How do I cope with myself being me

How do I cope with myself being me?

When I have a thought,
I tell myself do not think.

When I notice something,
I tell myself I did not.

When the past hurts me,
I tell myself time does not exist.

When realities overwhelm me,
I tell myself nothing is real.

How do I cope?

When I am forced to be awake,
I make up little things to think about.

When my eyes are forced to be open,
I blindfold myself and all in the world.

When memories burn me inside,
I erase every minutes past behind me.

When I grow crazy of all the absurdities,
I know that nothing is real.

How do I keep being me?

I do not think that such thing exists.

I do not see anything at all.

I do not feel at all.

I do not exist.

Benyamin Bensalah

20.03.2023

A heart among heartmongers

Agony. I dress it in suits.

We take long walks

in the park, on the streets

at the calmest places

giving the weirdest look.

How this might come up?

I have no idea.

Nothing is weird here;

it’s all my regulars.

Then, in the eyes of the mass

there’s an infinite emptiness –

deep inside them,

in their idle soul,

not like in mine;

only empty on the surface

while inside

agony’s jogging in suits,

darkness is brushing paintings,

silence is screaming up poems,

macabre is planning weddings,

and joy wants to die in socks.

These walks are bothersome,

but for only one reason:

You.

Benyamin Bensalah

07.01.2022

New year, new year, new year

This perpetual feeling of wrong
never ceases, always returns.
Sometimes, it gives you a breath
just as long to barely survive
or to madly gasp for survival.

Peace lies somewhere in a mass-grave of hopes
ditched by monsters
who enjoyed their life in cost of yours.

This fluctuating ever wrongness
never dissolves, always hurts.
Sometimes, it could be grabbed
as if it would be a person,
but it’s only one persona.

Hell is other people as it was said once
that is the truth,
but what hurts more, you are one of them.

This faceless ever wrong machine
never olds, always renews.
Like an impossible chess-game
not obliged, still forced to play
where each step gets you played.

Clockwork theatres write simple scripts
still ungraspable
where you are stuck in the cogs of others.

This fluctuating ever wrongness
makes me, and ends me.
Sometimes, I see the wrong in myself,
but the time I reach my persona
I realize, others killed that person.

Hell is only me if the perception is mine
that is the truth,
and nothing hurts more than I am not needed even by me.

This perpetual feeling of wrong
overloads me, and fills me with void.
Sometimes, I crawl or explode madly,
but rather, I focus on survival
since there’s less life, the more I survive.

Peace comes when I see your faces no more,
wretched, wicked monsters
who had the chance to ease my pain, but gave me more.

Benyamin Bensalah

30.12.2022

Moments of my life

Alone –
I am trapped in this moment
in a room with so called memories –
no good, none of them glittering, shining;
only pitch black and traumatizing.

Alone –
I am stuck in this moment
with all moments I have ever had –
all the lying compliments, planning
when people felt me like having.

Alone –
I am stuffed in this moment
of complete continuous failures –
it’s been only my pain growing,
and the chances I’m up to fooling.

Alone –
I am squeezed in this moment
by the fact that I failed –
that I am still among living
in a world I cannot be fitting.

Alone –
I am in this moment
where I have my children’s names –
and all the good I could be giving
but I regret the fact I am still living.

Benyamin Bensalah

07.02.2022

János Pilinszky: Cold world

This world is not my world,
just the compulsion of my body
getting me deeper and deeper as a worm
makes me dig into it.

That’s how I feed death,
and likely it is eating me;
my life is not mine anymore
it grows like wild meat upon my heart.

From every living created
sobering his eyes
so it sticks out, undisguised
giving up his vain shame.

The forever unknown
will eventually be homey.
Like withering on the autumn foliage,
its destruction embalms.

It’s a cold world, no man’s land!
And so tossed to the top
as scrap metal, still dead
ther are our hopes, the stars.

Benyamin Bensalah

04.02.2022

Translated from the Hungarian poem of János Pilinszky, “Kihűlt világ”.

Dezső Kosztolányi: Like someone who fell between the rails …

Like someone who fell between the rails …
And he feels his fading life all over,
while the hot wheels rumble with all power,
many-many oblique images are bursting up as a zigzag flare
and he sees, as he has never seen before:

Like someone who fell between the rails …
the infinite, distant life
says goodbye because it has become far fairy tales,
like someone who fell between the rails:

Like someone who fell between the rails –
wild panorama, awful pleasure –
between rails and between wheels,
the sad time rumbles over my head
and death thunders from afar,
for a minute I’m holding it, what is eternal,
butterflies, dreams, horrors, sweets:

Like someone who fell between the rails.

Benyamin Bensalah

05.11.2021

Translated from the Hungarian poem of Dezső Kosztolányi, “Mint aki a sínek közé esett…”.

Bully

Some youthness’ dour or such to say
Since children mock; they cannot play
Since children hurt; they cannot feel
How painful is with what they deal.
Some shameless children can just flout
With shaming; t’is how they stand out
From those who simply are around;
Not knowing how; how deep’s that wound.
So- was my youthness, back in time
With the same struggled strife – child crime
As done or seen and rarely gained
Despite the time, the pain remained:
In the mindset, in the feeling,
In the core of my beleiving,
In the days of an adult
As having been in a cult,
In a jungle eating men
Like without like feeling them,
In no need to do that so
While they needed my help though
(Children are the worst animals)
Crippling men to be but gulls.

Benyamin Bensalah

30.10.2021

Sick scrabble

Months, weeks, decades have passed;
was not good but I tried to love in the past,
imagining good dreams naively
that there is who loves me, friends who keep me,
but like just a good peasant
doing nothing,
now, here I am to put the sow …
I am putting an end to this show.

Benyamin Bensalah

18.04.2021

Translated from my Hungarian poem, “Beteg tegek” (2007).

Ma cabre

Every species developed their means
to perceive the surrounding
as well, every individual has its own design;
the birds crossing the sea,
the fish below where we can’t see,
the bugs dancing in ultraviolet.

So did I inherit and developed mine
of sensing this magnitude
to end my own design;
the trucks, the train, the cars,
the cigs, the drugs, the scars,
the heights’ and depths’ draw.

It’s ceaselessly pulling me hard,
sometimes I’m running
sometimes I accept this design;
pulling against, pushing for it,
crying – numbing, it remains horrid,
being in a force without control.

Benyamin Bensalah

30.05.2021

Shovel, hoe and big bell

To burry the past for good,
to hurry the present and bring it forth,
to worry not what the future would hold;
I just need a shovel, a hoe and a big bell,
letting it hack and clatter and gong,
thinking nothing can go wrong.

To burry the present for good,
to hurry the future and bring it forth,
to worry not what the past could hold;
I just need a hoe, a big bell and a shovel,
letting it smack and dong and flatter,
knowing nothing does matter.

Benyamin Bensalah

15.05.2021