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benjamin-adams
benjamin-adams
American
Crouching slick faced in the depths of the pines, Drums are echoing in me like dead men. The forest always knows how it will end, The thick autumn painted crimson with blood. The deer murmurs as I slowly take sight And ran for miles after his mortal wound. Through ravines and thorns I carefully wound: His corpse was still beating among the pines. Cone-needle bed is his funeral site. Death has become the tooth-scarce grin of men. My hands are on the shoulders of my blood: A burden he must carry through the end. Not long after this the deer filled the end Of our truck and the ragged red-brown wound Pained my eyes, hissing at me as the blood Fled from it like a warrior who pines For home. We cut him apart with old men And the winter made our breath turn to sight. Two months later my kin’s ribs are the sight That tell me it is all about to end. Where once stood muscle now lay paper men Leaking memories, ready to be wound In the splint’ring rigidity of pine And finally make good their debt of blood We are starving without the nature-blood And the black smoke pollutes the holy site Where killing became living in the pines. Now there are machines living at the end Of my fence, chewing on the trees, wounding My mother with the oiled claws of un-men. I meandered slowly towards the dead men Now laid enshrouded deep within the blood Of the forest. I am the living wound Among the trees. Wooden markers show sights Of a generation shortly ended. There is no life among the wretched pines. Now coming are the haunted men who pine for the forest of their blood, but the end has come and earth-wounds are their only sight.
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Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 10:39 PM UTC
A Pioneer's Lament: Sestina (Rough Draft)
Crouching slick faced in the depths of the pines, Drums are echoing in me like dead men. The forest always knows how it will end, The thick autumn painted crimson with blood. The deer murmurs as I slowly take sight And ran for miles after his mortal wound. Through ravines and thorns I carefully wound: His corpse was still beating among the pines. Cone-needle bed is his funeral site. Death has become the tooth-scarce grin of men. My hands are on the shoulders of my blood: A burden he must carry through the end. Not long after this the deer filled the end Of our truck and the ragged red-brown wound Pained my eyes, hissing at me as the blood Fled from it like a warrior who pines For home. We cut him apart with old men And the winter made our breath turn to sight. Two months later my kin’s ribs are the sight That tell me it is all about to end. Where once stood muscle now lay paper men Leaking memories, ready to be wound In the splint’ring rigidity of pine And finally make good their debt of blood We are starving without the nature-blood And the black smoke pollutes the holy site Where killing became living in the pines. Now there are machines living at the end Of my fence, chewing on the trees, wounding My mother with the oiled claws of un-men. I meandered slowly towards the dead men Now laid enshrouded deep within the blood Of the forest. I am the living wound Among the trees. Wooden markers show sights Of a generation shortly ended. There is no life among the wretched pines. Now coming are the haunted men who pine for the forest of their blood, but the end has come and earth-wounds are their only sight.
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39
She’s a darting smile in honey sweet sun a soft speckled nap in the shade She’s a bright red bird weaving in the trees, a shimmering root in the reach She’s the smoke in a starry night skyline a kiss in warm crying light She’s an oft turned page under tired brown eyes a tale of trumpets and song But most of all she’s a love long sought for a quiet reminder of strength.
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Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 2:22 AM UTC
Honey Sweet Sun You Are
How word conveys thine yonder form is winter’s ice upon my ear, No mouth can so describe the warmth lay hous’d inside my heart endeared. Despite all speech that one might find, though vastly far it always spans, your essence will lay undefined, far beyond all ink-spotted hands. But here I stay ever toiling, grasping my pen yet unprepared, Cursive paper onward coiling, My crumpled sheets lay uncompared. So know my love you’re all to me beyond that which our words can see.
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Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 8:36 PM UTC
Undefined (A Sonnet in 8 Syllable Lines)
I bled my words but none landed on the paper.
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Jul 4, 2013
Jul 4, 2013 at 2:30 AM UTC
None
My smile glistens like cracked glass. The dancing never stops.
0
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 4:57 AM UTC
All-day
I can still feel that stained carpet on my toes, the one where I used to play tug of war with my dog until he got hit by that Mac truck in February because he’s stupid and thought it was trying to conquer his territory or something, but now I guess I’m the stupid one, because here I am flying out over the streetlights and sidewalks, just waiting to crack against the pavement like some gigantic Humpty Dumpty, which makes me glad that there’s a precedent for not being able to put people back together, because I’m almost positive that even if they did, there would be at least one or two pieces switched around that would make just the smallest difference and then Humpty Dumpty wouldn’t really be himself anymore, and that’s sad because I’ve always at least been myself, even if a little misguided, and at least I wasn’t one of those soul ****** drones that took the medication and good god this is taking forever I chose this because I thought it would be quick, because I didn’t want to end up like the squirrel Josh ran over on White Oak Road where just about everything in him was smashed except one leg and his head and he just sat there twitching for like thirty seconds or at least until I couldn’t really see him anymore because we were driving away, which is odd because if it had been a dog or a cat we would have stopped, like the mac truck driver did for Jake in February, but since it was a squirrel we just chuckled and kept on driving over to the Dairy Queen, the biggest one in the world actually, and it even has a sign saying so, and I always tapped it as I walked inside the place, which really wasn’t so much a huge place as slightly bigger than the other Dairy Queens of the world, and I would have really liked to travel the world but it was too expensive and the world isn’t really too keen on meeting some country yokel who can’t even pronounce Thucydides correctly, which I really don’t get why we don’t have any cool names in the modern times, because everyone’s roll sheets and grave stones and birth certificates read like a grocery list, John, Bob, Ben, Joe, and no one ever has a cool name like Pericles or Hesiod or Ajax, but I guess that’s because no one can ever really fill out those names either, because it’d be too much like a 6 year old wearing size 17 shoes or my girlfriend wearing my hoodie but less cute and more pathetic, as if we had broken up and she just wanted to wear it for nostalgia  and her eyeliner is smeared all over the collar because she wiped her eyes on it and yeah, that’s probably what it’d be like if I
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Oct 11, 2012
Oct 11, 2012 at 4:01 PM UTC
Sunny October Tenth
I can still feel that stained carpet on my toes, the one where I used to play tug of war with my dog until he got hit by that Mac truck in February because he’s stupid and thought it was trying to conquer his territory or something, but now I guess I’m the stupid one, because here I am flying out over the streetlights and sidewalks, just waiting to crack against the pavement like some gigantic Humpty Dumpty, which makes me glad that there’s a precedent for not being able to put people back together, because I’m almost positive that even if they did, there would be at least one or two pieces switched around that would make just the smallest difference and then Humpty Dumpty wouldn’t really be himself anymore, and that’s sad because I’ve always at least been myself, even if a little misguided, and at least I wasn’t one of those soul ****** drones that took the medication and good god this is taking forever I chose this because I thought it would be quick, because I didn’t want to end up like the squirrel Josh ran over on White Oak Road where just about everything in him was smashed except one leg and his head and he just sat there twitching for like thirty seconds or at least until I couldn’t really see him anymore because we were driving away, which is odd because if it had been a dog or a cat we would have stopped, like the mac truck driver did for Jake in February, but since it was a squirrel we just chuckled and kept on driving over to the Dairy Queen, the biggest one in the world actually, and it even has a sign saying so, and I always tapped it as I walked inside the place, which really wasn’t so much a huge place as slightly bigger than the other Dairy Queens of the world, and I would have really liked to travel the world but it was too expensive and the world isn’t really too keen on meeting some country yokel who can’t even pronounce Thucydides correctly, which I really don’t get why we don’t have any cool names in the modern times, because everyone’s roll sheets and grave stones and birth certificates read like a grocery list, John, Bob, Ben, Joe, and no one ever has a cool name like Pericles or Hesiod or Ajax, but I guess that’s because no one can ever really fill out those names either, because it’d be too much like a 6 year old wearing size 17 shoes or my girlfriend wearing my hoodie but less cute and more pathetic, as if we had broken up and she just wanted to wear it for nostalgia  and her eyeliner is smeared all over the collar because she wiped her eyes on it and yeah, that’s probably what it’d be like if I
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10
Rain weaves weary paths on the old Aurelian stone busts like lilting music in a deserted ballroom. Yellow cobblestones echo underneath black soled shoes and sickly noses sing. Across the street, children laugh like the breaking shaft of a silverish door key in a cold iron-clad lock.
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Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 1:26 AM UTC
Aurelian Stone Busts
Thunder shakes its hide of rain. Against the sky, rain retreats. Rain makes some people lonely but graces me like a scar. Rain makes some people just wet. Against your skin, rain bright-stars. Rain drifts in deserted rooms like a speaker suspended. "Glisten, eyes, and rain freely." At home flood-rain drowned my dog. Shake your coat of rain, fly on. Rain weaves weary paths like the old Aurelian stone busts. Forest rain drips, doesn't fall. Rain runs down softly like a colorful painted lasso. Rain breathes on my window sill like a loaded rifle. Rain penetrates all skin and bone. Rain is more serious than a lover on his deathbed. Rain can be pitiful like glowing fire never dead. Umbrellas familiar with rain sit forgotten in closets with old pairs of shoes. Direwolves prance through rains with tails held like a tarantula in molting season beats drums. Ashpalt puddles boil with rain. Against the ground, rain retreats.
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Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 3:14 AM UTC
Rain Bright-Stars
Like when they found the chariot wheels at the bottom of the Red Sea so was I surprised at the faint reaching of the fig tree, clinging to life amidst so much dust, as it reached ever upward in an infinite dance, unaware of its eventual wanweird fate. But I tracked on, crunching through the ancient dirt, scrolls strapped upon my back, coarse leather digging through my camel's hair robes, sandy grit forced in the gaps of my toes. I cracked the locusts and devoured them, dampening their bitterness with the sweet warming explosion of wild honey. So with bound Pleiades above me, I gave witness to Jerusalem, saying "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." And I took them into the Jordan and made them new men. As the chill waters numbed their muscles, their hairs pricked up like gooseflesh, the night echoing with splashing water and murmured voices. But slowly the people trickled away, back to the twang of lutes, their ladles of soups, and I was left alone, sitting, contemplating, always waiting. So I sent forth the ravens, carrying my message, to meet at the Brookhollow no matter the obstruction, to come by wagon or camel, no matter of rain or flood. But they were stubborn and prideful, and would be moved from their couches probably by no less than one of Archimedes' great battleship levers, and even then with massive groaning like the coarse wooden hulls of those monolithic ships. Because the sweet taste of pastries is lodged upon their tongues, keeping them occupied with this world instead of the next. So here I'll stay, always waiting.
0
Sep 10, 2012
Sep 10, 2012 at 1:02 AM UTC
John the Baptist
Like when they found the chariot wheels at the bottom of the Red Sea so was I surprised at the faint reaching of the fig tree, clinging to life amidst so much dust, as it reached ever upward in an infinite dance, unaware of its eventual wanweird fate. But I tracked on, crunching through the ancient dirt, scrolls strapped upon my back, coarse leather digging through my camel's hair robes, sandy grit forced in the gaps of my toes. I cracked the locusts and devoured them, dampening their bitterness with the sweet warming explosion of wild honey. So with bound Pleiades above me, I gave witness to Jerusalem, saying "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." And I took them into the Jordan and made them new men. As the chill waters numbed their muscles, their hairs pricked up like gooseflesh, the night echoing with splashing water and murmured voices. But slowly the people trickled away, back to the twang of lutes, their ladles of soups, and I was left alone, sitting, contemplating, always waiting. So I sent forth the ravens, carrying my message, to meet at the Brookhollow no matter the obstruction, to come by wagon or camel, no matter of rain or flood. But they were stubborn and prideful, and would be moved from their couches probably by no less than one of Archimedes' great battleship levers, and even then with massive groaning like the coarse wooden hulls of those monolithic ships. Because the sweet taste of pastries is lodged upon their tongues, keeping them occupied with this world instead of the next. So here I'll stay, always waiting.
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48
My mind traces your every curve and valley, yearning for adventure in new lands. For though unexplored, I can see you fit me as water in glass. So why not rush into me, why evade? Guiding is my specialty, but you writhe as if in storm, with wind in current as I grasp futilely at your crashing waves, beg for your ordering. But so it goes, again, again, until I see you have no waves, you weather no storm. It is merely my eye-shard's trick, reflected as I lay broken and shattered about the kitchen floor.
0
Aug 8, 2012
Aug 8, 2012 at 1:55 PM UTC
Eye-Shard's Trick