Works by Ben Balazs

  Speak to me not in breaths, Not words made of cogs and wired sonnets, Wrapped in freshly printed bonnets. Do not finger my emotions like a pick on a guitar, That's made of dried up tears and scars, That don't mean much. Look me in the eye and say, that you simply can't deny, My being here. Hold back every bitter urging, With the truth of our undoing, And swallow down the massive pill that puts your every fear to rest. Tread the mill whose track is spent, That winds in lines that have no end. And sweat your mind upon your shirt, and work off all the inner hurt. But while you're washing your sins away, And while you drag on through the day, I'll be in my porcelain boat, Catching any life that floats. Fishing for a cause or two, In the easing night of the simple blues, And bubbles rising from the sea. In the real world I'll always be. 

Bound into scholastic pages with linings drawn in number two pencils. Seated never comfortably inside the cage that is this studious desk. So below me it would be to stick my gum underneath that which holds up my future. So below them it would look if even for a second they took into consideration the feelings of the ones they teach. But whiteboards and marker go dry without use, and offices need workers, and streets need lights to guide the people through the darkest nights.  So little does it matter to have this note or that, to have gotten a letter in the alphabet that isn’t tacked with bitter connotations and sour expressions. How often we do crawl under uniform bathroom stalls to reach a door that only opens one way. Of course, to my dismay, the shortest road to hotels of gold is by way of selling the soul. The sword which we must draw to slay the beast, behold, is held within the clasp of a system dead and old. Its grimy hands can somehow stick with great strength and av...

Knit me high over the kiln of your chest. With trims of gold and splayed in blue, I vest myself as just a veil over the fiery heart you store inside. As storms do pass and winters tarnish, I will sit within my post and hold to you my warmest smile. For as dawn breaks in the sky, or dusk rolls through the bitter hills, you will find me there, sewn and shorn with complacence and personality. I will dress you in prisms of colors galore, and decorate you with the badges of my want for your affection. Perhaps there will come a time when you feel I am too warm, where you feel I am too thick of fabric and such, that you may decide where rises a sunny day, “It is time to undress and wash the dirt beneath me.” But I say you, my friend and my soul in part, to see me not as worn but rather as flesh, and maybe even as sibling to the sweat you so wish to displace from your body. I am not such that I could say no to you, of course, but understand that the warmth I breathe is that which seeps ...

The view of blue does quite protrude. My vision shakes at pristine lake. My eyes, maybe blind, do sense. That what I see does steer from me. --- Wading and shaping the way that I'm gazing. To see is to believe but is green with grief. As it's far, no car could reach that star. As its clean serene scene looks back at me. --- Deadpan face, the same place, giving chase. But it's my own, my ears, my nose, my clone. Far from near, not here, unclear. Falling to the sky, my my, where am I? Did I land, can I stand, am I stranded? Am I lost, was I found, still abandoned? --- Far from shore, perhaps the core, there's so much more. Swim deeper, body sleeker, water shimmer. There to look, a candid crook, within that nook. Watching close for one more dose of comatose. Lost in waves, a darker cave, to whom I gave, The view of blue that quite protrudes, That shakes and makes my pristine lake.

Soaking it in, the deep crimson reds. Soaking in salt and dust and grime. He fell from there, he fell from high. There he lay with a lowered head. There he held against his flesh, The poised and sopping sheet so clean, Shriveling at the bone so lean, Shying from the wound so fresh. Down below in flattened brush, Where ants and molecules do crawl. Down where writhing roots do call. Say to him, “Don’t cry, hush hush." And so his tears will fall, some fast, Upon the lip, looks so redeemed. So sweet but once, now ripping seams. Shreds are slipping into the cracks. To patch, to mend, to hold afloat, That which leaks and pours and drowns This man in pools of his own shame, Below this tree, this place remote. He tries to climb back up again, He bleeds and cries and sweats some more. But it soaks, it soaks, it soaks that in. He falls, and falls, and falls again.