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 Mar 2013 Rand J Bennett
Ugo
Funny how we woke up in the morning
and pretended that tomorrow never happened—
strutted naked in mirrors celebrating our youth,
laughing, knowing suns and moons couldn’t do the same.

We borrowed our arms from the fridge
and peddled bicycles with bad breath—
trading war stories ‘cause we knew
if we came back alive
life would still be the death of us.
 Feb 2013 Rand J Bennett
Liz
Stalks of bronze leaves croon and
the manicured trees burst jade
against the sky, dangling over
tilted dark green benches.
I pretend to read,
trailing over the pages the oily noses of
dark-eyed, wide hipped nannies
willowy limbed women whose
scarves unfurl under artless chignons,
business men with careful mouths,
long, frecking strides.

He broke the fourth wall without warning and
my laugh was sporadic while I crumbled,
under the slightest of foreign touches, there,
above my shoulder blades,
where another hand
once brushed.
 Feb 2013 Rand J Bennett
Liz
The night, my face, your hands: The world is damp.
What else is there to do with all this weight,
but sink into the autumn grass, sedate,
sticking to the lawn like a fresh new stamp,
feeling the pulse of a steady bass amp
filling spaces between us like a freight
train, roaring to a new country, so late,
bearing fragile cargo to unknown camps.
I want to rage against the worst of me,
to keep deep down that brassy, dismal light,
wailing after you pulled me from the road;
your shirt's sweet warmth smelling like wet birch tree.
It hounds me to the core, the ifs and whys
of ugly nights, the drive to overflow.
 Feb 2013 Rand J Bennett
Liz
Before I met him and learned to scream,
my hair hung thick, sheets of burnt oak wheat.
Rebel strands clung to my arms, trailing
my sides. Somewhere, I still hum Sam Cooke
(a change is gonna come, oh yes it will) and
Ma's back is turned in the kitchen, making pie.
apple slices in the blue bowl,
thousands of unknown thoughts
shifting under her small hands.
Pa folds into his armchair neatly,
hands tucked tight against his sides, quietly rubbing
holes in the soft wool, watching Streets of San Francisco.

The garbage can rattles, the street smells of pine.
I back out of the drive, on my way to the last first date
I will ever go on. I pop an orange tic-tac,
just in case. I don’t want him to taste
the sour ghost of an apple still sitting
on my tongue.
 Feb 2013 Rand J Bennett
Marian
Tall old oak trees,
Swaying-dancing in the sweetly blowing breeze,
Their branches close to my Mamma's bedroom window;
The breezes caress the dancing flowers in the meadow.

Grandma's dear hands once kneeding bread,
And Grandfather's strong hands patting my Mamma on the head,
Breezes blowing the yellow muslin curtains at the window pane;
And sweet lilacs, and many other flowers are bordering the lane.

The perfume of flowers drifting from the window into that pretty house,
Where cats would always catch a darting mouse,
And wisteria blooms twisting their mighty branches around the tall trees;
Which sway back and forth in the breeze.

*~Marian~
i entangle myself in the sky,
grasp and tug on breezes,
expect grass to be as thoughtless
as my skin.



i am complete, here,
amongst the feelings of stones,
as april folds me,
intricate, in its madness.
sonskyn means sunshine in afrikaans. it's just pretty, there isn't a meaning.
Whispering to each handhold, "I'll be back,"
I go up the cliff in the dark. One place
I loosen a rock and listen a long time
till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush
of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind --
I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side
or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward...

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark--
"Made it again!" Oh how I love this climb!
-- the whispering to the stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
"Made it again! Made it again!"
She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.
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