Tag: madness

Better Persist in Dying

I pay for every single smile
Nights of crying and loneliness
Like pushing rocks a mile
that fall back on me bottomless.

I pay for every single happiness
Days of being my own exile
Like walking in the eye of storminess
that shows all the madness awhile.

I pay for every coping style
Years of distant, forgotten sadness
Like hiding the warning FRAGILE
that leaves behind my pieces in recklessness.

Benyamin Bensalah

07.12.2020

Regret

I’ve never seen a word such suffocating –
such as regret.
I stuffed my already crowded mind with lies
such as I never feel regret.
I stuffed my ego with lies that I deserved this all,
and all the bad is out of regret.
I went dreamwalking with that chestboard in my chest,
seeing all pain I was used to, but regret.
While the word kept me chasing, just as my chest kept aching
from what I wasn’t able to see that I do regret.
My chest is opening now, with unusual pain that is searing me down,
but I’m somehow happy to hear that I do regret.
All the pain I caused, not just to myself alone, not just to the one I loved,
but for everyone who had to pay for my pain – I regret.
I don’t know how could it be possible now to be a better person from now,
and I really don’t know it like I didn’t know it back from now, but I regret.
This word is here now, that kept me suffocating – crying – waiting for answers in my hiding,
but I am free now; free as a hated criminal who’s not enjailed now, and knows only one word
only one word that he murmures alone:
I regret.

Bensalah Benyamin

04.12.2020, 04:20 am

Ne’er no’ere

Science tells us, time and space are not the thing
that makes us dependent, but
we make them up, just to
feel dependent.

As not being depending on any or to any
time and space keeps drifting,
merging and vortexing
with you nowhere.

Even your cereblar synopses warp,
plunging you in sharp dark,
throwing in deep blaze
your dizzy image.

Childhood feelings, romance,
pain of bruises, torments
keep mashing up
your moments.

In such an end, you if you,
or rather your shadow
drift in nowhere
and nowhen.

Bensalah Benyamin

01.12.2020

Lies

What a bitter joke is the life!
Would it be better without lies?
So many lies that God forbidden,
Those which are or not deeply hidden:

The lied “ailuvyoes”, the lied “aimfines”,
The lying poetries and stolen rhymes,
The lied self-esteem, the lied moods,
The lying virtues under my hooves:

Are all lies.
Are all sections that need sactions.
Are all lies.
And all are punishments themselves.

Benyamin Bensalah

25.02.2018

Attila József: Lonileness

Beetle step on your open eyes. Green
velvet mold relax your breasts.
Look at the loneliness you are sending me.
Grind your teeth;  eat up your lips.

Your face should fall off like dry sand,
the dear.  And if you’d caress me,
since in place of your lap there’s an empty land:
your working fingers should be tied off by weed.

See, this is you, these are disgusting wishes.
Still, you wouldn’t flutter if people were
gathering silently to see like around witches:
who made me so evil.

Whom are you grabbing now?  If you give birth to your son
it will be his pleasure to spin around,
you blink at him while it gets surrounded one by one
with full-length alligators around.

I lie motionlessly on my back, on the bed,
I see my eyes: you look at me with them.
Die!  I already wish so wordlessly the end
that I might think I am going to die in it, damn.

Benyamin Bensalah

01.08.2020

Translated from the Hungarian poem of Attila József, “Magány”(1936).

Oh, you happy man!

Man, you!
Tell me who are you?
Mortal.
Whose life is temporal,
But you’re happy, you.
You fool!
Oh you.
Are you crazy?
Tell me you are.
Your happy life,
Tell me is a lie.
It’s a mess-up in your mind,
That you always laugh.
I look at you,
carelessly,
Because you are careless.
Your idle smile,
That you left on your face.
As always.
Accidentally,
Or maybe it’s direct?
Intentionally,
You surprise me,
With this ugly gift?
You are pushing into my face,
That you are,
How you are,
in a so happy grace?

You sick!
Or whether I am
A fool,
not understanding the thing?
Even if it’s trivial.
It is, to every man.
Only for me.
I’ve come to this world crying,
You laugh.
You’ve been laughing since.
Into my face.
Like this, selflessly:
Hah!
Oh you!
I’ve lost even my words.


But still,
I still ask,
a hundred times,
If you do not answer,
a thousand times,
Because I do not understand.
Where in the sadly mischief,
Has been your sadness.
Or it’s only me having it,
While others not.
This is so inhuman.
But I’m a man,
Medically, in the body.
And my soul?
Much has been mentioned,
as taboo.
Here’s the tangle.
Inside.
Yes, I already feel.
Or…
Oh, that’s not it.
Then I ask,
A hundred times and a thousand times,
if you need to.
Until you say it.
Where is that certain,
That certain happiness.

Benyamin Bensalah

06.06.2017

Translated from my Hungarian poem, “Ó te boldog ember!” (2007).

Attila József: YOU KNOW THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS

You know there’s no forgiveness
so, it’s vain to turn to sadness.
Be what you meant to be: a man.
After you, there still grows grass.

The sin will not get lighter,
so, it’s vain if you water.
That you are an evidence to this,
thank what you could acquire.

Don’t blame, don’t swear
don’t be a jerk to yourself
don’t worship and don’t seduce
don’t join the army unaware.

Stay worthless,
don’t look at the secrets.
And with humanity,
since you are a man, don’t be reckless.

Remember you growled
and in  vain you implored.
You have become a false witness
at your own record.

You called Father being fallen,
man if you found none in heaven.
And you found grown bad spots
in your psychoanalytic canon.

You believed in easy talking,
in friends been just acting
and see, never, never anyone
said that you were worthy.

They cheated, they loved me so
you cheated and you can’t love also.
Now, grab the loaded gun
and squeeze it to your empty torso.

Or throw away all the principles
and still hope for faithful love-riddles,
since like a dog you would believe
in anyone who’d see you still love-able.

Benyamin Bensalah

08.07.2020

Translated from the Hungarian poem of Attila József, “Tudod hogy nincs bocsánat”(1937).