Benjamin Gorman's Shared Poems

The battle is done;
won or lost is meaningless.
Peace comes to the field.

A siren’s ululation slides across
the faux-summer night,
bleeds into the distance
its urgency draining away,
a slackening pulse.
Dog chorus textures
the settled city soundscape
train horn
skateboarders
a car looking for home—
and behind it all
the quiet distance-dulled roar
of the freeway.

This is the inescapable sound,
the rocking leg
the jittering knee
the gum-chewing
jaw twitch
of restlessness
of fear-of-quiet
of fear.

Rock me, mommy
I want you to rock me
until I fall asleep
until the night falls
like bodies into mass graves
each dull thump a finality
until the star-crescendo end of things.

But the orange streetlights
mock the far-future sun’s cinder end
and say
on it goes,
on and on.

My window-floodgates admit
this spring night's
tide of sound:
a jet climbing, passing cars
train's deep rumble and whistle

behind it all, the indistinct
dull roar of the distant freeway
crowd-cheer of rubber
on roadway
that continuous flow

we're a restless beast
that won't bed down for the night
no sunless slowing
closing of our petals
only endless movement
arrival forever deferred

spring moon vaults aloft
drawing tides and lilacs' scent
my heart's shore awash

Banging anvil sparking steel
yet quenched these words lack mouth appeal
what I'd forge and leave behind
does not endure the trip from mind
to paper, which decays to dust
and all my dreadful heated lust
cannot godlike breathe to life
these words these fragile words so rife
with ego's yearnings, raw desire
so back they go into the fire.