Category: l’art pour l’art

A page

I’m standing before a book again.
Who cares of the cover – everybody does.
Isn’t it nice, again?
Oh, it is.
Isn’t it scary, again?
Oh, it is.
Reading won’t hurt us, right?
Oh, it does.
As it did tremendous times.
Still, you are at the first page now.
Yes, I am.
Why? Why would you?
Because this is life.
Life?
Life of a writer.
Writer? You wanted to read, didn’t you?
Yes.
I don’t understand.
Me neither.
Stahp.
I wish to stop, but this is life. We go on.
So?
Shhh. This is the first page.
They are always the best.

Benyamin Bensalah

27.08.2022

OK POEMER

“You cannot see it till you cannot say it with beauty?”

Because we are illiterate.

Was it the bait?

Because…

Everything is love and death

Words must hit as dazzling meth

With a structure that stands 9-11

Carrying a scent of Heaven

From all those Rue and Lilies

From the garden of Great Achilles

Mention a great hero of a nation

With all the fancy connotation

With pictures more vivid than LSD

Rhymes on amok killing spree

Jamming music of beep beep beep

Pleasing critics as it’s deep deep deep

Right down on their throat

That’s how they feel somebody wrote

That’s how you are recognized as artist

Then who cares what your art is…

…about, all those hows and whys

Who cares a homo-sapien cries or dies…

When it’s fitting the current chique

You and your work are both sick.

Benyamin Bensalah

01.11.2021

Greek Fire in and out

I’m releasing less attention
because I’m breaking under some tension
from the rules of nature,
being this carbonic ape-like creature,
but I’m still doing my best,
still living even if pain’s ripping my chest.

The days’ve been heavy,
my rhymes have become just as wacky,
rolling down some short-not shots
while playing a lunatic, mad poet’s plots
with loneliness as franchise
that’s sad, not, until the wretch dies.

No harsh feelings, that’s fine,
I’m still holding the line and that’s mine;
I’m born with bigger heart, naive –
this is how I’ll leave, nothing more to achieve,
but till my hands can tremble,
I note myself down, so you can remember.

What a talent, what a treasure,
but has nobodoy to share this pressure,
talking as if it would be shareable
my crazy selves, nothing like cherishable;
no need of “pain, no gain” bullshitting –
I’m just here for some fire-spitting.

Dark, surrounding big-blue ocean,
I’m still burning on its surface in self-promotion;
my flames tremble, and are heavy,
none’s feeding them and I gave up already
since its hunger would eat up worlds,
but I’m just a poor poet who’s running out of words.

Benyamin Bensalah

24.05.2021

Pierre Reverdy : Late in life

I am hard

I am tender
  
                             And I lost my time
                             Dreaming without sleeping
                             Sleeping while walking

Wherever I passed by
I found my absence
I am nowhere

Except the nothingness
But I’m hiding at the top of the bowels
At the place where the lightning has hit too often
A heart where every word left its keenness
And where my life drops to the slightest move.

Benyamin Bensalah

13.09.2020

Translated from the French poem of Pierre Reverdy, “Tard dans la vie”(1960).

Amourtisseur

The pressure, pressure and pressure,
year to year, day to day
from people, people and situations
is smashing, crashing every one of us
with all possible forces.

Where is the possible counterforce
that could be against,
that could save you from breaking,
that could save others to explode on them
with a dark mushroom-cloud of anger?

What could be better counterforce
than just simply smiling,
and dissolve the pressure of others,
bringing a bright day into the cosmic mess
with radioactive kindness!

Benyamin Bensalah

10.09.2020

Riceology

Boiling rice may be a bogey;
We are cooking, stirring, working on it,
Then, we get a gluing paste for our fatigue.

But boiling rice is a simple act;
Only if you’re following a couple fact,
My scientific, tricky receipt step by step.

Firstly, you measure the rice;
Take a mug once and twice and thrice,
So you see, it’s science, not a play of dice.

Then, the water is coming,
And here is my first trick coming;
How many times you must be mugging?

An ordinary cooker,
Would take double water,
Pouring six mugs of fresh blunder.

But me! The chef Benyamin,
I choose to put three and a half in,
Letting the rice to swim, not sinking.

But above all of this,
Here are my other magic tricks;
Frying the rice for five mins or six.

After it got golden brown,
I pour hot water on it muggly owned,
Then, I leave the rice under a cover to boil.

After lil lodge-podgy,
We can check our moody foodie;
And it was the first lesson of riceology.

Benyamin Bensalah

09.10.2017

Buildings

See the edges of the buildings –
White buildings, red buildings!
What monstrous and numerous are those things!
From the upper highness,
As from viewing up from their legs,
They are giantly erupting like trees.
But what are these?
What are these?
Not like trees that arise from the seeds,
Are they just there?
Just like that?!

Ask who did build those buildings –
Roofed buildings, bald buildings!
What squared shape they have,
What eminence some of them holds.
But who asks about them?
And who cares
after all?

See all those what’s heard of buildings –
Greek buildings, Ottoman buildings!
Does mortal eyes’ seeing see these things?
The glazed ceramics and corinthian crinklings
Under the seas and upon the skies,
The art of the architect’s,
Or the pain of the masons by whom the brick lies?

See nothing what’s in the buildings –
Commercial buildings, industrial buildings!
Even the one who sits, stands in these things
Sees only prisons fenced in wall by wall.
As in a zoo, they are inclosed in the buildings.
People see people only feeding
When running out of the buildings.

See the monstrous, numerous buildings –
Breathing buildings, oppressing buildings!
They eat up the landscape
And even other buildings.
In them, people and people and people,
Working and eating without seeing
The buildings and buildings and buildings,
Digesting the people, the look
While they are seething and eating us till we go.
Though, they’re not seeing what those buildings do
Because they are just buildings after all.

Benyamin Bensalah

13.02.2019