This is Benjamin
Archive for the ‘noetry’ Category
The broken cup of our times
June 8th, 2010 | benjamin
The broken cup of our times.
The chipped enamel from which we all must drink.
The shit reception of culture
Caked in snow no thump can repair.
The car with faulty air-con
Whose windows won’t unwind.
The fallen-out crotch of intimacy.
The ruined cassette of history.
The spoiled milk of inheritance squandered in the sun.
My Mosquito
May 24th, 2009 | benjamin
For my love, for Monique
Past my ear the sightless buzzing dives like a World War ace.
So near I cannot slap you down,
Shift left, veer right, you dodge my hand with grace.
Please take your tiny fill of me, for I’ve much blood to spare,
Then still your wings and digest.
And with your sudden silence, you judge the deal fair.
Ah! A fool’s bargain I have struck to descend these silent reaches.
Trying not to love you is sleeping under a mosquito net,
Things slip through and now my heart itches.
haiku
February 2nd, 2009 | benjamin
The temperature rose in our flat, hotter even, than the 40-odd red faced, spherical celciuses that danced around heads, puffing their steaming air all over us and in our direction.
So we escaped to the State Library, an edifice of the state that is disarmingly cool and inviting. Chilly inside, like the personal offices of a South East Asian statesman (for they have internalised colonial myths that connect laziness with humidity and heat).
And I selected a volume of Haiku, printed at the height of the old empire, spilling its pages like so many crisp syllables.
I learned of the history of the form, and found this to be my sultry favourite, very suited to the weather:
Koibito wo Omo-
Okie mitsu
Nete mitsu kaya no
Hirosa kanaLonging for My Sweetheart
I sit up or lie down and yet,
How large is the mosquito-net!
By Ukihashi (a poetess)
Here now are a few that I wrote, so taken by the form was I, that I might have been a 90′s yuppie, clothed in kimono, trimming bonzai, practicing calligraphy, rolling sushi and so forth:
Broken Skin
A peach bursts its skin
And spills out all of its life
Into the fruit bowl.Starry-eyed
Cold light in my cell.
It burns my eyes, catches dust:
Now planets, now stars.Glow
Summer’s sun light burns
Now not seeing light that shines
lower than before.hunger of information
December 13th, 2008 | benjamin
the song has replaced the album
rolling news has replaced music and
science has replaced the soul
