FWIW – a literary site

The literary site of Jason Bentsman & Co. Entertainment, illumination, edification

 

 

Appeared in Wild Poets: Magazine No. 5 “Arson” (Seattle)





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



 

 

Appeared in Wild Poets: ‘best of’ (Seattle)





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



A Poem Lost

 

After climaxing for the first time three times in quick succession and learning that lovemaking can really be the sweaty primal holy blessing of trashy romance novels and exalted DH Lawrence poems, and after the fourth, which began as successively and seemed to move in infinite awesome strides beyond measure, in a hypnotic give and take, a pitter and patter of exultation and disbelief, illumination and death

 

I lay face down in a sheen of sweat in the cool world outside the blanket as she stroked my back in the most delicate sweeping gestures with slight fingers that till this day the thought of makes me tremble

 

I thought of the last solemn day of my journey across America after college: San Diego: the inexplicable old western town on the city’s edge where Mexican blankets in red yellow and white flare in the sun and the smells of dust, dried wood, tobacco and hot peppers pleasantly commingle, where I held on to my solitude while it pained and lashed out, like the adolescence of man, or the first throes of springtime, and everyone seemed as distant and inexplicable as the gestures of pacing speaking adults to a child, yet holy and dear

 

I thought of those solitary moments that seemed graceful and simple then, and now in a tunnel of nostalgia acquire an even fonder and more cherished quality: purchasing rolling papers, two bags of tobacco and a corn cob pipe from the infinitely distant and dear sales clerk with the antiquated visor and striped shirt in the oldtime tobacco shop unchanged since the days of DH Lawrence, sitting on the bench in the dust outside in the sun, rolling a cigarette while two Texan businessmen with large belt buckles on the bench beside strike up a conversation about how they, too, in youth rolled cigarettes like these, fine tobacco, and now in their old age have grown to smoking cigars: and Ah! how lonely I was, and how I marveled and exulted in my loneliness, and how one can so enjoy, can suffuse oneself in so much untainted pleasure from the simple act of rolling cigarettes in the sun, or watching a bird and eating an ice cream cone, or walking among the dust of the alleys of the antiquated western shops on the outskirts of San Diego, reading dubious passages from a Charles Bukowski collection, about Hemingway, and DH Lawrence, and thinking, that Bukowski! sometimes he’s full of shit, but you gotta hand it to him, simultaneously watching the red of the women’s scarves flash in the sun

 

I might have made a poem of this

but her touch was

too much

 

 





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



A Night of Sulphur
 

A night of sulphur
    in the garden
       with winding trees
          exquisite breeze
 

but sulphur ling’ring
    in the air
 

and in the blue heather
  I heard
      a girl’s voice
          clear as the moon
 

follow me down
  she sang, she cried
      follow me down
         down
            down
                to the riverside
 

so I left my bench
   and jumped the trail
      which
          hov’ring on
              that perfect
                           voice
 

made its way
   to southern shores
      the voice called on
          away, anon
 

follow me down
  it sang, it cried
     follow me down
        down
           down
               down to the riverside
 

and at that river
     silent shore
all voices converge
     in quiet waves
             had it been I
                 who’d dreamt
             that voice,
                       the last
                           of fading
                       childhood
                                     days?
 
 

 

 

Appeared in FIRE: No. 18 (Oxford, UK)





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



And Silent Silent Silent Go
 

And silent silent silent go
the last footsteps
of falling day
 

and silent silent silent fall
the glor’ious stars
of our decay
 

I stood nearby
affixed
in thought
as you peered through
the spying glass
 

to southern shores
dark blue
   beneath
       the fields
          and rolling
          hills of grass
 

I said to you
my friend
my love
one day these shores
will cease
to be
 

but you looked on
adrift
in thought
as the waves
   rolled forward
                  silently
 
  

 

 

Appeared in FIRE: No. 18 (Oxford, UK)





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



Jazz Wafts
 

Jazz wafts
through the darkness
of the lake. . .
past hunched trees
and grass
like clumped rice,
tissue-paper clover,
past glazed sand
and gravel
in the road,
forgotten boulders,
past street lamps
and their pale
amber glow.
 
On a boulder
sits a bottle.
It asks for nothing,
gives nothing in return.
 
The blank hum of crickets.
 
“It so happens I am sick of being a man. . .”
 
I leave the bottle
         and walk on,
                 into the darkness. . .

 
 

 

  

Appeared in FIRE: No. 14 (Oxford, UK)





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



Sara
 

Sunlight.
Her face was narrow.
The luminescent green sea.
Her elegant neck and slight fingers.
Silver jewelry.
To grow up when it was fashionable to be young.
Mistakes and great happiness conquered the world.
 
This is the impression twisted.
She smiled and talked and took careful inhalations of another
                                                                                          cigarette.

 
 

 

 

Appeared in FIRE: No. 14 (Oxford, UK)





Donating = Loving

If you found the above item worthwhile—or get any joy and value from the site—it would be great if you could leave a 'tip'... FWIW takes a lot of time and money to run. Donations from engaged readers are immensely helpful (and indeed indispensable).

 

You could contribute with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner. (Note: You don’t actually need a PayPal account; just use any credit or debit card and click through.)

Or you can make a One-Time or Recurring donation in Any Amount of your choice:

 

Partial to Bitcoin? You can send to this address: 
341CiB6nQsKYMcYrKcdTQJvrpa2wAx7fmC
Other cryptocurrencies? Ask for the address

To Occasionally See More Pieces Like This In Your FB Newsfeed  

 

   



— ♥ DONATE —

Running FWIW takes a lot of time and money. But I keep it wholly Ad Free for readers' benefit. Donations are immensely helpful. . . If you derive any joy and value here, please consider becoming a Supporting Regular, with a modest recurring Monthly Donation of your choice, between a cup of tea and a dinner.

Follow FWIW's new posts:

RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Recent Comments

All contents copyright ©This Year FWIW – a literary site

CLOSE I already like FWIW! OPT OUT: 

“Purity is Obscurity” – Ogden Nash



Show your support by liking FWIW on FB and/or G+, where I post something worthwhile (illuminating, informative, poetic, comic, tragic, usefully irreverent, captivatingly absurd) sporadically, whenever the mood strikes. . . You never know what you're going to get, but if I'm doing things right, whatever it is should ultimately enrich rather than detract from your life.

Content Protected Using Blog Protector By: PcDrome.