AC Benus - Stories

A receptacle for my attempts at translating other poets’ work.

written for Juan Ramírez de Lucas

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Medieval Japan. A master and servant get stranded on a lonely road. Across the moor, a haunting songs leads them to a humble shack at dusk.

Read and find out if dreams are nightmares we really can control or not...

1845. In the spring Redburn leaves Peru for New York on a warship. He has nothing, and feels like a failure. Worst of all is the loss he leaves behind him in the Pacific – his husband is dead, and Toby is lost and presumably long buried. What awaits him in the fall when he arrives back 'home,' to a place he has not been for four years? There he must consider what his brother wants for him, against how Redburn might honor the noblest sacrifices of the men who love him have made.

1843. In a Polynesian paradise, something haunts Redburn. His dreams blend with the waking world, and he is driven to find himself while he seeks the lost love of his life.

1843. No lost soul is born into the world, but the world makes it so. Redburn must find Toby, nothing else matters, and on three ships of contrasts - well-governed, and hopeless - he thinks of only getting to land and looking for the man he loves.

Pieces combining sections of prose and poetry

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The South Pacific, 1842. These are powder-keg times, and in the midst of French Imperial gun boat diplomacy, Redburn has had enough of the sea. He draws a reluctant Toby into an adventure, and in the process loses something more valuable to him than his own life.

It is the summer of 1839. A 19-year-old boy sets out to be a man. He chooses the sea, or it chooses him, because it is a place where men who love as he does can escape society's pronouncements upon them. The boy unknowingly begins a classic hero's journey of self-discovery – travels 'there,' discovers his task is a deeply personal one, then returns 'home' to find home is not where he wants to be anymore.