I.
The humdrum whitewashed wall of my balcony
overlooks almost everyone here,
but it’s yellowed in the slightly
past-the-season holiday lights
winking behind my back.
Rip them out, and yet
the still flaming cigarette butts alight
the charred pupils watching.
Never quite willed away.

II.
Today I saw a hairy upper-ankle poking
out from a tie-dye dress
and out-of-fashion Birkenstocks.
Adam leering through
the straightened golden curtains,
and I thought: woman? No.
You wouldn’t catch me out like that.

III.
The end of my mug’s looming
and only now am I confident
in passing personal judgment.
The last drops smile while they cling
resolutely to the inner-rim.
How they refuse to fall!
The sprightly demon climbing
the wet, ridged inner-walls
of my throat is parched,
strumming on my vocal chords,
and I’m singing,
obscenely.

IV.
You can’t come into my house
before I’ve cleaned it up,
flipped the cushions, hidden
all the plastic cups and washed
the clear ones to look like glass.
I’ve gotta Lysol, Clear-ox, and detox,
then I’ll let you in, maybe.

V.
My balcony knows too much about me.


-BRD

Copyright @2012 by Ben Davies

Just because the rose beats our blood,
Why does the violet come second?

I’m sure the lizard loves it warmer
Cold. His heart flies in a square, blue box.

They should sacrifice blue ribbons in
Stead. Martyrdom looks clean, sans crimson,

Sans blood at all, then we’re murdering
Statues, already dead, beaten me-

Tal, standing without legs or organs.
Sheba, just part of the whole shebang,

You look so depleted, staunchly there,
Staunchly not, and somehow I wonder

Whether you’d like the b or the a
Better, or nursery rhymes at all.

-BRD

A wraith in Monday’s spoon,
I’m pale to start again,
Winter’s dark in day lit June,
I’m maimed by blackened game.  

My skin so deeply grooved
With days of gritted muck,
I forget the face I wore in youth
On such temporal crutch.

With lonely else but waiting,
I’ve yet the time to count,
Eighty-eight in lines remaining,
As the bright of day, dims out.  

-BRD

In the Garden

As the rose cuts deeply with its redness,
I see your visage in sleepy visions,
like a portrait beneath my lashes, stroked
flawlessly, through the length of days
spent trimming down the weeds
that grow relentless through our efforts.
In a matter of time we’ll shear
them down again, that much harder
to slice that pestilence away,
as the darkness of autumn evenings
creeps into summer’s passing shadow.
Let there be some light yet, to see
the work of longer days in our garden,
to see your final smile in the sun’s beam,
and watch, as my delighted fingers caress
your freckled neck in admiration.
Let there be hours to pray and sing,
and laugh at gilded butterflies,
let there be moments yet to wonder
at the splendor of it all.

I close my eyes to see your likeness,
but the paint begins to crumble
from its canvas, wrinkled
as if worn by the harshness of times.
The smoke between your fingers
has clambered up and stole
your golden hue away,
like a breath of darkened wind
it strips the petals from your face,
and tears have dripped the very
sparkle from your eyes,
the spirit soon to follow.

You wounded me with beauty once,
without, you wound me still,
the faded wings of butterflies,
pressed cold, upon the sill,
the garden’s white with winter’s cover,
the glass with winter’s pall,
there’s only moments yet to wonder
at the brevity of it all.

Dear K,

I’m broken
With a half-empty toast rack and extra jelly,
Unground coffee beans and our unwashed dishes,
I woke to a cold pillow, but no amount of caffeine
Wakes your absence to my expectant lips.
I wandered down with the falling drops
From my tributary lashes,
Wondered why these pearls should dive
So much deeper than it seemed they might
When you said we’d be better off,
You’d be better off, alone.

I shook with clammy hands and nervous glances,
It should have been a sign of things to come,
Briefly entranced for brief romances.

With nothing to be clammy for, anymore,
I sit in the desert dry of unaccompanied rhythm,
Like these notes were begging to be written,
Written because I’ve no other river
Through which my thoughts meander so comfortably,
But stop, I know you’ve no desire to hear about
My breakfast, my day
   I linger.

-BRD

Shades of Gray

                                     A man in black,
                               blurred, as the beating
                                 wings of butterflies
                                 cannot be captured.
                                 Smudged, the steps
                                        he took, lie
                                          smeared
              ­                          on his past,
                     like a wake     of     mud printed
                                            soles.
             ­                         He’s cryptic,
                             obscure as the pictures
                                  drawn to fill an
                                 empty       space,
                       unknown as       those behind
                        him. Come         back to
                   airplanes and          clover leaves,
           childish bathroom            walls. These tiles
           are trodden weary           shades of gray.

A thick mist twists about my childhood,
when it all seemed so much simpler.

Mammoth butterflies tickle
my imagination, I sit and wonder
at the minute grains of sand
cascading from my palms,
the naïve pleasure it once rendered.

These men are chasing dreams
on the backs of butterflies.

Soft driven airstrips blow away,
I have little expectation left to fly.

My mother used to tell me
I could do anything I wanted,
I would sign my name on the clouds
but I have no strength left to leave the ground,
time has left me reaching.

My sand has dwindled.
The butterflies have drifted away.

-*BRD

De-winged and flightless
         is the dragonfly
              that tried to slip by
                       in my slipstream,
It found instead the pickup
          traversing the alleyways
               of my convoluted imagination.
I don’t know why I’m driving,
          ever driving someplace
                unrealized and unexplored.
I feel so disconnected,
I feel so disrespected by the world
                sometimes
But that’s not fair
           it has been good to me.
I feel so disconnected
        sometimes
and yet it comes in times
           when I’m most consumed
                most surrounded.
Maybe I’m just tired
        and the walls around me quiver only
from the struggles of my waking eyes,
Maybe I’m just bitter
        that I can’t have the perfect life
                 and feel as if nothing could be better,
Maybe I’m affected
        by this liquid life I’m draining from my cup
                 in hopes of finding a different day
                                            at the bottom.
Is it jealousy that lingers in my mind
        or mere longing tinged with a heavy
                 dose of confusion?
I am confused.
And yet I’m still alive
        unlike my dragonfly
                  and so I stumble onward.

-*BRD

Teardrop                                                         ­       
                                                                ­  that
                                                                ­beauty
                                                          sits inside the
                                                     tears - sweat, sliding
                                                  down  your skin - slowly
                                               dripping  down  to fall where  
                                          memories lie awaiting - the smallest
                                        ripple  on  a  pond - a  wave  so  subtly
                                      starting - the  faintest  tingle  whimpering
                                  for  its life’s exasperation - wants some  simple
                                recognition, a tiny touch of reckoning - shed that  
                              drop  that  comes  to  cause­  the  wave’s  unbridled
                            movement - be  the   pin’s   undying  call  in   a   room
                          plush packed in silence - that  saline  drip on weathered
                           floors   that  saw  this  life  worth  making - gives  this
                               road   a  worthy  end,  or  bend  since  path’s  are
                                wending - ride  the  bead  that  singing  tells, the
                                    ticking,  tocking  resilienc­e - the  glistening
                                        few that beating drum - through shine,
                                                with  ligh­t,  the  spectrum.
                                              ­                - *BRD

Start with:
        Airway, Breathing, Circulation,
        easy as ABC
they said.
        Perhaps they meant
                clear my throat,
                         slow my breathing,
                                        check my pulse.
                              I could have used
                 the advice, but
        there wasn’t time,
for him.
        Perhaps,   no.
               His pleading eyes
               will not fade in time,
                             and his sand soiled body’s
               last electric leap
        seems to hover
        still longer
        with each
        repetition.
        His blue lips
        still murmur
        words
        to me
        from the
        water.

-*BRD

At my feet are strewn the boxes,
filled and unfilled, waiting
for their cargo to be packed down,
the coarse rustle of newspaper
helps to drown the sounds
of my beleaguered thoughts.

These lingering thoughts
mate with memories in my boxes,
but soon the sounds
are filed away, and I’m waiting
for the next newspaper
to cover them, push them down.

Here it says a dog was put down
after running away from... my thoughts
are arguing again, the newspaper
tries me keep going with my boxes.
Don’t keep her waiting,
she gets like this, the huffing sounds,

her impatient, ruffled countenance sounds
an alarm, keep my head down,
but I can’t carry on waiting
for a place to settle my thoughts,
it’s nothing but boxes
for me, one for every newspaper.

Sometimes I feel like a newspaper,
scattered, and full of the sounds
and lives of many places, in long
rectangular boxes
on page two, continued on page four, no one point
to nail me down,
I’m lost until I find my own, thoughts
will get me nowhere, stop waiting.

But she’s been forever waiting
on me, I am her only news, paper-
less and live, her thoughts
are always with me.
In her every promise, the sounds
of beginnings and settling down,
traveling with me and my boxes.

Every newspaper-sheathed move, sounds
of uprooting, thoughts of stripping down,
she keeps it waiting in boxes.

-*BRD

Incomprehensible blankness screams
at my feeble marks that tumble
clumsily onward, undaunted.

I feel as if my world was plunged
under a hundred waves,
And all I hear is the muffled roar
in the ocean’s unfaltering rhythm,
All I see is the bubbling gleam
of a million unattainable breaths,
I’m drowning.

I’m drowning in dark, engulfing haze,
The muddled thoughts of teenage
Days, spent wandering after acceptance.

There are times I float. unseen,
The narrowing ledge
atop my day that’s packed
in the distraction of
endless possibilities.
I hide on it.

I cannot discern the voices
that guide my fingers with their visions,
Perhaps I’m better off alone
the chasm in my head,
I hear only that rhythm, the beating, a cadence,
I write to it.

-*BRD

I am just paper,
Space, ink, and words,
But you are a dewdrop
Dangling from her stem,
It looks different through you,
A refracted beam
A density of color unknown and indecipherable,
Like a dried leaf in the wind
Move me,
I am a wispy imitation,
Blown by you, Zephyr
Take me.

Tears all dried and salty
I am uninspired
But you are rain,
Pitter-patter and replenish.
Puddle-up and reservoir
I’ll need you.

A page above tonguing flame,
I curl and crumble,
Make myth of me,
Give me grace to rise
And ask the night for morning.

-*BRD