you ask me to make more art but the vultures have come and gone. My body has been stripped for parts, any gold or silver stolen for the pawnshops. My head has been rusted for so long that you can’t tell the broken parts from the living Coal and gas fumes choke you with the …
every poem can be about you if you don’t commit to a self. you can stay a shifting pile of neuroses, trapped between a coffee cup and wine glass. the kind of mess which stains. that you can never get out of your skin. cause you never had enough words in yourself, or a clue …
I have never once written a word I’m proud of. and I’ve never once taken a breath of fresh air. Or seen the stars unclouded. Or felt safe in my skin. I’m twenty years old And this country is the color of spilled blood, And the only metaphors I know are bloody, and I can’t …
And in reality you know this to be true: / you don’t feel any closer to this place on this floor / than you did on the second. / and it doesn’t feel like circumstance / or a choice / your wires are too tangled to connect / antennae too bent to transmit / lights …
you can’t hold yourself together anymore. the cracks spread further every day. making yourself marble has made them uncurable. even a helping hand can’t heal absence. there’s no glue for marble, no fix for burnt books. There’s a reason Victory is still headless, and you’re still not happy. nothing stays important, no one saves you, …
My sleep disintegrates into a sore neck and a dark room. I lift my head from my desk with a groggy moan. The screen saver of my laptop stares at me— accusatory and bright. A notebook filled with indecipherable trains of thought and decorated with drool sits on the side. The details come to me …
Your eyes are closed and I look out the window. The sky is drowning in crimson after someone tore out my throat with their teeth. Birds fall from the sky as if flight had just been a fantasy all along. I go to the ocean and watch the fish rise to the surface bellies-up, like …
The blades of red grass stretched over her head. They clung wetly to her as she pressed through them, but when she checked her skin, she found no crimson stains. What little of the sky she could see was black as mold and smeared with blood. The line between day and night was arbitrary. Warm …
these words are just a black box on a falling plane a drowned memory in an ocean plain. lost within a trackless train. stained with blood and promises now slain. lost deep in the shade. and there in that dark place laid, is the only light I ever made. you watch as it begins to …
Once in a while, he runs away. The story ends like this: he comes back. He knows that, but that doesn’t stop his escapes. The story happens because of this: he doesn’t know. His life isn’t bad, lonely, or empty. What life is, not just for him, is heavy. Sometimes he feels the hairline fractures …
the Door is as old as me.Sometimes I chip at it,And let a little through before ISlam it shut, and then I haveA story, or a poem, or a shred of somethingBigger, which I discard. i Know there is more behind it.An ocean ofSelf that I can never let through in case itDrowns me and …
The long and bloody dance ended at that gas station at one in the morning. Anton found Jonas filling his car with shaking hands, dirty clothes, and a week’s worth of stubble turning into a beard. Not that Anton looked any better. He lingered by the ice machine, savoring his last moments with the man. …
There’s rolling text when I die— names who helped, names that didn’t. A startling construction of steel and thorns. Why I succeeded, why I failed. All written between the lines of those who built me. The backing music is a mocking drone. The theatre empties before the words stop. No anticipation of a legacy, no …
A path unhindered: plowed and lit framed in bright darkness. I know the way to go. But a shifting silhouette in the distance: between me and the end A lover? A killer? An end or a beginning? I go forward: trusting with eyes closed— A kiss ringed with copper on my lips. A rose-scented knife …
The firelight begins to dim. I see it, we see it. The splitting, crackling wood quiets. Sore sorrowful sparks make their last dance. Smoke rises like irretrievable hopes escaping us The charred logs lose their glow. I sweep up the white ash, we sweep up the white ash The fireplace sits dark and still.
Ben Sidorenko's Writing 