New Song, “We’re Gonna Die”
Samsara
We stood around the fire
that night,
strangers to ourselves,
souls far from home,
stranded
on this far-flung and forlorn
fold of the vast wasteland of form,
in some kind of interdimensional waystation,
someone’s back yard.
We were all the main characters in separate stories,
long and wild ones, but
somehow, we all ended up in that scene together,
wondering if destiny had a purpose,
all awestruck and quiet
around the fire
that night.
I strummed soft smoky bittersweet notes,
steady, simple, continuous,
a blanket of consolation
that wrapped us each in our separateness
and kinda snuggled us all together.
Notions flared up occasionally,
wispy and wistful
or sparking and popping out of the fire ring.
“How did I get here?”
“I wonder what ever happened to so and so.”
“What could I have done differently?”
“How am I gonna get out of this place?”
“My soul isn’t from here,
but it can’t remember where home is.”
“I wish the child-me could know how loved he was,
but he never really knew and now he’s dead,
and buried somewhere
inside me.
But maybe he can hear me
tell him now;
I see his ghost playing and running around in my dreams some nights.”
“Dreams make perfect sense.
Why is being awake such a mindfuck?”
Now and then
we looked into each other’s eyes for a moment,
maybe a little more,
with sad smiles and
soul’s light glowing through
those sweet heartache eyes
of warm moist clay,
cheek bones and brow worn down
to an earthy grace
of surrender and determination.
Yeah, now and then
we look into each other’s eyes for a moment,
but mostly we all stare into the fire,
half hypnotized.
Is it because behind the flickering
flames of this life,
a constant light and warmth
reminds us of some kind of eternal home,
a place to rest in belonging?
Or do we stare into the fire
so we can put our backs
to home,
the cold dark space surrounding us,
stretching beyond the beyond,
whispering to us
reminding us that sooner or later
we must return,
whenever our spirits decide they’re finally done with this samsara.
Did we stay too many times in this world
clinging to some kind of self?
Are we the abandoned orphans
or are we the runaways?
Nobody can remember.
But I know that whether we live infinite lifetimes
or die a final death,
not one of us will make it out of here.
Almost Full
The table was so long
I couldn’t see where it ended.
An incredible banquet
of countless dishes crowded
together and out into the distance.
I picked up a plate and excitedly moved along
sampling this and that.
Many dishes were marvelous and delicious,
many shockingly foul and bitter,
but I found while the flavors faded,
all were worth trying.
I grew anxious.
Some dishes emptied,
but I wanted more.
And it occured to me
that my stomach couldn’t possibly fit
a taste of everything.
It hurt to see all the
tempting treats
I would have to leave
untouched.
Half way down the table,
with the beginning and end both in sight,
I noticed so many things I wanted to taste
weren’t even
on the table.
Rage and disappointment!
How could this be my banquet?
This is all there is?
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was the chef.
I was just about to complain,
but she spoke first,
in a voice of wry and friendly humor:
“It’s funny!
You are here
and you have been given
an exquisite banquet,
and yet you’re upset,
because all you can think about
is what you couldn’t have.
Ha!”
She handed me a glass of water,
almost full,
winked,
and walked away.
Original Face
The smooth, fresh snow of youth,
glowing with light still whole,
conceals the rough rock faces
sculpted countless lifetimes.
What spring-born creature could know
the land’s shape before the winter?
The melting reveals,
but not before it alters.
Cracked rock tumbles
and loose earth washes away.
Blue, pink, and yellow surprises
speckle receding white,
as the land awakens slowly,
slipping the blanket off
its bed of green grass,
blood brown soil,
scattered, quiet stone.
The frozen white light shatters
into the many colors.
The mask melts at last,
and the terrain
of a well-worn face
appears.
I wanted to meet you
while we still wore some snow.
I wish I could have seen
you through your seasons.
And I wanted you to see
how I became.
I wanted someone
to know.
But it’s just as well.
We will be glad to find each other already unfrozen,
wearing our warm ridges lovingly.
We will share stories of spring and summer,
imagine the blossoming and burning.
Sometimes story is better than sight.
Like neighboring mountains,
have we already seen each other
shaped through the countless cycles?
Who can remember?
But I will know you when I see you.
You will have, as I do,
a snow capped peak,
a special and secret place
standing out above you,
fantastic,
unreachable.
I want to gaze up at your original face,
hidden forever by first snow,
so the light can tease me
with your wink.
Strange Bird
Frantic
I grabbed at a thought and missed.
Terror
as two flew from my arm’s hold.
I was clutching a wild flock to my chest.
Obsessed eyes scanning back and forth,
trying to notice which would try to escape next.
Wings fluttered in my winced face and
beaks pecked at my eyes and
another slipped out and flew off and “I NEED YOU!”
One had an urgent message still tied to its leg,
another was pretty,
and another I wanted to wear on my shoulder,
to repeat and validate everything I said,
and another,
the most crucial of all,
was for dinner.
My precious thoughts!
My precious…
I couldn’t hold them all.
One by one I let them go,
sacrifices made in anxious surrender
and faith.
Watching them fly off,
I was caught by the wide view of heaven.
Laughing,
I remembered
it had been right in front of me all along,
I hadn’t been holding my thoughts.
They had been holding me.
Free
and facing the spacious fullness of life
I raised my empty arms in wonder and gratitude.
A strange bird landed
in my palm.
I didn't grasp.
I held it graciously, like the ground holds our feet.
The strange bird looked me right in the eye
and said, “The important ones will come back
exactly when you need them,
but they will need a place to land.”
Ash to Ash
(flit)
Phhhh,
Hhhhhh
Shit.
Do I have it?
Is this how my lungs usually feel?
I don’t even know.
Waiting
0.2% of people aged 30-39
I hear her coughing in the kitchen,
like someone smacking and scraping
an empty cardboard box.
“Like an iron weight on your chest,
like breathing through a pinched nose.”
Phhhh,
Hhhhhh
Dizzy cold falling fuck oh my god this is it I have it
I remember that it could be
exciting
and interesting.
It would be alright to die like that.
Waiting.
OK, I feel alright
I think.
I/we can’t see what’s happening.
Phhhh,
Hhhehhh…
With stones and bamboo poles.
they killed thousands,
even children.
She said they knew he was innocent,
but the people stoned him until he was broken
into pieces that mixed with the gravel path,
desperate to prove their own innocence.
One third of Europe
I should quit anyway.
Phhhh,
Hhhehhh…
13,000 Americans die
every day from
smoking.
Quarantinesocialdistancinginfecteddisinfectcontagiouslungsfluidbeatenbecausehewas
AsianlockdownWorldHealthOrganizationlaidoffrecessionrentoutbreaktestingventilators
stockpilingshortagesevictionexponentialtoiletpapermasksdeadliermartiallawTrumpsaid,
“I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Phhhh,
Hhhhhh
Man, sometimes I get so fucking scared.
It’s hard to get comfortable with the fact
life is just
ash to ash.
You’re Doing GREAT.
When I dream in my next life
Sometimes in dreams
I have tea with a sweet Russian lady.
We sit in our cottage
at our little table
between the open door and window.
The ever fresh days,
white, blue, and yellow,
rush in and around us
with the children.
She was once my wife,
and this cottage and these children were ours.
We meet here
so we can remember, reminisce,
relive that lifetime, feeling
all it’s moments at once,
folded into this place
forever
in time between all times,
resonating even through the fog
of a new life.
I wake up crying.
There’s never enough time.
I lay wondering who she is now.
Could we recognize each other awake?
When I dream in my next life,
I hope I’ll visit this one I live now.
I hope I can sit with Mom and Dad and John,
and hold Lady and Penny while they bark and lick my face
like I just got home.
I hope I’ll read again with the children I taught in my classroom.
When I dream in my next life,
I hope I’ll visit this one I live now.
It was a good one.
Sad Boy Goes Out
It’s Always the Same
Forgive Yourself
It is time to forgive yourself
for all the things you did
not
do wrong.
Forgive yourself
for all the times
your innocence was
made to feel like guilt.
Forgive yourself
for carrying the boulder of
shame they put on you.
No wonder you couldn’t fly
for all those years.
Forgive yourself.
Forgive yourself
for showing yourself
only to have people tell you
to hide.
Forgive yourself
for every time you shined
with child-like pride
and got pissed on for it.
Forgive yourself
for the times your brilliance
was rejected.
They had to close their eyes,
because they were too accustomed
to seeing in the dark.
Forgive yourself
for the lies
they told about you.
Forgive yourself
for the self-mutilation,
trying to fit
into their categories and concepts.
Forgive yourself
for the self-hatred,
for getting so lost in their madness
that you couldn’t even see yourself anymore.
Forgive yourself
for compromising your integrity,
hoping to be loved.
Forgive yourself
for helping more than you should have,
for being unable to save a lost cause.
Forgive yourself for trying too hard
for too long.
Forgive yourself
for getting so lost.
Forgive yourself
for all the things
you did not do wrong.
Forgive yourself
for not loving yourself
for so long.
You are not bad.
You are good.
Digger
I’m always digging
I don’t know why I can’t stop.
Maybe I always want to know what’s underneath.
Or maybe I’m never satisfied with what I see.
There’s got to be more.
Sometimes I see a glint down there
or imagine what’s below those
unremarkable surfaces
and then I just can’t help it.
I dig. I'm a digger.
You can always uncover a new space.
Sometimes it’s bright under there.
Maybe part of me knows that the only way out is through.
Maybe there’s another sky down there.
So I dig.
Often I want to go wandering out wide
and sometimes I do.
But mostly I dig.
Intently.
I’m getting somewhere.
Maybe a wiser part of me knows
the greater adventure is to go in, inner, in-est.
“Sorry,
I'd really love to see you tonight
but, um, actually
I have this really important digging thing I have to work on...”
Maybe I can’t help digging through the past,
piled up and decomposed.
I extract nutrients,
organic matter reduced to elements
that can become new life,
old materials to combine in new ways.
I find artifacts
that can help me see my way backward
and forward
at the same time.
Maybe some part of me remembers that,
while I’ve tried so hard to build myself a
certain way,
the real me
was already built
Perfectly
but got buried long ago,
and its excavation is now an emergency.
Or maybe I’m really just looking for a simple home,
A place to plant myself.
Maybe my secret is that I’m a seed
So often I ache to rise
to new heights.
Instead I just keep digging down deeper.
But maybe a wiser part of me knows
like a tree does
That you can only reach higher if you stretch deeper.
Maybe I’m digging a well.
Maybe I’ll strike the aquifer beneath all forms,
feeding each variation into being.
And one day,
after a lifetime of digging,
if nothing else
I’ll have a grave
and I'll crumble into it,
graceful,
grateful.
There’s dignity and purpose in digging it yourself,
starkly aware
that is what you are doing.
July 7: Ben Gallup at Third Place Books/Raconteur
"Ben Gallup will share from his new book of poetry, 'I Want to Meet Your Light.' More than just a reading, he wants everyone (including himself) to heal through poetry, improvisation, and participation. Far from hocus pocus, Ben helps us find ourselves and each other by getting down to the immediate, humble, and human."
There's a bar at the book store. Let's hang out afterwards!
Sunday, July 7, 2019 at 7:00pm
Third Place Books
5041 Wilson Ave S
Seattle WA 98118
https://www.thestranger.com/events/40465309/benjamin-gallup-i-want-to-meet-your-light
New Book, “I Want to Meet Your Light”
I’m excited to announce my first poetry collection will available online and in independent book stores on July 1, 2019! I’ll be selling advance copies at special events leading up to the general market release.
What readers are saying:
“The poems in this collection are raw and earnest. Often conversational, sometimes beautifully minimal, and always honest. What threads them together is the expression of longing and desire in all of us to connect.”
– J. Yoon, Psychotherapist
“Most poetry leaves me unmoved; it doesn’t make me feel anything. Enter Ben Gallup with the most raw, original poetry I’ve read in years. Reading Ben’s poems will rip off emotional scars and twist a knife in your deepest aching, yet somehow leave you buoyed and filled with life. His simple words evoke beauty and love side-by-side with heartache and yearning. His preoccupations are life-and-death matters: rebirth, identity, meaning, alienation, trauma, nostalgia, growth. Ben makes you feel human. Ben makes you feel.”
-John Michael, Firefighter
Book Specs
ISBN/SKU: 9781733966115
5.5 x 8.5 in or 216 x 140 mm
Perfect Bound on Creme w/Matte Lam
Page Count: 84
Spine Width: 0.20120 in
Weight: 0.261 lbs
No Compensation
An excess of one kind of strength
indicates
weakness somewhere else.
Find where you have become too strong,
rigid, brittle,
and you will find your weakness
in its shadow.
Compensation does not correct the imbalance.
It reinforces the imbalance.
It is a temporary solution,
an emergency measure to save you from disaster.
But left uncorrected
it becomes its own disaster.
You are soft in ways you should be stronger.
You are too strong in ways you should be softer.
Let your brick walls breathe and stretch.
Let them become flesh again.
Seize your weakness.
Plunge it right into your frenzy of fears.
Let it stay there and struggle
and tear and resist and persevere
day after day.
Let it become strong like a tree,
bending with every wind
and always returning to impeccable posture.
Life needs structure to flow.
Life needs structure to flow.
I Could Tell He Never Saw Me
I could tell he never saw me
because his sight couldn’t reach me,
because it stopped before it left his eyes,
because it couldn't shine
past the clouds
in his pupils.
It just reflected right back
into to his self-contained world.
I could tell he never saw me
because his sight couldn’t reach me,
because the usual traumas of becoming a man
had blotted out the pure and tender lens
he was born with.
I could tell he never saw me
because his sight couldn’t reach me,
because his light couldn’t escape
the gravity of his own pain
and hunger and despair.
I wanted to help
but there was nothing I could do;
he couldn’t even see me,
because he couldn’t see
beyond himself.