Category Archives: poetry

If You Ever Need Me

Don’t make it too obvious.
In fact, don’t make it obvious at all.
Just pretend I have a Ph.D. in
vagueness. Open with some
mixed signals interwoven with silence
and then stick to the script while
bending over backwards to make
me read between the lines.
I should be trained in the art of you
understand how to color the colorless,
how to dance through the rain as if
tears are somehow watery sunshine.

So:

Please don’t bang on your chest,
blow the trumpet, sound the alarm,
pull out your hair, or stomp your feet,
because that’s just simply too obvious,
and I want to magnetize to your heart,
want to learn the positives to your negatives
so that I know that when you say you’re fine,
you really mean that your entire world
is on fire—close to blowing up or burning down.
I guess if our love is what I think it is,
I should be able to understand you
even when you speak without words.

Entitlement

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

Fold me into your poems
to be read aloud in the quietest corner of your heart.

Place me between the tightest lines
where your uncompromising lips can be softened.

There is no winner in this tug of war,
only me striving to stay in your vocabulary.

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Please make sure to view her blog for additional poems and content: https://flickerofthoughts.com/

Ambush

You surprised my heart with an attack
Declaring war on my insides
With weapons never
Intended for conflict

You shot shit not from a bull
But a beast in human form
Even a guerrilla wouldn’t
Commit to those tactics

You agreed upon nonviolence
With plastic promises and cosmetic lies
Yet the paint on your face
Confirmed you were still in battle

You engaged without bloodshed
For you preferred the shedding of tears
A smile dropped here and a smile dropped there
You blew me up with peaceful kisses
The bombs of seductive love

I’m glad our one-sided struggle ended when it did
I would’ve never survived a nuclear relationship

My Love, a poem by Benjamin Grossman at Spillwords.com

My latest poetry publication at Spillwords Press:

My Love

You are not flesh and bone,
Not clay and dust,
Nor light and darkness.

[read the entire poem by clicking on the link below.]

Spillwords.com presents: My Love, a poem by Benjamin Grossman, who received his MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College.

Source: My Love, a poem by Benjamin Grossman at Spillwords.com

My Love

You are not flesh and bone,
Not clay and dust,
Nor light and darkness.

Neither are you some color
Fixed between good and bad
Or a mere figment of a poet’s imagination.

Rather, you are an admixture
Of fierce fire and flexible water.

Whenever I am near you,
All I feel is constant steam, ripened heat—
A desire to burn, no matter the consequences.