(Sublime Connection)
Plainsong fastened
To a digital display,
Be that as it may,
I do not begin in type, on screen.
I was not born near the stream
Filled with fuels so pristine.
I do not venerate them,
The wave-like blankets
Of a sublime connection,
Falling one over the variant.
Vindictive are those who dissociate
Children with innocence.
I may have been raised by phones
- And clocks and sedatives and roads -
But this generation will not abide to them,
It will use them.
(Book smarts on a shelf)
Corpses in a lot, bodies in a bag.
Book smarts on a shelf, left there with the knives.
Gravetones in the court, looking like some rags,
All the little kids go back to their hives.
The cops are headed hard,
Pray you will make it out,
Bodies lost in the drought,
And they act as a guard.
Those small blue broken men,
They are lost in themselves,
The cops won't send you help.
The cops won't send you help.
Corpses in a lot, bodies in a bag,
That is their occupation, don't you know?
Gravetones in the court, looking like some rags,
A poisoned corporation, not a hope.
(She is More than her Smile)
He asks her to smile
While he only grins,
He says this is not cultural.
She asks him to love
As she wholly sings,
He says it's inconsequential.
They're both asked by mothers
And counseled by daughters:
What is it they want, what is it they need?
And while she tells of a world
Where she is more than her smile,
More than upset and more,
More than his - female - child,
He tells of a world where he can be king.
(blind)
He looks at me as if he wonders,
But still holds back.
There is a tidal wave of content falling down on us,
Except all he does it burn the water;
When one match isn't enough he brings two,
Then three, then thirty, then thirty thousand;
Matches become torches become atomic bombs.
And soon I forget the ocean even existed,
The wave was just my imagination.
The only blue I see is in his eyes.
The only water I have left.
The only waves he couldn't burn.
You are wrong to think that love is blind.
But I don't mind giving him time,
He doesn't owe me sight.
(Flower)
Christmas lights and summer ice cream
Spotlights on the children;
Wonder is a word they like to use,
Belief is the concept that they've fused.
They're so innocently evil.
Tranquil in their spoiled state
Spotlights on the things they say.
Funny thing, I'm just like them,
Funnier still, they are my demographic.
They are our roots, we are the stem.
A flower, so dangerously classic.
A flower, so carefully protected
Under lock and key,
A future, so constantly fed, nourished,
Drowned out in its feed.
By Paul Beniaminov
The meanings behind each poem:
The first poem is about how people stereotype teens/kids as “social media obsessed” or “phone dependent”.
The second poem is about the stereotype that police officers are “helpers” when really, their job is to seek out trouble.
The third is about how women don't owe others femininity or smiles; they are more than flirtiness or benevolence.
In the fourth poem, I take the role of a guilty almost antagonistic character in love, but instead of stereotyping the looks of interest from the person #2, I give him time, and say that no one ever owes me a reciprocated love; one shouldn’t stereotype a respectful relationship as a romantic one.
The last poem comes full circle to the first one, because it is once again about children, and the stereotype that they are helpless, because - as I explain in the poem - if they are spoiled and treated as helpless, they - the future of the world - will not be able to fend for themselves.
In collaboration with YWMTU (@yourwordsmattertous)
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