tobetitledlater

POETRY

All poetry written by Benjamin Gerzik.

Blue Skies

The sky hasn’t fallen—
It’s hanging,
The storm’s gone,
It’s turned blue,
Swaying in the wind.

Its stench is now the air,
There was no stay of execution,
It died off the docket,
Before it could be born.

Eyes strain through the columns—
Ordaining,
The world’s gone,
It’s turned pew,
Sitting on its hands.

It’s wrenched back to the chair,
There was no stay of execution,
It died off the docket,
That rough beast must now be born.

Kissing statues rotting,
Marble back to cotton,
The sky’s outside the window,
Waiting to be cut down.

2022

Reveries

The leaves float by, wrinkled dreams of skies,
Of a season too early to mourn.
The moon scrapes high, sharpens clouds for eyes,
Would-be mothers plead fall to be born.

The leaves turn dry, gnarled streams whir wry,
The chill licks the clouds clean ‘til they’re shorn.
The sun asks why, needles razor bright,
Winter whispers sweet somethings ‘til morn.

We trace faces in clouds—test their veins—
But do we pity the sky when it rains?

2023

Pithy

Some things only get harder with time:
Flowers grow angles as they wilt,
Diamonds burn from coal and silt,
And you’re made from pith, lime.
You’d watch me grow and I’d watch me die.

I’ve found out I’m no stranger to lies.
A silver tongue’s near mercury,
No stranger to perjury,
Laughing as the truth dies.
I knew you before I knew myself.

I’m always an inch away from you,
A desperate weed in your garden,
Waiting, begging to harden,
To be torn from numb roots.
I’d sift through your hands to be held again.

Some things only get harder with time:
Your love was always so easy.
You bloomed; I’m but a seedling
Lying under dirt and grime.
I think this will never be easy,
And that’s why I need you to need me.

2020

teething

I cut my teeth on diamonds,
I write godless hymns—
Toes curled up in rapture,
Glazed eyes growing dim.

I stretched so thin in ascension
I snapped back into place;
I’m sweating through the pews,
Sinking past your grace.

2017

Bored at the Altar

Clouded windows, severed hands
Clasped in remembrance
Shattered feet run regal, drenched,
Dry like a riverbed,
A skinless head on a skinful neck

Erect and frozen, trained even in death
Two more hands, one clutching, one holding
Striated, limp, creating, destroying,
Holding onto all things left flowing.

My God is frozen.
My God is thawing.
He’s caught in the eye as His gyre keeps widening.
My God is growing.
My god is tiring.
His bags grow heavy with each breath he’s denying.

He’s denying his hardest,
A paintless artist,
Holding a match while he’s burning his carcass,
Calloused and thoughtless,
His justice is lawless,
It just takes small mistakes to get left burned and unaltered

I’m bored at the altar.
I’ve heard all the sermons.
The stained glass is worn out and I can’t see any colors.
But still, all those murmurs—
A broken church doesn’t need any lecterns.

The congregation’s the pastor,
No children are bastards,
White light flows in past the memory of rafters.
Maybe there is no hereafter;
Maybe the soul is just plaster;
My God is frozen in rapture.

2018

Whiskers

Cold, cold whiskers, fraying, falling, fragile
In the air, filtering our light like dust.
Time is over; it does not unravel,
Slow, stall, bend for men like us. It is up.

The golden light shears your graying features,
A glorious, glorious remembrance
Swells, beats away, collapses in seizures,
And leaves a husk, a broken resemblance.

A boy plays in the mud, jeans too new
To whisker away like us. Not yet.
His brother, in the river's soaking pew,
Holds a prize, new whiskers gleaming in sweat.

Together now the brothers rest, too grown,
Whiskers gone, whiskers growing, alone

2017

A Raisin in fluorescent lights

My therapist told me to bite into a raisin and feel nothing else
Its wrinkles feel like chapped lips,
Its juice tastes like spit after a cheap flavored cigarillo
Without the nicotine or the regret
Or the potential

Mid raisin I realize I only use these similes as crutches
My experiences limping into themselves
In a crowded hallway
Like ghosts in a hospital with all of the lights on
Trembling in fear of pure raisin-ness

2018 

If i die young

If I die young, 
Hang my Sunday's best on a mannequin
Lay me out nude,
Dagger in hand on a pagan altar,
Unseen tattoos carved deep, wide eyes asleep.

I pray there's stifled laughter,
Toed lines in the sand between reverence
And revelry,
Blood and wine heating our faces
I hope our shoes are laceless.

My memory
Should be nothing more than one,
Please don't make me the martyrs that killed me
There's enough heroes in our world
Just let me die.

If I die young,
Just let me die.
I lived a life,
And it was mine,
And that's enough.

2018

To Florence, to live*

It's like living out a past life here,
Ghosts coo-ing old forgotten songs in a new key,
Dead lovers woo-ing me all over again.

But now my friends are more than foils—
There's depths to them I don't need to drown in.
Longing only for more time instead of substance.

Substance is something sacred now.

The air here reminds me of home.
Unremarkable, but easy to breathe.
I can breathe easy.
A deep sigh and a sharp inhale,
Time folds over like cream.

2018