Mary, untangling the knots

Me, you, a goddamn scrappy moon,
side by side, talking about new love that never comes.
When I’m at home pulling jobs in bed I often think
of far too purple things, like sonnets with hoary

line breaks. Artificial joke, party, you asked
whether you sometimes hurt me, which was not your intention.
I know, the world is up in arms about you.
There’s always a city with two heads in every bed.

This night with its slobbering stars I
don’t think of you anymore, settle for the earth’s bark.
which is old and reliable and also shacks up with everyone

but at least simultaneously, it doesn’t need the magic of a sweetheart
and trembles only through its messy, tangled mane
(so no sonnet) untangles no Mary
(one city, two heads, one bed).

*

Her soul is made of crepe paper

I love her. She is strict
like a root canal treatment,
relentless as a constricted bum.

She gushes a nice round in my heart.
With a scalpel she skims my eyes
and sings with her clay-dry mouth:

Gouging, gouging, good-humoured gouging.
Gouge, gouge, good-humoured gouge.
You’ve lost the plot, little boy, you’re….

Her soul is made of crepe paper,
mine of papier-mâché.

The moon has only fifteen minutes
to pop shine on the two of us.

*

Once upon a time

Wish I was too old for a broken heart. Old enough
to spoon soup. Everything about me creaks like a forest.
as if a train has run over it. How many deadlines

can my body handle? I pier on my bed.
Tile wisdom punches my grave. Don’t think I’ll make it,

something scrapes into that one diary that had
a lock on it, I strike down
like a flag. With plaques on my eyes

will I enter hellfire, my life
a slobbering firecracker that wouldn’t go off
at New Year, rolling on the wet-splashed pavement,
in the clinical January rain, its powder
lost to stiff-frozen dog shit.

*

WTF did you send me flowers?

WTF did you send me flowers?
No must have been that jerk from Tinder.
But he doesn’t know my last name.
At best I would send you a monster.

A monster?

Yes a monster that comes lurking through
the keyhole with a green eye.
And that you stand undressing.
The green light from the keyhole the only thing on you.

The monster doesn’t see much, thinks it’s Monday.
Goes back to the monster coffers to sample clocks.

Then what?

Then I have a carnivorous plant delivered
with a key tied to it.

All poems from Sauseschritt, Martijn Benders, 2015