Smaller

The summer grows sparse after its early fever,
rain quieting down and us too I suppose.

I take to arguing with a pretty girl
at a bar and then kissing her on the mouth,
accepting late night phone calls despite
everyone's best interests and
the fact I can barely stand when it rings.

I feel smaller now
that I only know where you are
when you're in the same room as me

the space I inhabit suddenly confined
to that sliver my body takes up
    my edges definitive
    except for in those rare seconds
that I cross someone else's mind

It's not what I want
not the affirmation of a pretty thing
but to sit low against the leather of a dark car
and pass quiet, protected over limestone hills

when you're young, all you want is to get lost
older now, I've been drinking to remain stationary
but it's going to be any day now
that I run myself out of this town.

Speaking of objects and their auras...

I got sick of lighters disappearing on me
so I bought six to last the week.

Now the blue ones seem to be proliferating.

While I was at it, I picked up a pack
of No. 27’s
--your brand--I don’t know
what I was expecting to happen

maybe a communion of spirit
of sorts

I drank a bottle of wine,
smoked three in a row on those
old stairs that go from campus up to the busstop

One of my roommates, now,
he smokes the same

and I was grateful to him afterward
when my mouth tasted nothing
like your body or blood

I'm not sure how I ended up calling you anyway


I woke up to the sidewalks steaming.

The morning must have brought in rain

I don't remember

but speaking of objects and their auras
when I went to dress myself

yours were the only clean shirts that I had left

For Stephen Dunn

On my shelves today I discovered
a collection of poems that I gave you on your 21st birthday

the inscription reveals me as a young man
intimidated by the implications of such a gift

Do you remember? 

I was coming back from out of town.

There were two volumes and I didn’t have time to wrap either of them.

This one, I signed 

 “xo,”

The other 

"Love,”

so that when I told you only a week later
it was half the surprise it would have been

I guess it got back into my possession
during the days it slept on the bedside table next to us,
with your Garrison Keillor sonnets and a copy of The Waves
that I stole from my brother only to douse in cheap wine.

What stands out to me now, though,
is none of these things
but instead the large margins
left blank at the bottom of each page

that make it so hard to tell
when a poem is truly finished

they say,
“keep reading,
keep reading.

meaning is never fixed
by the end of a line, a stanza, or a day

but by the end of it all.”

You & me & them

In October, I wrote for you
outward toward them

I didn’t know their faces
I just thought we needed to talk
I was asking them to listen because

you had

perhaps without even meaning to

shown me a way to look at the world
as if it contained some measure of sense:

tilt your head this way,
slowly close your eyes

while you look at the cityscape

(the motion of a head turning

to receive a kiss on a balcony

that balcony where we spoke and kissed

out loud until I was sure we were born

in a truer version of Hollywood

and, then, until I learned we weren’t)

How terribly insular I must have grown
those months after

when
Colorado was burning down this summer
one of the truest things you said to me was
“your poetry is so much better when you’re happy”

and I think I know the reason now

on these bright days when the whole world
is squinting in the sun and trying
not to sweat through their clothes

there are moments when I still feel
like, them and I, we need to talk

when it becomes obvious
that everyone must need everything
just the way that we did.

A request

Hi (and happy Fourth) friends, 

This post isn't a poem but an open invitation to everyone who is kind enough to read my blog. In a couple of weeks, I am planning on entering a few of the poems on this blog to a contest that a literary magazine called The Narrative is holding. This is the first poetry contest that I will be entering, and I'm very excited about it. However, I need your help.

The contest asks you to submit five poems for consideration (part of the intention being to illustrate the diversity of your style). As I think is the case with many writers, I am a very poor judge of which of my poems are the "best." As such, I am very invested on getting input on which of the poems that appear on this blog should be subject to revision and submitted to this contest. 

What I'm asking, then, is that all who are willing leave me feedback (whether in the comments section of this entry, or if your viewing this through Facebook as message sent to me) as to what your favorite of my poems are. It would be most helpful if you gave me a list of five poems, but if you just want to put a good word in for one or two that would also be extraordinarily helpful. 

Of course, I understand this could be a time consuming process, because I don't expect any of you to be intimately familiar with my work. With that in mind, if you are going through the trouble of trying to genuinely discern which of these poems you like best you probably shouldn't bother reading before the first entry in July 2011 ("A Month") because I think there's a pretty steep drop off in quality before that time. Similarly, if you just want to read some of the more recent entries and see which ones you enjoy out of those that would also be lovely because hopefully those are better than many of the poems I wrote last year. 

Really, I would treasure any input you would be willing to provide.

Similarly, after I select which poems I will be submitting I'm going to ask anyone interested to offer their opinions on how those poems should be revised. If you would like to be included in this process, let me know and I will include you in that conversation (which I plan on having, either in an email thread or through Facebook messages). 

Of course, in recompense I would be thrilled to offer any input on the writing of any of my reading and friends. I view this, not only as an opportunity to improve my own writing, but also as a way to open communication between the writers I know about writing--something I think would be extraordinarily valuable. 

I look forward to hearing from any and all of you.

Thank you and much love

Ben