine
I followed and found you in a garden growing. There were crow berries and shovel-backs, Lucifer trees lining the cantaloupe trails, The smell of Jupiter leaves Soaking in the wheelbarrow.
I followed and found you in a simmering...
May 2011
4 posts
I know this body was not made to last forever
So when I go
Make my books out of the trees that petrify
Let them turn to stone
Let them sit for years in the libraries no one visits anyway
Then let them sink into the ocean forever
I wrote my heart into a million words
My heart belongs to the sea
American April
When I loved you It was under the cover of April showers It felt so safe Being next to you
And you had magic in you Laced like innocent breath Right beneath your collar bone Where your silver necklace rested I used to kiss you there In the dusty sun When we would wake beneath your window
You slowed the earth’s spinning It waited on your precious words But we were speechless Our heartbeats echoed...
1 tag
“I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I...”
– Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944)
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My words are my love
My love is a soft pillow
Your head can rest here
April 2011
6 posts
Tree
I am tall. I am a giant Whose leafy limbs once gave shade. For generations I have grown, Stretching my many arms Into the sunlight To hold up the sky
My roots Stretch on for miles. In them there are many things, The history of life and all its answers, Secrets of the wild woods, A cragged story, A host of bones.
My heart Is forgiving I forgave the wind when it shook me, Forgave the winter for its...
Forgetting
You Sit in the back of my mind Holding a sketchbook full of memories I have been longing to forget The one of the cherry tree, The smell of you still heavy in my bed The long dark hairs I find tangled on my coat’s shoulder The one I wore last winter Your hair is shorter now
I Want to forget the springtime The chilly nights and clouds of March The rainy days in April The different bookmarks you...
1 tag
Firefly
Have you ever caught a firefly in your hand Opened your hand to set it free Only to have it wait a moment? Then when it finally flew away It flashed its tiny light As if to say “Goodbye dearest friend, The world is better now.”
I know she has a sunflower heart I know because she dreams of things like oceans Speaks of things like love and hope And still prays for things like peace I am a rock...
2 tags
I am only a boy who can fly two kites at once.
March 2011
11 posts
“A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what...”
– Moliere