Daniel Benjamin
LONG POSTSCRIPT IN THREE PARTS
1.
This writing has no
desire for prophecy, truth
or even to track the
moving oscillating space
heater column or
the rolling ball ink
spilling on my fingers
or the steam from
the egg sandwich,
the bath water,
my breath
in the under-heated
apartment; the
curl of my toes,
stickiness
on the desk under
my cookbooks, my
water glass fingertips,
my extrusions. Now
my finger is covered
in ink so
I’ll print it here
not so good
so I lower my fingers
down the pen, my
expectations and
soon the heat under the
beans
This is a poem about
Poetry
Poetry means nothing to
me today
and even
when it meant
everything, only
for a displacement.
I let the water
boil. Which will
last longer, this pen’s
fleeing ink
or the cooking
water
The bay leaves
“that sometime did
me seek”
To respond
to not writing I’ll
write a lot
unseriously, not picking
a careful experiment
narrating the unpicking.
My adjusted fingers
solve the ink problem
and the house smells
of thyme, I am
wasting paper
in my spillage, in
the overflowing of
what can’t—
Jeremih says I like
to play crazy sometime—
I am not just
drinking and writing
fast
on a rolling ball
I care more about
basketball and
the Knicks are
bumming me out too
I like my easy life
and the privilege I have
not to work hard
and to license it
I’m spilling
unseriously
dream of painting
cold in
extremities
Dear Anooj and Emily
thank you
for your prompt reply
sorry I cannot do the same
Dear Australian poets
apologies
for my sloppy
editing
I am kinda getting
paid for the anthology
I am not getting
paid by the union
Dear Jane I don’t know
what you want from
me or what I want
from you and if we
can give it, now
that time has passed
the bench colonized
by blandness
Dear Claire how did
I luck out on having
you in my
century and city, I’m
expecting to get
in trouble for it
Dear Maddie Claire says
you are a witch and
she is right and
its too cold to go
outside and too
early for me to feed you
again
I washed my hands
lazily
I got ink on them
again
I checked my phone
and had a text
from Adam
Dear Adam I always always
think of you as Virgil
Dear Seulghee please
prosper because I don’t
want to live in a world
where you don’t
Don’t tell em says
Jeremih
I get some ink on
a spoon, turn the
page on my
messages
and really I am
seducing myself as I
said to JR,
Dear JR dearest JR
it feels so wrong
for you to
be in another
city, should
we both move
back to Chicago?
I don’t know if
I still believe
that nowhere will be
better than
Berkeley or
in art
I always believe in you
JR more than I could
say, I mean like in
a religious kind of way
Dear Shira writing laws
Dear Rebecca passing
verdicts for the week
Dear Anna the true
artist
Why is Maddie so agitated
Why am I,
sitting on a chair
in the middle of
the room
Dear Dylan if we
lived in the same
city would it always
be vacation?
I don’t know
what I could bear
or why I’m getting
this shit down
I hate it
I hate poetry about poetry about poetry
and feel a horrible
jealousy
to see myself through
these
nauseous eyes
I’m running
through the
pages faster today
at
least
running in place
an ink stain
a body language
2.
It’s 6:48pm in my
numerous life,
my life numinous,
and I have
Anna’s gorgeous
vinyl notebook
before me,
gold
like Marianne’s
book Commitment
but sticky
too and grabs onto
Steve’s Cyborg
Legs which
Brandon gave me
in a sticky bar in
Berkeley
A little gross but
with unexplainable
forces
of attraction
Anna sent me this
book in a box
for my birthday
and I’ve kept it out
the paper is thick
I’m trying to say
I’m not lonely
in this
numerous
life, thank you
George
Dylan said
after reading
one of my poems
that there was
such a contrast,
the abstract
and the thick
I want to write
long enough
to get from one
vinyl side
to the other
But I think
that means more
than minutes
Nate says
that serial poets
have a hard time
with endings,
Jack says I am
thinking that
a poem could
last forever,
Frank says this
poem is long
because our friendship
has been long,
and would be
long as I hope
our friendship lasts
if I could write
poems that long,
well, Frank
that poem’s
not so long.
Jocelyn juxtaposes
the finitude
of the day
and of the
life
and the poems
die softly,
bearable.
Light falls
later and later
here,
and a pile of
lighters slowly
diffuses around
this small apartment
Now what
falls from
the trees
isn’t leaves,
some little
pollen clump that
sticks, a little
light drifts
in the sewn
seam, Anna
cut it. Ismail
is coming over
later, the stitch
in my evening,
the purveyor of
limit
In Bob’s book
he repeats a story
from Don
of being in a
taxi with Frank
reading “Hôtel Transylvanie”
and Frank
crying at his own
poem
I can’t love
anyone who
doesn’t cry
from art but
that’s everyone
Now the light is
of the light
fallen but air
gains a little weight
between my open
doors, heavy
and as pirated
Do you also
forget how
Frank writes so
often
of suicide, well,
the lovers of Frank
love life
too much
Now just one
bird chirps, my
mouth fills with
water, now
I’m breathing,
now I close my
eyes to
listen
Shall we win
at love
or shall we
lose, and who
shall all of
us be
Shall the Warriors
win 73 games
I’m writing
in my
loser’s faith,
for me alone
for living
not stopping
to count
each seam’s
pages, here’s another
one. I shiver
and suspend
the breeze.
At the reading
Jane got into
the rhythm
of her rhythms
then said that
made her
feel bad,
well, it made
us feel good
But I won’t
make you
love your
listeners more
than obeying
the dictates of
discomfort, the dead
speak louder to
you. Are you
still happy
on vacation,
thanks for telling
me Write a
long poem in
that moment
of my
not-yet-apartment-
depressed
I don’t want
vacation to end,
imagine prosperity
as its endlessness,
I hate suffering and
only more
so in me
and my friends
For now we’ve
got money
to spare,
and prepare
to find poetry
in the talking
Joshua trees
and laps of
each other
Tonight I
just want every
name to
return my
loving spelling,
I know they do
already, already
have. Sweet,
sweet and
delightful names,
houses on the
page for your
hearts and
sweats.
As for my
name,
I’ll put on
a shirt, check
for wine lips,
think
about dinner
now that it
is dark
A spider
resembles first
a mouse, then
dust, then
leggedly emerges
the other end
of the table
I miss JR
and text him
something stupid
But a letter
holds sentiment
like a charged
stone, the smell
of a t shirt,
chalk traces.
3.
Tho I’m no
Christian
(misspell
the name twice,
the second I
gets me
confused)
I belong
to the faith
in rebirth,
our own
coming back
to life
When Ismail came
over I fed
him a
salad and
leftovers, I
filled his cup
and lungs. Katy posted
a picture
of Judas’s
sad gaze
Now I’m eating
kumquats with
coffee, Ismail says
he is hungover
again. I opened
O’Hara’s
Collected and
we read
“Hôtel Transylvanie”
in silence at
my intoxicated
behest—
“I am lyrical
to a fault”—
and Ismail
tears up,
says
it’s the cat hair.
He is surely right
but I am
also right,
and light flickers
onto unplugged
Christmas lines,
through cobwebs
tying them,
past roaches
and gravel,
some springy
purple buds on a
green branch,
flourishing in
my ignorance,
my privileged state,
my day
without a
hangover
The body
isn’t there,
not here
in the couch
depression,
the garden
filled with
imaginary smoke,
dirty chairs
What I’ve accrued
are not debts,
clumped
up dead skin
stuck
to the face
or shoe,
the skin that
pertains
Where will you
find me,
since I will
be gone,
not there
where I am
laid
I hear a cry,
does it
pertain to me
Do I then
have to believe
in losing,
running down
the ink
and the pages
No.
I’ll not be a late
monastic,
consolation prize,
and I want the
same for you,
for all of you
if you
don’t faze your
extraordinary
fecundity,
gifts of faith,
generous
paranoia
He is risen indeed,
say it
with me
or after
and recognize
our miracle
of resurrection
that couldn’t
happen
another time
of year
but now our
salty tears
have purpose,
velvety fava
leaves
and mud
on pink radishes
Jane sends
me a picture
of Opal
shrouded in
bunnies
Eliot adds me
to a grouptext
of witty
strangers
These rectangles
bring so much
life
I’m going
to cook
for Seulghee
and Claire,
a stew of
beets and
carrots,
roast potatoes,
I can’t wait
for Tuesday,
a day and a
day after
This is the
third pen
of the poem
this is the fourth
of five
bunches of paper,
this is the
sound of
daytime insects,
few birds,
Maddie back inside
grooming,
a plane or
a drone,
her small
crying talk,
some other outer
buzz, this
is a distant
voice. The poem
goes on
too long
but I have
a distance
to go before
the other vinyl
side, this is
a squirrel barking
I want to live
happily more
than write well,
what does that
make me
Maybe less
than half a
poet, thank you
Dorothy
I look through
one more
stitching window
nose to paper
and see the
big stones in
the garden, the
vinyl flapping,
and smell it
And a neighbor
comes or goes
loudly
and
I’m rushing
now for some
reason
I have to clean,
have clothes
to hang,
Anna’s prints to
frame, dishes
to wash, papers
to grade, Alexandra’s
beautiful accordion
poem between
two stones
and wrapped in
cardboard
with my name
on it
I have names
to re-learn and
to forget.