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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
there’s nothing safe about love. it can be a net waiting to catch you, or a golden line leading you forward, or chains pulling you beneath the waves. it changes and shifts. it can be a key made for your heart just as easily as it can be a knife crafted to fit between your …
we have a long way to go. so keep the door unlocked— keep the fire burning. we won’t get lost. you showed us the way. x we remember your helping hand, your tired heart. we can see you on the horizon. our gentle mountain, our way home.
every year, winter kills autumn / with bloodlust / with joy / it steps away from the body with red hands / and cold eyes / and bruised knuckles / brother killing brother / cain and abel jealous over the life the other held / just as autumn killed summer / with cold eyes / …
Start with a kiss. It’s the only anesthetic I need. Whisper a sweet lie to soften my flesh, then cut me open. Slice along my arms, saw through my rib cage. Take out my diseased heart and replace it with something still living. Drain out my blood and keep it far from anything living. Mix …
it’s like that feeling of falling right when you’re about to fall asleep but some bastard has stretched it out for hours and now you have nothing to do but fall fall fall fall because you can’t sleep and you can barely breathe but you need to sleep and aren’t you just tired of that …
Ben Sidorenko's Writing 