You play human - Martijn Benders - Dutch poet, philosopher and writer

A star-fort abandoned mid-thought,
stuck in its final shrug.

A building left by all.
A landscape no one ever witnessed.

In the fever-woods
of spatial planning, he glimpses
the greatest joy a soul can bear:
to attend kindhearted music—

with glorious politics humming in the mob,
with a warmth that tells no secrets.

You play human
but you’re a committee.

Real people have nose jobs
that went terribly right.

When you speak, your words
are tourists stuck in a postcard
beneath a pox-lit sun.

You sleep inside other people’s dreams.
Your gaze flaps
like unpaid parking tickets
in a tourist trap.

That ghastly clique-head of yours.
What can one even say about such a head?

That it has hair.
Hair, painstakingly arranged.
Raffle-bin hair.

You must know your camouflage.
You must decorate your guts.

Let your blood ripple.
Let your vocal cords scream blue murder.

Hunt like a poacher
in the bell jar of good skin,
wearing a coat
of pulsating lumber.

The whisper-noose of that dark
color you’ll never digest.

You’re a tasty little morsel.
I’m giving you an eraser for your birthday.

You’ll stare at me, bewildered,
with those doughy, pleading eyes.

The largest flat eraser in the store—
I had it wrapped just for you.

I reach out my hand.
You’d want to faint,
you’d want to erase this moment completely.

But again you look at me, unsure,
with those doughy, uncertain eyes.

“That’s no poop-bird,”
I counter—
that’s Mister Owl.

“Poop-bird! Poop-bird!”
she screams,
pointing at the TV.

I take another look.
He’s not well cut out.
Christ, he’s practically reciting Proust.

But poop-bird goes too far.
Poop’s just too vague.

Mister Owl has nothing to do
with the Illuminati,
I still try to explain.

“Poop-bird!” she screams again.

Category: Benders Diary