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Ac Benus Poem
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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
[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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2015
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Ac Benus Poem
“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!
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2023
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Ac Benus Poem
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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
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.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
Skyscraper:
The raindrops
Falling over my bed,
Upon the eaves of my bedroom roof,
Sound like an army of cat paws treading lightly
Lest they disturb some troublesome foe,
When all I can think of
Is the rain.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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Ac Benus Poem
Icarus had wings made by his father,
The power of which to him were unknown,
Yet he spread them without too much bother,
Knowing the life he risked was but his own.
Lying next to you reminds me of how
Our spirits may be borrowed devices,
Granted in freedom, but which can allow
Soaring vantage over grounding crisis.
So, like the boy from his prison-escape,
I unfold my gift when I am with you,
And though I glide near the warmth of your shape,
I don’t fear you melting me through and through.
For when our souls find room to stretch and fly,
Even stars must melt in a lover’s sigh.
Copyright © Ac Benus | Year Posted 2022
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