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Sunday, November 01, 2020

For My Son Andreas, 3/22/01 - 10/15/20

I once had a beautiful baby boy
I’d hear duty’s call through his cries that pierced through my soul
And climbing out of the dark pool of exhaustion every time, I’d go
To offer a breast, a relieving back pat, a soothing song
He slept in a bassinet next to my bed
And I’d marvel at him, as I touched his head
And watched him breathe

In time, I had a toddler
Who lurched like a sailor across, to him, miles of floors
Whose chubby, sweet cheeks I absolutely adored
Delighted when he discovered his teeth were weapons
Casually employing them in confident advantage against perceived threats
Wide-eyed, but undaunted, at the resulting shouts and chastisements
In keeping with his lack of fear
At 1 ½ he jumped into a pond to swim with startled ducks
Laughing joyfully, as I jumped headlong into the muck
To fish him out as I tried to recover from a near heart attack
When that toddler learned to run
He got into everything
Escaping from me in a rapid, unsteady gait
Laughing at the chaos he’d create
As I’d throw up my hands in defeat

Time passed, and I had a precocious pre-schooler
Mesmerized by Caillou, Spongebob, and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends
As well as Clifford the Big Red Dog, and The Backyardigans
Reading and writing by 3 and 4
Tormenting Aravis the cat
Running around our complex with me shooting each other with nerf dart guns
Bubble blowing and writing on sidewalks with chalk in the sun
Throwing temper tantrums when he missed a goal in youth soccer league
Or when his master tried to teach him discipline in Taekwondo
He gleefully drove a red Power Wheels jeep
And in his own bed, rarely would sleep
Keeping his exhausted mother on her toes

In a blink of an eye, kindergarten was upon us
Faster the time seemed to go
He came to me wanting to learn to play the piano
And recitals became the norm
His intellect, becoming ever sharper, inclined him to Chess
And winning was the only option, he would not accept less
As he honed his strategic and reasoning skills
I remember playing the “I Love You More Than” game
Each of us using grandiose examples to convey the magnitude of our affection
Until finally, after I explained that love cannot be measured
He crafted a trap, in that mischievous tone I treasured
Asking “Do you love me more than God mommy?”
And when I replied that you cannot love anyone or anything more than God
He got me by asking “If love can’t be measured, how do you know?”
Leaving his bemused mother speechless, no good answer to follow
As we both laughed at his cleverness
How he delighted in increasing his smarts
Delighted in outmaneuvering and learning the art
Of keeping his parents guessing

Elementary years careened by at breakneck speed
Learning archery, magic, and how to ride a bike
Books he loved, forts he helped build, and girls he liked
Fishing at Lake Crabtree, watching Ben10
Collecting Bakugan, reading Percy Jackson, swimming at the Y
Taking leisurely walks and making jokes about people who’d walk by
We would play Super Mario on Nintendo Wii
Screaming like maniacs when we defeated Bowser
He would walk our dogs and bring me back flowers
Waking me abruptly with his night terrors
He would crawl between my sheets
Eventually falling asleep in my arms
And I promised myself I’d always keep him from harm
Although I knew it wasn’t really possible

By middle school, he was taller than me
Into dragons, a girl named Maikaya, basketball, computers and rap
He liked to act grown, but still some days would come lay in my lap
And allow me to pretend he was still just my sweet baby
No more piano, soccer, or fishing, it became about friends, computer hacking and basketball camp
Texting, IMing, coding, up downs, free throws,and dealing with muscle cramps
He no longer viewed me as the authority
Rambunctious, hard-headed and full of swag
I ended up sending him to live with his dad
So his father could keep him on the right track

Before I knew it, he was a teen
Handsome, Intelligent, outspoken, funny and vain
After any length of time together, he would drive me insane
But I still loved spending time with him despite it all
Whizzing through the streets of New York on bikes, or walking the streets of San Francisco
Whitewater rafting in the mountains or driving to the beach in Wilmington, we had fun no matter where we’d go
Even if the fun times didn’t always last
He was proud to show me his Lexus, his very first car
And confessed to me he felt he was destined to be a star
When we would have one of our heart to heart talks
I was there with him when he signed his first lease
I was there when he had run ins with the police
Praying to God to help him through
But I knew in my heart we'd only have him for a short time on loan
I knew that at some point, God would take my wild boy, leaving us alone
To reflect on what was and what could have been

I am grateful for the blessing, that was my precious boy
I am grateful for all the many heart aches, and for all the little joys
That came along with being his mom
He helped shape me into the the person that I have become
He helped to make me stronger, so I never will succumb
To the sadness derived from the loss of his physical presence
I will always miss him, till the day that I, too, die
But this is only “See you later” this is not a true “Goodbye”
Because I know in my heart we will be together again

May God Bess and Keep You DD © All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Friday, October 04, 2019

How Much Do I Love Him?

How much do I love him?
Enough not to call it love
A simple four-letter word won't do
More than affection
Superseding lust
Much more than the word "adore" can even begin to capture
I'd wrestle down the sun midway between the horizon
To daily give him light
Mankind is conscious of only 7 wordly wonders
My love for him awakening the 8th
Man's monuments pale in comparison
To the monumental joy my heart creates from loving him
I'd suffer, sorrow and sacrifice
Anything, everything
So that he might never again feel pain
Without him, nothing is beautiful
The sun, a mere star
Music, nothing but drawn out words over noise
Roses, nothing but colorful weeds
How much do I love him?
My everything I'd do anything for
The fire by which my passion burns
Definition of my soul's beauty
There aren't words to describe the emotion I feel in his presence
The notion of him alone brings unparalleled happiness
Because with him I know I'm truly blessed
How much do I love him?
Beyond anything he could ever comprehend
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett For JEIA

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Testimony

In my mind I've walked lands of the promised
To pay my humble homage
There aren't enough words, lines, or time
To define how you have made me feel
You didn't JUST see the breasts, hips and waistline
You recognized something divine
You, the deity to my religion
I, the prophet you proclaimed
Along rocky travels
I've fallen short as your holy saint
Everyday I trod, using you as my rod
You're the closest thing I've got to God
So, before you get it misconstrued
Those words "I love you"
Just don't do
Only way I can express it
Is being the most as your representative
While others use effort as righteousness
I will speak of my existence
Telling how you breathed life into it
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett For JEIA

Sunday, October 07, 2018

"Just wait"...my lightly whispered words were lost

On top of heavy, humid gasps of discovery

Nothing could prevent the inevitable

Annihilation of defensive denial

To the truth my mind had refused to accept, but my body

Held to like a prayer

Oh God, you fill and open me so beautifully

Now my love can flow, free

© All Textual Rights Reserved by Kristiana Bennett



For JEIA

Monday, November 13, 2017

Empty handed

If I had known what being in love actually looked like
Then perhaps I would not have fallen in love with a man who was not
I could never have spent years chasing a shadow
Instead of recognizing the man who cast it
So remote, he was never really there at all
I would not have gotten lost in the sweetest of dreams
Only to awaken confused
Diminished
A heart filled with sorrow
And yearning for what I thought I had lost
And never truly found
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Friday, October 20, 2017

Undone

The love I felt for you
Was the welcome glue
That kept my battered heart together
Until your acid indifference
Dissolved the bond
Leaving it undone

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Longing

I smell like missing you
A bouquet
Angel's trumpet
Joined with devil's tongue
Sweet-bitter equilibrium
To tempt the palates
Of unbalanced men
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett
When you look into the mouths of most people
You find a hornets' nest of lies waiting to sting you
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Friday, September 25, 2015

Freedom

While walking the trail near my house yesterday, I observed lovely yellow leaves dancing carelessly through the air and noticed the crunch of dessicated brown leaves beneath my feet. Suddenly, it occurred to me that death is nothing more than the end to our attachment to things...© All Textual Rights Reserved by Kristiana Bennett.                                                                                      

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Why America is No Longer Great

Why is America no longer the greatest country in the world? For me, it boils down to this...Americans want to be entertained. Facts often aren't entertaining, they are disturbing. They make one think, they make one question what they really stand for and what's really right. Sadly, most Americans would rather their thinking be done for them, which lends itself to powerful, corrupt people and networks doing just that. So, we have a nation of ignorant and misinformed people participating in a process that was meant to be a tool to foster and maintain freedom, but is now more of an illusion. Candidates often aren't selected by the people, they are selected by corporations and interest groups and certain people in the parties. Then we get some entertainment, negative entertainment more often than not, then, like the American Idol nation we have become, we vote for who put on the best show, the best act.

I challenge people to look in to their hearts of hearts and really think about how they feel and what they believe regarding the social and political issues of our time. I want them to disregard what their parents, religion, educational institutions, or social groups intimate their stances should be. I want them to reach down deep and discover what their stances REALLY are. Then, I want them to do a bit of research about the parties and candidates they have voted and rooted for and see if those parties and candidates really represent them. But, of course, people won't do that. That would open up a very nasty can of cognitive dissonance for so many of them. It's easier to vote for the same party mom or dad voted for, easier to vote for the party one's business partners and peers vote for, easier to vote for the party that is most closely aligned with the religion one was indoctrinated to embrace...Chains are quite hard to break. And shit doesn't stink when it's masked by a democratic facade. © All Textual Rights Reserved by Kristiana Bennett

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Lamb's Lion (Unfinished)

Sweetness can be sharper than any blade
With unerring accuracy, he always hits his mark
I'm left wounded, defenseless and weak
In a pool of negativity
There's no shield strong enough to deflect an arrow shot from kindness's quiver
No thought left untainted by love smeared upon the tip
No hurt, dissatisfaction, or pettiness substantial enough to build a fortress of indifference with
I'm left exposed
A capricious carnivore
Disenchanted with a broken-hearty diet and the company of like predators
I elected to subdue my primal instincts and surrender myself to a man with the disposition of a lamb, gentle, compassionate, innocent and tame
I changed the game
And followed him to greener pastures
Leaving the jungle littered with the debris of a slew of shredded conquests, and remnants of my own innocence, without a backward glance
I lost myself in the green of growing things
The shifting blues and grays of sky-like eyes
And the brown and beige of a stable and secure space 
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Desire's Playground

It all starts in the mind.
Thoughts like flames turn frigid chains of societal claims imprisoning chemical impulses into raging waves they ride upon
Descending the length and breadth of fleshly terrain
Submerging everything in their wake until all that’s left are islands of feeling…
Bouvet melting
Soft mounds, stone erections, dark, wet caverns and hidden valleys become the playground for dancing digits, thrusting tongues and teasing teeth.
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Monday, March 17, 2014

Karma

The words flew, like bullets, from my mouth and hit their targets, his head and his heart. I observed the impact. Red rivers of anguish flowed from his eyes until they formed an ocean that drowned me.-All Textual Rights Reserved by Kristiana Bennett

3/17/14

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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Odalisque




I am the sun's odalisque
I lie in darkness on my bed
The cool air from the ceiling fan 
Lulling me into a state of ennui
Until he creeps
Like a thief
Through the slatted cage of my blinds
To slowly caress me with his fiery touch
All over my golden skin
Until I'm so hot outside that I melt within 
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Sunday, July 14, 2013

People don't realize that there's a war going on here, in this country. It's a quiet war that involves no guns. The bodies that fall are only the ideals, values, rights and liberties that have died and the blood that spills is American pride. 


The smaller victories, the strike-down of DOMA, for instance, cannot make up for the greater losses we are experiencing as time goes on–the Farm Bill and the redirection of government funds from programs designed to feed urban poor to agribusinesses, the strike down of the Voting Rights Act, Section IV leaving southern states able to gerrymander voting districts and impose all sorts of stringent, and often racially biased, voting laws unchecked by the federal government, the political targeting of Planned Parenthood that leaves many women without the ability to have abortions or access to affordable reproductive care, the rising costs of tuition that make it increasingly difficult for poor and middle-class students to have access to higher education, the fact that corporations have and continue to successfully influence people in Congress to eradicate the checks on corporations and business practices that are imperative for protection of the working class in this country...The list goes on and on. 


Wake up people. Please. I am frankly terrified of what the future holds. People do not think it possible that the great United States of America could ever become a dystopian society, but it can. When the masses are kept poor and uneducated, when government is allowed to become increasingly ubiquitous and corrupt and individual freedoms and rights are systematically stripped away in concert with decreased access to public assistance, it becomes ever more possible and ever more likely. Wake up! 


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Gardens and Mats

Waking from a dream can be painful 
The abrupt transition from cushioned concepts 
To the sharp angles of literal life 
Can create an internal dissonance 
That has life-long detrimental effects 


Like the death of something beautiful 


His cutting, careless words 
Cleaved their way through her tender garden of dreams 
So quickly and cleanly 
It took a moment for her to feel the sting 
His crushing contempt ensured that nothing would be left to grow anew 
She looked around at the carnage 
Headless stalks 
Blooms in pieces 
Edges beginning to curl 
Colors fading 
And felt the tears begin 
Hot, helpless and hurt 


"Why would you want to be a stay-at-home mother? You'll never have anything. All the burden would be on your husband. That ain't fair. Why would you want to teach? You'll never make any money. You are smarter than that. You're just lazy Kris. You need someone to push you and motivate you to live up to your potential," he had said. 


She looked at the ground, struggling for composure 
Trying to breathe past the painful blockage in her throat 
She mustn't let him see her cry, she thought 
She mustn't let him know that he was killing her 


He carried on, oblivious to her pain 
Confidently cloaked in the mantle of experience that came from years she had yet to live 
Confident on the pedestal she had created for him 
He weaved his vision of what her future should look like 
A mat of dried stalks that she could sit upon, live upon 
The scene he painted on it left her cold with its artificial beauty 
Its limited scope left little room for anything but small, careful movements 


Money (just green and white paper) 
Fancy cars (just painted metal) 
A big house (just wood, glass, vinyl and brick) 
Clothes (just fabric) 
Jewelry (just stones) 


She blinked past her tears and in a very small voice told him he was right 
Of course he was 
This tall, unbending, cynical, older, educated man 
That had fallen into her life like a stone 
An act of God 


What was she at 21? 
Still green 
Bendable 
Uncertain 
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett 5/18/13

Monday, April 29, 2013

Divided

For Andreas
My words stood like a fence between us 
I had put up a straight, firm line of pickets, the unyielding truths as I felt them, and he had crossed them with a wooden resistance, the obdurate truths as he saw them, and we nailed them together with the steel of hurt pride 


We gazed at each other through the cracks 
Precious glimpses of vulnerability 
More often, thick burlap flashes of years past 
Our memories, the fabric in which we had clothed our lives, were mantles we labored under 
A comforting warmth 
A suffocating weight 
Clumsy, patchwork veils that chafed 


We tried to break through 
Apologies and promises tossed like bricks 
But they were never strong enough 
We stood on our respective sides 
Bent under our burdens 
Worn from our efforts 
And loved as best as we could 
Through a barrier we had built too well 


© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett 4/29/13

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Atlantis

How far down are we going to let this country go? 
It's been speculated that our demise is the only legacy we are going to leave behind 
As the decline in our wealth and power leads to poverty of spirit 
We are getting beaten down and boxed in to an ever larger margin of error 
Not because we have been outnumbered or outmanned 
But because we walked into a fight empty handed with closed eyes 
Mentally blind 
Too late, we realized that sodomy isn't just penetration from behind 
But the insidious penetration to the core of our consciousness with razor-blade tongues 
That slice the truth into unrecognizable shreds 
And cause our resolve to rush from us like water through a sieve 
With our faith floating along in the current 
Libertarian and Centrist 
Republican and Democrat 
We all end up being violated by those parties we've been indoctrinated to embrace 
As they plunder our finances, futures and freedoms 
And sink us further into the muddied waters of our collective past 
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Saturday, July 28, 2012

These Walls

We are so busy reacting to what life throws at us, that we rarely take the time to discover who we actually are. 
We simply navigate within the Byzantine structures of society, our families and our own psyches. 
Those walls are killing me. 
They close in more and more day by day. 
I just want to be free. 
Whatever that means. 
Free from the awful tyranny of societal norms, the emotional ties of my family and the weight of all of my accumulated guilt and fears 
I want to transcend the illusion of my disconnection from everyone and everything around me 
I want to become lost in love 
Boundless Agape 
Not the limited sphere of Eros 
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Devolution

The death of depth of feeling and thought 
Is gradual at best 
The callous scab of indifference 
Growing progressively harder over time 
Covering ever larger territories of tender, bleeding hearts and craggy brains 
Until they become petrified organs in increasingly flocculent shells 


We congratulate ourselves on how far we've come 
Technologically (Innovative internet, Computerized cars, Sophisticatedly sensible smart phones) 
Academically (More BAs, more PhDs, more program choices) 
Socially (Interracial couples and homosexuals are accepted, ubiquitous Facebook and Twitter, we have a Black president for Chrissake) 
Societally (All those charities/nonprofits and other organizations that strive to make a difference in the lives of the downtrodden, the oppressed) 
Politically (The land of the free (cherished chains of debt we embrace you) and the home of the brave (as pedestrians walk by people being assaulted without stopping and students gun down innocent civilians in theaters and policemen use the power of their badges to assault and harass minorities...oh America, may your beautiful facade forever keep us blind) 


We sit in front of our televisions and computer screens 
Blankly staring at the torrents of information 
That give us the illusion of knowledge 
But instead, increase our confusion 
Feed our delusions 
Drain our desire for revolution 
The dissolution of a series of systems that keep us enslaved 


We die inside daily as we imitate life 
As we try to exhibit the appropriate feelings and responses 
Turning to the more primitive aspects of ourselves for direction, libido, fight and flight 
We become less. 
Less and less and less... 
Human 
© All Textual Rights Reserved By Kristiana Bennett