ben smith | falling apart at the seams & four other poems

falling apart at the seams

All my sun flowers are dead.

and I have seen eyes like them before.

she says

“maybe we are not
meant to be together”

Things fall apart around me.

Branches break.

Bubbles of the bath pop at my ears.

the Indoor plant
continues to die

albeit all my Spanish wine.

Her blue blanket is pilling,
The liver is at 280,
three more years
of this will give me
ten after that kind of drinking

with cirrhosis

and i have seen eyes like them before.

I’ve had eyes like that before.

She was falling
out of love with me
and all i could do
was write this poem
into my ipad.

feed the cat before
lights out.

We used play pool
With child hookers in
Cambodia

Now I sit
On the couch
With
Port
In a tea cup.

That afternoon i had come home
to find her

doing wieghts
using two tins of canned soup
for dumb bells

and timing
them with her phone

She says

“Your doing your work,
Im doing mine!”

I go back to the computer
put on a selection
of televised suicied videos
i have collected
from childhood

Even the wildest beast
needs a ball to play with.

I have seen eyes like them before.

I am getting old now.
I can see thickness
where there never was.

I imagine
stabbing my self in the throat
with a real expensive kitchen knife

and running out side
in a gargle,
blood seeping through
my fingers
wrapped around my neck;

bleeding onto the rose garden,
laughing at the up coming moon.

but we are hardened
and we need each other

so we bite a bottom lip
and move along.

We are lovers.

We have work to do

I open a note book
And she laughs at the tv
with my cum
still on her tits

Her eyes now
full of
a innocent
joy
and it
makes my
heart
beat
again.

even for a second,
a single beat
and i remember that
the honey in her
mouth
is well worth
dying for.

Filled with birds

The drink
doesn’t work some times.

It props you up,
keeps the ball rolling
but it doesn’t work.

Not really.

She looks for villas
in bali
on the I pad
while
I pour another white
wine.

A pile of books at my feet.

Vegetable soup in the kitchen.

My garden
sits in the precise
night light.

Dark.

It’s not a gamble.

It’s a throw of dice
with out the spots mattering.

with out money on the board

The dice don’t work,

the drink doesn’t work
but some how,

she makes the wheels turn;

and I wake up
for work on a Sunday
to pay for our wedding

because she makes me work.

The morning
is filled with birds
and I don’t worry bout things
I can’t change

as the boys fall from a pub
or a womans bed
or a park bench

and pile into our work truck

to smoke cigarettes
from a crack
In The window

and at this time in
the morning
I have nothing else to say.

Mermaid suspended in a glass of gin

The dead flower
is a black ballerina
in a bottle of sasperella

and not bronson
or Cagney
can save us

now.

the best we have

is to pretend
its nothing

and walk into the
arms of death
like he was an old friend
we hadent seen
since before our birth

because of arguments
in our life

we take knowledge
as humans
who think
we deserve an answer.

while the real
geniuses
of earth
are on our forks

or tangled in
burger bars.

In fields
under a small shady tree.

Just passing time till the dirt
takes them forever.

Bunnings

The garden
attendant says;

You don’t look
like the kind of man
who will let his roses die.

the sun burns
every thing i grow
in that red hot
summer
sun shine

and all the flowers
spill their guts
and die
in bursts
of white and
blue.

My health is that lost
with trying to find air in this
place that fills its self with
trees.

and while every thing
in nature tries to kill
us

we hang in there
and murder our opposition
with our fierce persistence.

i have failed even
the woman at
bunnings.

i take a day off
and sleep beneath the celing fan.

and at ten

I yawn and it
makes
me
feel
good.

a maid

Like a black and white nurse,
red at the waist
poking her ass into the air
to be rooted
with a real dick

like the garden
of a man named
Richard

our old tricks die

and we all
complain

as if old man river
was ever going to take
us easily.

she
relapses on her 18th
birthday

a black balloon
on a red string

is

hanging from the mail box
the next day.

the speech i gave
nothing but lies
to a lair

and i feel about
as empty as
i have
ever felt.

Maybe god is
seven times taller than me

and i cant reach his face
to lay my dick on his cheek

so i kiss a woman
on the lips

and from the sky
he cant see me
locked to a mortal
half his size

with boobs like his mum
never had,

and a cheeky grin
he saw on his son

when we put him on a cross
and made him
our bitch.

Forgive me father,
i know exactly
what im doing

i just dont
give
a
fuck.

Ben Smith | Photo by Darne Jamieson