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Best Poems Written by Ac Benus

Below are the all-time best Ac Benus poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Ac Benus Poem

Bare of Foot

Our world is but a pane of glass
    And I have seen the Grim Reaper
Lift a wearied hand with a stone -- 
    With little restraint to keep her. 

For in a dream she showed herself,
    Boring her terrible eyes in me,
While neither young nor old, or plain 
    Or handsome did she choose to be,

But bare of foot and draped in gloom
    We stood looking across a road,
I noticing how she was swathed 
    In the black of night where she strode.

A seamless gown, the same fabric 
    Crossed atop her head like the sight 
One would see the Virgin Mary
    Sport beneath a starry crown's light.

But her eyes, her eyes, frightened me
    As they locked on mine with intent;
As she started coming my way
    With all that she could represent . . . 

So, I'll reiterate, our world's 
    As fragile as our very life,
Where many vandals are at play
    With fire and stones of brass at strife

To kill senselessly without thought
    And deny we have soul and choice
To save others 'fore it's too late
    And a scream becomes every voice.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

Stratagem

[an aria] 

Anticipation's keened
    And desire's as sharp as a knife;
But longing is a fiend 
    Who both lengthens and shortens life.

        I'm fed to the teeth with people
        telling me I'm too good to read,
        that connection's an obstacle,
        and I fail where I most succeed.
        A vain person will toss it off,
        and think greatness you can't force-feed,
        but their feelings I cannot slough,
        so they too weigh me down and plead.
        They say that recognition waits,
        and only forward momentum 
        crushes the doubt that hesitates 
        the tip of my pen's stratagem.
        But still, I am alone right now
        in a world where my feelings bleed
        because I am ignored somehow
        just for being 'too good to read.' 

Anticipation's keened
    And desire's as sharp as a knife;
But longing is a fiend 
    Who both lengthens and shortens life.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

If-- For An Immature Age

“IF—”
for an Immature Age

If you can damn a warm January day
  As part and parcel of a worldwide curse,
And not let the ignorance in you pipe up and say
  “Well, for winter, we could do a lot worse!”;
If instead you long for the renewing snows
  Because they’re more needed than weather mild,
Feeling proud how maturity in you grows,
  Then you will be an adult, my child.

If you can endure springtime showers and grin
  With a broadening sense of consciousness,
Ignoring your petty gripes when they begin
  And bless Nature’s great advantageousness;
If instead you think of the wheat and flowers
  – Of bread for your offspring, with honey piled –
Standing humbled mid the thunderstorms’ powers,
  Then you will be an adult, my child.

If you can bear the worst August and July
  With nary a complaint against the heat,
Knowing the insects need this time ‘fore they die
  ‘Cause much of the world’s covered in concrete;
If instead you’re prosaic about the sweat
  And wipe your brow with a mind reconciled,
Accepting that it’s better to give than get,
  Then you will be an adult, my child.
 
If you can watch an autumn sunset go down
  And not think what you glimpse is beautiful
Due to tons of sulphur-dioxide brown
  Never letting you see the sun in full;
If instead you lament wicked pollution
  Covering the Earth as it’s now defiled
And feel renewed to finding a solution,
  Then you will be an adult, my child!

Details | Ac Benus Poem

The World of the Self

Sometimes I feel like a Mahler adagio
set free in a world to drift past sites
a human pair of eyes or ears can recognize
as vaguely divine but so remotely removed
from the current situations of stress and
happiness that's pretended for others' well-being
when all along, the world of the self is a sad
floating plane of misery and missed connections.

Sometimes I feel like a Mahler adagio
set loose on a world that has no use for
the sadness I feel or make my daily bread
while I sustain my suffering soul in this
reality of unreal actions and hidden emotions.

Sometimes I feel like a Mahler adagio
alone, alone, alone amongst the many
who will never feel it the way I do.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

Translation of Platen's Sonnet Number 57

AC Benus translation of "O süßer Tod"
by August von Platen


O mellifluous death, who stiffens most men,
You've received but artless tribute from my tongue,
For often I've yearned for you since I was young,
And for the slumbers nothing can wake again.

You sleepers you, the ground covering deep when
The eternal lullabies lured and were sung
So you gladly shunned the cup of life and swung
Its taste round me like some bitter regimen? 

You masses too I fear the world has deceived,
As your best intentions, thwarted and betrayed,
Crushed fondest hopes as no one might have believed.

In sum, blessèd are we beseeching death's blade,
Knowing how our desires are heard unreprieved,
And each heart must get cleaved 'neath an earth-turned spade.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

Translation of Platen's Sonnet Number 58b

AC Benus translation of "Indeß ich hier im Grünen mich erfreue"
by August von Platen


While I delight myself here in the green wood,
I call unto the barely sentient things:
Come you birds, O come you butterflies, take wings
And fear not, but believe in my faith most good.

Think not that I lay bait for you, or ever could
Set the treacherous snares that doom alone brings,
For I spend my time far from where man's hate springs,
Dreading them even more than you where I've stood.  

O count me not with those brute hordes and their lies,
For I've never sought to harm or have one wilt
And been shunned by them for what most men despise.

So therefore, let us flee the paths they have built: 
Man seeks your ravagement and utter demise,
While on me, they've heaped their unacknowledged guilt.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

The Roots of Compassion

The loam of Human Kindness, friable,
Can be compact within a mortal grasp,
Yet loose as needs release and pliable
For the roots of Compassion to enclasp.
Warmer emotions must shine from above
If tender regard is to grow from seed;
The sun of mankind’s garden must be Love
For our good works to produce and succeed.
But the moody darkness of self-concerns
Can pour from our clouds like a deluge flood,
To soak in ruin’s caprice wetness that burns
The bonds people form, severed in the mud.
    So tend your soils well, O you Sons of Man;
    Nurture on Earth, God’s harvest while you can.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

Love Is a Fire

AC Benus translation of "Amor é um fogo"
by Luís de Camões



Love's a fire whose burning is never seen;

He's a wound that hurts, but is never quite felt;

He's a raging discontented contentment;

He's a pain that eats away without throbbing.

 

He's pure wanting, whose want is to be desired;

He's loneliness amongst the crowds of people;

He's not satisfied with mere complacency;

He's the caring that's achieved through surrender.

 

He's the desire playing captive to the will;

He serves the man who vanquishes the victor;

He's fealty to the one who'd still slay us.

 

But how to bring his favor to mortal hearts,

So seemingly dead in their conformity,

When the same love acts contrary to himself?

Details | Ac Benus Poem

Skyscraper - In My Dream

Skyscraper:

In my dream,
The snow lay round about,
Showing clear signs of melting decay
As if light rain had fallen on it recently,
And my eyes could hardly fail to see 
The head of a dead man,
A brave Ukrainian, 
Murdered there.

Details | Ac Benus Poem

A Poet Who Doesn'T Feel--

A poet who doesn't feel 
Is like a dealer who doesn't deal
A knife sharpener without a steel. 

A writer who won't emote
Is like a schoolboy reciting by rote
A person who truly never wrote. 

This dabbler 'I' at least tried 
With words like feelings that never lied
Or sought coldness as a place to hide. 

"Upon Looking in a Modern Volume of Verse"