We like to share with you the stories, writings, and art of the men and women who are a part of RealLife. This is a poem written by Ben Jenkins, a recent Real Life graduate from West Campus.
A Breeze like a barefoot child
passes my bedside wordless rustling
my sleepy body consults its instruments
intrigued by incongruous calculations
some halfdozen dubious explanations
muscling itself up to investigate
Everything here is amutter
coffeemaker sputters from the kitchen
dying leaves twitch and scuttle across the floor
the front door swings heavy defeated
creaking hinges send the walls cringing
the central heating grumbles in indignation
powerless to regulate the obtrusive autumn
Two Men are sitting on my sofa
smoking pipes
and riddling with their eyes
a Third laughs from behind with the carafe
and all four of my blue mugs
Coffee?
yes of course it is time to flesh out
this sweetest frame time to divide
shame from desire time to drive out
these ghosts from my machine
I never saw so honest a beard
never heard a voice so keen
scalpeling out such Words:
All the locks are gone.
And the doors no longer close.
And the night no longer comes.
And this is how the world goes on.
This is the mystery we’ll live and know.
Rest is incomprehensible reparation
oxygen joy with nitrogen dread
invisible things I count as nothings
and a galaxy of sunlit particles
compose an apt atmosphere
sharp enough to pierce
with each breath seeming to express
some reality about the capacity
of the secret cavities inside my chest.
I will grow to welcome this Guest.