Brendan Bonsack

Everyone that I Know

Everyone that I know
Thinks they're
Losing their beauty
Everyone that I know
Thinks nobody is listening
Everyone that I know
Is just so overwhelmed
You know?

Everyone that I know
Hates the government
And nobody that I know
Says they voted for them
Everyone that I know
Is working at least two jobs
And training a machine
To take them away

When I'm in the street and
Sat down to eat my lunch
If someone points skyward
Everyone starts looking up

Somebody I know
Got the news from the doctor
Nobody I know
Wants that kind of news
Somebody I know
Waits in the light of their phone
For word of the cousins
Lost in a war they did not choose

When I was in the city
Waiting for cars to pass
Someone pointed skyward
And everyone started looking up

Then someone
Clutched their breast pocket and
Fell face down to the ground
And everyone I'd never met
Gathered in to help

Everyone that I know
Thinks they're
Losing their beauty
If ever anyone should ask
I just tell them no.

~ Brendan Bonsack

Gallimimus

I learned a new thing
About dinosaurs 
And forgot an old thing
About love

What did your t-shirt say 
When we drew that city 
Circle train around us
Touching only in
Creases of thought

They intimate 
By the span of the chest
That Gallimimus
May have had two hearts
But the stones
Could never preserve
All that softness

I read a small book
About people like us
Who eat the same
Indentical thing every day

What did your t-shirt say
Handmade and suitcase
Crinkled in the brightness
I think it was Wash Me
And it made me smile

They intimate 
By the span of the chest
That Gallimimus
May have had two hearts
But the stones
Could never preserve

They intimate 
By the span of the chest
Gallimimus
May have had two hearts
But the stones
Could never preserve
All that softness

~ Brendan Bonsack

Hang the Expense

He brings a painting of a flower
To hook upon the wall
In the café, buys a coffee
It will probably never sell
But he loves it
It reminds him of someone

God will be calling him soon
To do the bidding of men
Ten thousand eyes
For a single tooth
For the King says
For the Rich say
Hang the expense

He makes a pastry for the painter
He says it's on the house
Just how his mother made them
And the pumpkins are in season
Smell the spices in the oven
That is love

God will be calling him soon
To do the bidding of men
Ten thousand eyes
For a single tooth
For the King says
For the Rich say
Hang the expense

He reads the paper
To his father
At the table by the door
Two pits behind his glasses
And he doesn't really talk
Describes the colours
Counts the petals
In the flower on its hook
Skipping over pages

God will be calling him soon
To do the bidding of men
Ten thousand eyes
For a single tooth
For the King says
For the Rich say
Hang the expense

~ Brendan Bonsack

Science Fiction

A computer made of human flesh
Grown inside a petri dish

Fed with saline and hallucinations
Pretty neurons lighting up at every question

I've heard it's learning to love, but
Its whole existence is for you rent a piece of it

I saw an old friend today
Remember Luna, Sol and Rey?
Vaguely, but I don't know what happened to them

That was another time, you know
I truly was disarmed by you
A body as given is not a thing to take

Remember water clean and fresh?
Swaying, hanging, above the river bed

The cooling towers hold the kiss
The meeting at the shoulders bliss

The ease of love, the ease with which
We can go about forgetting it

I saw an old friend today
Remember Luna, Sol and Rey?
Vaguely, but I don't know what happened to them

That was another time, you know
I truly was disarmed by you
A body as given is not a thing to take

~ Brendan Bonsack

Naming

The moon
Is right there
At my first little steps

Smaller than my fingers
An angel
A fairy on a fence

My body’s
Strange new
Weightfulness
My mother’s
Floating Summer dress

Its flower
Yellow
Leaves my skin
The crackle lawn stings
The scent recedes
Of hairspray
Cigarettes
And white wine crisp
Oh, so far do I drift

I start to name them home.

~ Brendan Bonsack

Jarvis Says

Jarvis says you got to have love
In my left ear and right
In a disco time
The woman of the aisle
Looking like she just inhaled
A whole other life
Memento mori raincloud from the train
It's one more for the library
By her big librarian eyes

Sunshine, shadowlines
A little nook in your loft
Our ink and paper fingers

I'm getting old, Jarvis
I'm not half the man
I used to be
But half the one I could have been
That leaves a third, Jarvis
By my calculations

Jarvis says you got to have love
I guess I am in
The you they're speaking of
The woman of the aisle
Stacking books in order of mention
All precarious like
Memento mori lamp and incense train
Am I one more for the library
In her big librarian eyes?

Sunshine, shadowlines
A little nook in your loft
Our ink and paper fingers

I'm getting old, Jarvis
I'm not half the man
I used to be
But half the one I could have been
That leaves a third, Jarvis
By my calculations

~ Brendan Bonsack

More than My Heart

I remember the first time
That I bought you home
I was so afraid

You were lying in a tiny chair
I got from the Trading Post
A neighbour brought some diapers and a cake

And sometimes it seemed you were not moving
I spent less time sleeping than awake
Searching for a patter that was soothing
Some nights were more than my heart could take

I remember the first time
That you came home
With a bruise across your eye

Your story was so full of flaws
The first time that you shut your door
A neighbour left a sandwich bag of ice

And I tell you then I contemplated moving
Somewhere far, for you to start again
I got to know the smallest strains and changes in your breathing
Some nights were more than my heart could take

I remember the first time
That you came home
With a smile across your face

I'd never seen your hand
Inside another's
It was your left, below the scars
You brought flowers for the neighbours

And sometimes it seems we are not moving
I can shut my eyes and you're just a babe again
You phone me with a patter that is soothing
But some nights are more than my heart can take

~ Brendan Bonsack

Free Sandwiches

A bearded academic
Retired, honorary
Asked me what I did
At his university

I said I’d
Never heard of
That university
Does it have nice trees?

How is the light
Behind the leaves?

He kinda
Lost interest
In talking to me
Found somebody else
In their third degree

And I stood
By the fire
Escape with a gardener
Would I like to see their zine

Of monsters from inner space
A kind of ball point dystopia?

We filled our
Coat pockets
Little cups of champagne

I posed for
Rough sketches
On the lawns
Moist with rain

That Barry
In the statue
He was a bastard
Back in the day

Still standing
With pigeon
Crust tears
Down his face

I can't believe
All these sandwiches are free!

In the garden of
Earthly lights
Clinging softly
To the leaves

~ Brendan Bonsack