A Wistful Perfunctory

I'm sorry man this is life.
It's addictive, and it's pure, and it's available to everybody
I've got no magic in my breath
I can’t speak and then it’s Good
I know you see me dealing with fools and beggars and blind people
But that’s just something to pass the time
Before my first cup of coffee.

Really,
I'm chasing midnight
Walking'round when the headlights are on.
Staring at nothing,
Placing bets on what time I'll sleep at dawn
They say we're never fully here, but I’m waiting anyway,
For that grinning deceit, y'know?
I really wanted the graveyard shift,
So I came in, partially included
To a point. Funny, time’s running short
And...Still! I have yet
To find land?
Sooo...maybe? I'll be
A ghost. I mean,

like I said,
There’s not really anything material by daylight
By midnight, just echoes of laughter and
All those drained faces you see in afternoon mass
like I said,
its midnight
The chancellor of party crashes
So who wouldn't have second thoughts?
like I said,
i’m a ghost
Dying's for the fools,
Life's for amateurs
Boo! Losers
Arrg. Winning,
Failing, so...
But,
like I said,
its twilight.
My dogs are barking
As I'm sure your dogs are barking too.





Homecoming!


When I was child
i draw cartoons
In my head you'll see soon
Eventually, and maybe after
I'm dead. We'll see

The cacoon is unwrapped, and I'm-
I'm excited for a busy night
whatever that entails, hiding in closets or
embracing the streetlamps over a baby's wail

Ye-Yo!
The music stops short
Of cracky scale skin faces
gripped by the teeter totter, when
one way won't face it.
I ask a chief if he can help me find
that grail in time

or take out the abstract boredom, stuck
deep inside the heart of rhyme (or was it in my mind?)
But, I geuss, no matter where steel
gets pounded, the men's faces will always suffer...




Benjamin Black-Odinma



What I'd Give to have You think of me Romantically

" It is Autumn,
When I remember the touch of her kiss
When I taste time I always regret,
how she opened a doorway
so I would see light.
All those motions of hugging
and feeling alive. "


But we are just another
Erased history, aren't we?
Filled with forgotten men
In our songs. In our poems. In our phallic symbols. In our parchments filled with fantasies,
And,
Mirrors
(my room is filled up to the brim with mirrors to see you, but now I no longer see myself.)


Chivalry holds just another "I "
That no one has missed
Our women don't stay
and our men can cry
they usually mourn at bedsides nowadays
Or try to find some job-angel-guide


" She spoke of freedom
And in a way it was sad
How she spoke of some glory I had become
and the forgiveness I felt, for the sins I'd been given. "


Small places
In the Fall
Hold my hope to sea
Even more will follow
In this eternity.
Buried deep in shallow memories
So I search to understand
How I'm just a man
open to scorn
but opened to everything else
Like the sea

and while we linger like the kiss
from our absent fathers
frail
You are a gift
So don't try to pretend
Who we are again. I
know I am "man"
Intangible to skipping stones
hatred
and
forlorn.








The 27 Club

Moving homeless friends calls good decisions
legally blind to altruism's
We split the silence for a season. But here comes
the boot to spite our sin without
Rhyme & Reason

Screw the plan, let's have a session...

Keep a frown
You'll wake the walls
And we've got flies outside our resen

Good morning gents!
heard ya down the hall
This looks sorta like a place to sprawl.
I'm existential sir, like
That luggage isn't here at all?
But hey, I'm tired of rhyming.

In moves the man making squaters ghost
From unsuspecting squeels that come too close, and
What's for breakfast? Cinnamon toast Crunch.
All you can do is sit and pout, or begin another session...



Benjamin Black-Odinma