Ben Space

The smallest weird number, caught out on a string, waiting to become true again.

[ben-davis-poetry]

It feels like someone just sawed off my legs and smashed my chest to pieces

[ben-davis-poetry]

Feeling/Formula

What does it take

Is it anger and anxiety?

Rush to a deadline

Flush at lost friends’ murmur 

Is it sun and body light

Hours on foot

February Spring 

A Winter Respite?

Am I a formula to be read

Can I be seen and filled in?

Illuminated and produced?

What can I find out

By fiddling with my thumbs

And laying face down 

In frozen mud?

[ben-davis-poetry]

It’s been a long time and I almost forgot

Unholy and repentant Soaked in wine

Witness to seeding Clouds of water And the mulch below

The dust trails Of dim passion Burnt to the base

Of wispy dreams Busted and lost To indulgence

Mired in selfness In pursuit

I am

[ben-davis-poetry]

You are awake.Sitting on a friend you figured would not be a friend’s couch, early, last night’s child rum still think in your nose, not unclothed, now actively embraced by your own sweat. The truth is closing in on you at all sides, you are not what you’ve said you are. Failing, faster all the time, constantly approaching that ephemeral real, that partitioned selfhood struggled against at every turn jeered at by every joke you make, hidden in every false-honest footstep that falls so heavy. You are unchecked sexual desire, restrained only by dreams of ego and grandeur. You are so obsessed with ego. So much that liquor can’t break you. 

You went to a play yesterday and they talked about Prufrock, he wasn’t sure about eating a peach, or going to the tea party, or much of anything really. He asked himself if he dared to disturb the universe, and assured himself there was always time to reverse, and to craft that mask that follows you, that mask that becomes you until its use is cracked away at and it crumbles barren to the Earth. Am I that pathetic? Prufrock has always made sense of my life for me, “Do I dare?” over and over, wondering when I ought to disturb the universe. I am filled with wonder at what honest would do to the world around me.

Honesty would have me nowhere near here, honesty would have me ten feet at all times from this room, these people, this crowd. Their identity obsessed falsehoods drop them from their delicate floating glide of nonchalance and smash them feet first onto the ground, planted and rooted in a reality they take far too for granted as being real. I would be so madly forward, I would tell her that I don’t give a fuck about time and what has happened and your robot poor man’s replacement of my ego with his. That she had no place caring about stupid things when we get the opportunity to have just one more moment.

One more moment over and over again, I am losing so many moments over and over again, and I can’t decide what to do. I am losing moments to me, not to anyone else, no one has taken them from me, but I am still losing them. There is no you, this is me, I know only that I want to be more and that I am not and that I am less and less and less and less and less and less and less and less and less. The me I used to see is on fire and gasping for air, the world that had been its bubble is now engulfed in ink smoke and particles of fiber glass. Its lungs have almost given out and it holds on only with the most fragile shaking breaths. 

Not sure any longer if there will be time, and it turns out that Prufrock realizes only at the end, that he was wrong. There wasn’t time and now he has run out of time to stand on the beach and I have run out of time to become. Missed the mark, skipped the tea party, I dared not disturb the universe and so the universe has disturbed me by leaving me completely behind.  

[ben-davis-poetry]

I think I need this space back

[ben-davis-poetry]

I will always be in my kitchen staring at the cabinet, deep into your trials, wondering wondering wondering, how friendly it would be

[ben-davis-poetry]

Once you have asked yourself just once, just once, what is my reason for living, why have I chosen to be alive today, every moment... every every moment of the rest of your life is a constellated answer to that question. Once living is an option, not the default mode, there will never be another implicit moment. We may ruin the sanctity of being in an instant. 

[ben-davis-poetry]

You are the ghostliness That has invaded All the space in me You are the fading That has drip drained The solid from me The longer I hold The more I am dispersed And the artifacts of me Fade away to nothing I have seen you On the edges of me Passing walls And avoiding my doors Every corner bleeds you And the world is me And I am your wound

[ben-davis-poetry]

Dreaming of Being Seen

If I could I would craft Light in the image of The tides or as breath. As if vision was pulled And prone to weight. I'd grow planet like- Massive and round Draw it into my field And trap it for a while- Become illuminated Starlike on solid ground. Then you would see me From across the divide All over the universe You'd never pass over And miss me again

[ben-davis-poetry]

In The Night We Found

Tin cans and signs of Rain men fallen flat. The dignity of fresh Roadkill come onto by The silent, hollow And dimly lit streets. A baron antiquity Dimly reminded of its Previous motion.

An echo built Empty mimic Of the day Reverberating faint With lamp buzz and The last whispers of Our suns old dreams.

A walk become Rapture in the absence Of clock or watch. A foot forward Into endless curtails And nightmares And vacant parks And moon lit sidewalks. Out of lockstep at last With the turning sun and Ground. And trapped Timeless in the dark.

[ben-davis-poetry]

Casket Open

A distant gaze What once was

The open wake Excellent no more

A good man's death Riddled and lost

What is good What is not

A transfixed stare Mistaken care

[ben-davis-poetry]

What You Asked Me

I took your hand like you

asked me to.

I went as far as you

asked me to. 

My feet felt you pull

and you carried me;

but when you let go

like I asked you to,

they fell flat on water

and I sank unprophetic 

Into my delusions 

[ben-davis-poetry]

Come with me Into the morning

All I want Is to feel Your dreams

And your hands Under the blanket Holding mine

[ben-davis-poetry]

A Window of Burden

Writing is contemporary

burden.

I’ll tell you,

snow fell on the 29th

in my town in Maine.

60 degrees fahrenheit on Christmas.

El Nino’s relent,

and frequent return.

The modern World,

bearing out

the contemporary burden

of past onlookers and

burdened writers. 

We are soon buried in snowless,

and coddled by

smog lit screens.

To write of me in this time--

I become neglect.

And heavy weight.

Text carries and is formed

responsibility.

Concrete and disdainful

of my whims. 

[ben-davis-poetry]

One month interrupted 

18 to 18

For the first time

It feels utterly wrong

To be here again

To be near you again. I don’t think I could do this

For any longer

Your mothering is old

And this room is cold

My memories are new

These old ones I live in

That follow me in this place

Are dim and untied now I keep dreaming on this bed

That has had so few dreams before

They are warm and simple

They are now and not before

Spaces like this can sometimes 

Change and appropriate

Morph to fit 

And become the now 

To take on new autumnal properties 

This one is dead though

And is obtuse in and around me

Unappropriated and stagnant 

I am ready to move on 

[ben-davis-poetry]

A wet December gone dry. Green has bled through, and become new white, grey, brown and dull.

First snow comes- risen again in chill- dances for a moment, and runs away again.

Another frozen world, lost in the green.

[ben-davis-poetry]

I am pre determined loser