Insomnia in a Sty

The red digits from somewhere behind taunt stoically,
Their cold light dancing before the eyes which refuse to abjure
A desolation of memories - each spawned in boredom or fascination
Each painted with equal abandon. As the stench of condensed data
Flings picadores at an absent mind, obligation rebels,
Crying duty! order! reason!
I must ask -
Who ever paid obligation mind?

Ben Finkel
December 13, 2007

Kneeling upon Return

Why is it that this beautiful sky will slice through my mirth to something more somber, something without measure?
Why can people never do the same? Make me stop and stare and drink my eyes,
feel my cloth crawl across my skin as the greys and blues swirl and sunder, painting sadness and glory in transient wisps
of moisture and memory! For to pierce the chasm of abyssal shifting shapes - that are dreams and constructs and awesome fears -
would that not be love? And now, for love's sake, I hesitate to see the sacred shadows of my dusk, my hour, my irrevocable divide,
as they paint their shrouded grounds and azure spaces to frame the purity of impurity's form.

Benjamin Finkel
October 10, 2007

PfS Rises Again

Here we go. Day one of college, and I've decided to resurrect this puppy. Leave comments, as always, even though you never do. Without ado:

Beginning to Live in the House of Sleep

There is a space between the shimmering plane
Of gridded bones
And the deadened wall
Of severed fibers
Where our breath, silent mist, seeps and curls to a cloned and bright facade
Where identical slabs and identical doors
Barricade our fellows -
Our fellows!

This army of strangers,
These sneering eyes,
They claim our own and fell? How can they
Beside their shapes
Attempt to know and spell
Our histories, our fortunes,
Our lusts and longs and nears?
And yet we must instruct them, while we ourselves our taught
Not of spheres and paths and books of slang
But of the families of familiars that our shells have wrought.

And our misty breath mingles, amidst a hall of statues,
Each of the same form, and yet
Of different shapes entirely.

Ben Finkel
September 29th, 2007

20s at Ransom and Erev Tamid

Eventually, this will resume again. In the meantime, something from mid-June that I just dug up, and a poem from last Purim, when I saw the most beautiful sunset.

20s at Ransom

Trapped in glass
words of masters
scream in dignity
Battling a stillborn brawl.
an old war of the present
citing and projecting.
The field is silent and vibrant
near and ancient
new and alien.
Which holds us?
Where have we taken
each other this round?
Everything depends - my lands in order.
______

Erev Tamid

The clouds have lost their luster
But after a moment's metamorphose,
Transform into sleek ravens, black
And violet against the darkened azure,
Whither the brazened and ambered moon ascends.

Dissected, a whole, a crescent against
The dying irridescence of spectrum
The rising majesty of umber
And rises and pearls, wrapping itself
In the olive memory of banded murk,
Remembering
The shadow
Of Earth
Written in darkness.

Erev Shalosh-Esrei b'Adar
Ben Finkel, March 3 2007

Assonance

Obviously, no longer daily. Here's a work in progress:

Fabricated Capricorn approaches apricots;
Valiantly dallying, rally shallow thoughts
Radiating gradients relating raiding dots.

It's harder than it looks.

Ben Finkel

Edited in 2010.

Gully Foyle in the Ice

When I was young
I climbed the cliffs of Denmark
Spying elves in every copse.
In the mist, I was one.

On limbs I climbed above the clouds
Youthful, I trampled spires of ice
Which, innocent, shattered on the ground
But then I saw the pane:

A frigid window of ice
Born of a web
Shining tall among the shards.
As I watched, it fell,
Its might undermining.

Later, I read a book -
It told me that all leaders
Are freaks, born of
Imperfection.

Ben Finkel
April 29th, 2007

Reciprocal

I read - this morning
that

HUMAN SIN IS REAL

and I thought
to myself
aloud

/How strange!
a sinner./

Ben Finkel
April 19th 2007. Posted April 23rd.

I Lost Count At Six Billion

When I first started to read
The entire book said:
"Once upon a time"
In monotony, block typeset.

It was one page,
One side,
But then a tale flourished
And calligraphy laced and I
Was happy, enchanted with the
Weaving.

But it did not stop.
The words kept curling
The trees dying.
The story churned and spilled
And I peeked to the next page
And the next
And no end could be found.

Ben Finkel
April 23rd, 2007
(I'm sorry, there is no poem for Friday. Schedule was weird. I will post Thursday's later)

From Wish to Wish

As I raise my eyes to greet the solitary wall
Of gray
I search
And claw, to decipher the foreign
Familiar
Shapes of fancy that scowl and giggle from their
Loft,
But I am thirsty and thrusting my arms -
Water in pails
Flying, unbroken - and striking down the words
And neither of my needs.

Ben Finkel
March 17th, 2007

Rumpelstiltskin

Violet, the silver spindles twine
amidst each other and the spectrum
air, weaving patters so beautiful
and complex that I, observer, can only
admire. For I know that behind the
spiders, half-glimpsed fingers slam
and paint with Word. Their works
are webs to my threadbare cloth
but I hope yet to spin.

Ben Finkel
April 16th, 2007 (posted April 18)

Stonehenge sways in the wind,
Cloth billowing about under an amber sky
And pale, bare ground.
Metal clad in vacuum,
Pilgrims wander still
To the signs of a mystery
As lost to them as us.


Ben Finkel
April 13th, 2007. A Friday!

Hello?

It's modestly hilarious that no one comments on these posts, these days. I want criticism! So much of this stuff sucks, so I want to know what the gold (or silver, or iron, or stuff that isn't covered in crap) is. What, if anything, is interesting? What sounds lyrical? What would you want to read aloud?

Hell, do you read it? If not, this is wasted effort. Art is worth less without audience. Although, fortunately, never worthless.

Ben

Between the Sun and His Collarbone

There is no purpose, per se,
For the marbles reflecting across the chill,
But as destination, frozen and fluctuating,
Reveals itself to identity,
The obstacle is apparent. Fatal.
And they pour themselves into their
Murderer,
Forgetting and dismissing the journey
Between the sun and the collarbone.

Ben Finkel
April 12th, 2007

Rigor Mortis

Clockwork, the army of hands
Crash down their typesets
Proclaiming the world
By their slanted eyes.

But the gear-mess slips,
Tongues speak the wrong morphemes
Eyes project the matter behind them
The beast topples.

But the hands keep sieging,
The eyes searching,
Never noticing that they are dead.

Ben Finkel
April 11th, 2007

Yarr

I was told not to write something embarrasing to the blog, so my options are rather limited. Visit the Bustopia podcast. Ep6 will be released any day now (as soon as I stop being pwned by homework and edit it). bustopia.blogspot.com. Play starcraft, it is good for you.


-Noobulous

Stress

Accidental definition
Of fitness
Bound us to another spectrum
(of our myriad)
In it fits the world, so far as we can
See;
So much compressed into
A seven-tiered arc,
Excluding the thousand, thousand
Wavelengths in which reality relaxes.

Ben Finkel
April 10th, 2007

Slayer

Anger is a rarity
In the three-tiered thought
As things must puncture the
Levels
Of self, community, God,
Which amounts to one act:
Destruction of Medium
Destruction of Art
Murder, arson, jettison,
Trapped implement, betrayal of the penned
It stabs the self, corrupts the house
Kills that on which divinities depend.

Ben Finkel
April 9th, 2007

Feeling slightly better

Origin

Where was the anvil born?
Any womb of steel and ---

This poem has been assassinated by Mr. Jibladze


Benjamin Finkel
Depressed

April 9th, 2007

As far as I can tell
I am one of the few
Who believes and trusts
The synergy of philosophy.

Everything in our dualistic
Society (Godsatan, totanarchy)
Is painted
In pairs: opposites.

But a rainbow,
A speckled spectrum,
claws choosing aspects
And combining them --

What do we find?
Directions and colors,
Flavors,
As one. Utopia.

Benjamin Finkel
April 5th, 2007

Is it not amusing,
That falling is repugnant
When the panic of naturality
Is compared to its defiance?

The only alternative
In my vision to falling
Is seeking those balances
Of rest, equilibrium.

But falling, I swear, is righteousness.

Ben Finkel
April 4th, 2007