Benbo is a mythical character. He is concerned with words and how they alter the reality of where and what he is.
“Are you there, my friend? Are you around the place, sitting?”
Benbo growls his reply
He is all caustic, all off his face.
Hungry and willing.
A wasted guy, a desperate cause.
Catch him. Keep him. Despite his obvious flaws.
“Are you there? Is there a signal? Do you love me?
Is there a signal?”
The words are the same,
They remain so, despite the distance.
Thousands of kilometres yet no names?
1
The singular, his name for her, his name for him, his name by them.
His name by her.
“Do you love me? Like I love you? Is there a signal?”
A goalkeeper by trade, lower leagues, a division above the workers.
Remember them? Is there a signal?
2
Benbo growls, all caustic and fit for grace.
Off his face, barred away, like a summer sinner nun bricked up.
Attached like a stamp to his envelope of hope, the signal.
The phone is bleeding internally.
His friend was going to play cards.
3
But the HTTP 404’d and now she’s got nothing left to do.
“Oh, this is as dull as Benbo in his self-sorrow
“I’ll deal with it all tomorrow.”
She looks at the QWERTY and thinks of Benbo’s predictability.
Needy and urgent, like a poem.
4
Now, strapped to the wheel, B…Benbo shakes his head.
He’s won!
Love’s stinking pathos is forgotten.
Like this signal in flight.
But real Benbo floats inside, the calculus of his cancer sticks deep,
Red and white inside his pocket as the cash stacks and attacks.
Revolting revelator.
I love you. Take a leap.
5
Fuzzy fuck-fuck music resolves his stagger home.
He leans, with his winnings, against a lit lampost.
“This is mine!” he screams, lost.
“This is ours!, a ghost whispers.
“I’ll get to it tomorrow, maybe, with breakfast inside.”
6
She’s going to be at his side,
As the catheters slide.
The cardboard, their beds on the beach,
Will never be retrieved.
7
“It’s mine. Where’s the signal?
“This remote, remote control switching galorious twitching.
“I’ll deal with it tomorrow”
She brushes her teeth and chooses a book,
Descending the stairs, she saves Benbo with a look
At the framed picture
Which, like the signal, she kept in the box.
