Ben Adams- Two Poems

the truest thing

one way to imagine it
is that hemingway, at the end
looked back not with despair
or regret

but only with the knowledge
– real and heavy
and beautiful, in its way –
that those few short paris years

had been the truest thing
he would ever know
had given him the truest things
he would ever write.

one way to imagine it
is that hemingway, at the end
was sitting once more
on the boulevard st. michel,

a young man with longish hair,
sipping hot coffee
because it was morning,
and carefully finishing one more story:

that was not the truest thing
he would ever write.
but would have
to do.

the final page
an echoing
blast, and then
blackness.



tide-swirl

the gaps between us grow
as the sun fails
over snaggletoothed pylons

the gaps between us grow but
we swim there
in that place for an ever
longer
moment

and the salt weathered jetty wreck
beckons
like a fading mistress into night.

the examined life falters
at the last,
when its light bleeds mute and gray
between the moon
and shoreline

and the stars are uncut stones

and there is love stopped
and buried somewhere
like a dropped pocket watch
in mud-flat sand.



Ben Adams is a writer and political ranter currently studying for his PhD on the poetry of Charles Bukowski. He comes from Adelaide in South Australia, which Salman Rushdie once called a sleepy conservative town (of .. million) and “ideal setting for a Stephen King novel, or horror film.” Ben takes this as a compliment, much preferring King’s work to that of Mr Rushdie. Ben has also worked as state ambassador for Express Media’s National Young Writers’ Month, a Buzzcuts arts reviewer and coordinator, and had several poems appear in the online small press. He proudly served among those last few video store clerks to hold their ground against the coming of Netflix.