I.J. Benjamin

i remember the sixth grade
and my teacher, an old gypsy woman with thick, greasy hair,
she would shout at me with a raspy,
liquor scolded voice,
...

when meaning has faded away
like the dawn resided the day
and you have no sense of purpose
but the loneliness of each second
...

it would just be me
and him
and we would sit on the cold floor of the side walk
and he would draw shapes in the grass with a broken
...

i tell you now,
i'll repeat these words,

be drunk,
...

i left two scars below my feet
and i am reduced to
listening to the wet sand
as the waves lick its wounds
...

Yesterday,
the most beautiful woman in the world
was going to kiss me, except, the second
before our lips touched, i fell apart
...

I was with a girl named Kanalia
with good curves, she explained that it's Hawaiian
and that it means
beauty within a shining star
...

With a bottle in hand
on a park bench, encased by
barbed wire,
not smiling, not frowning,
...

inside the most desolate of mountains,
where nothing is,
a speck of life, exists, breaths and lives,
the little, little hearts of
...

i wonder if i shall ask her
for her heart
with her hand in my
hand,
...

The ever still we are - the ever in love are still in love,
the ever in hate are still in hate and the ever poor still smile.
And their smile is still the same and
still, the very worst off feel good some days.
...

...

There is no smile more human and rare
than one of acceptance for what is there,
than one of compassion when life is not fair.
...

And now my time has passed,
i have to leave,
for nothing good or bad may
last,
...

today the day was short

there was little sun
...

Here is a poem to true love
this poem will not rhyme
there will be no full moons or serenades
this poem will be read with a snack
...

Every time I try to type a few decent words
I am hoping,
no! i am praying they are better
Than the last, though they rarely
...

...

When I was eleven,
there was a treehouse up on the neighbour's tree.
It was my sole envy, it was all I wanted, but my father,
he said,
...

When it's late at night or thick in the afternoon,
or the traffic is the worst, or the toast machine is broken
and you are swimming through waves of sweaty crowds,
notice the squeak of the birds in the sky, the rattle of the pipes, the sound of everything so easily becoming
...