Bennett | Poems

Poems
by John Bennett

nevertheless consume

nevertheless consume the power knots

naked matter bubble toppling eyes

rock grammar wheel arms hard white

waist cavities honey mind flung arms

language shuts hours air lamp bed

pock-marked refrigerators bed units

preterite dark ate us bees shopping

bosom selves a hill how hair ink

snake dawn chill things crept secret

distance letter mirror it be yet learn

bark flung headache eats remains

the traffic brick outside the

mountain whirl ascent

De-reading Iván Argüelles’

“The Shape of Air, Fragment 5”

smothering moon

smothering moon but air grief

sleep did nothing body ceases

matter’s grammar abyss launched

consonants’ glass error pages dice

mist driven aphasia room huis clos

horse confusion massive air porous

sound of parking meters flux dia

lect drunk ants float off an asphalt

leaf moonphone clatters on concrete

bridge glittering skin of Lebanon

gold books or mind dryer sinking

fusion finger of Aleppo heaving

in fire engineers and accidents were

air less sky less moth prediction

De-reading Iván Argüelles’

“The Shape of Air, Fragment 6”

tell them therefore

tell them therefore seven death ball

arrives arm skull protectors arrow leg

wings skull owl words death framed

jaundice backpack died flute write

mother descends steps mouths names

rivers stung drank pus four roads

effigies laughed bench burned

sitting cramp burns house sleeping

cigars round dark shattered torch

entered cold teeth it b’alam

bats clatter house then that buried

also head burns tzima tree

calabash and heart watch steps

this now she was blood heard

said cut lost skull branch spoke

hand spit spit skull merely son

speech ruiner in word enter said

thunder sudden home spit gathered

blood moon name gathered

De-reading the Popol Vuh – 12

wrecker thunder self

wrecker thunder self exposed

defeated sun weighty deeds their

face surpass its coming heart lifted

out said small boys feller tree light

as goes hunted orphans incessantly

it grows birds maintain middle hand

shoot clay practice fire twist aroma

therefore buried earth shaped

wanting this shall cooked skin grease

spittle gulps weakened now legs

fallen neck tied birth defeated

name head retold mother knower

knowledge rises writers flutes dice

falcon died Xib’alb’a path ball

flying scab task pus blood skin

demon staff skull sweepings abandoned

stab sudden vomit each neck burden

on road walking thoughts harassed

mask’s feathers died one name

De-reading the Popol Vuh – 11