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    AC Benus
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

You Were There, and other poems - 3. Excuse

.

Poem No. 4

 

Tanka:

 

Moves the soft spring air

Over me like the promise

Of all summer’s fruit;

But still, and thick in me are

These hard peoples’ needle-stares.

 

 

Poem No. 5

 

If in poetry there is excuse –

If excuse finds some excess –

Then the suspension of reality

Is its innate blessing and benefit.

 

 

Poem No. 6

 

Tanka:

 

The done and undone

are always lost in their stares;

“Ah, a foreigner,”

their eyes gawk, and I’m

only that, done and undone.

 

 

Poem No. 7

 

Tanka:

 

Through another’s book –

In the slow time before class –

I chance read his notes

While I see yet another

Skim lines I wrote before him.

 

 

 

 

_

Copyright © 2024 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
  • Love 2
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Wow, this reaches me on so many levels.  The last two spoke of how some used to cheat -- sometimes in class off of me, sometimes others.  We could not always detect this.

The stares from others -- sometimes this is involuntary, but we can control HOW long we stare.  Some not only stare, but gawk.  Some stare are curiosity; some are hostile or judgmental. 

Wonderful stanzas.

  • Love 2
On 5/17/2024 at 9:16 AM, ReaderPaul said:

Wow, this reaches me on so many levels.  The last two spoke of how some used to cheat -- sometimes in class off of me, sometimes others.  We could not always detect this.

The stares from others -- sometimes this is involuntary, but we can control HOW long we stare.  Some not only stare, but gawk.  Some stare are curiosity; some are hostile or judgmental. 

Wonderful stanzas.

Thanks, ReaderPaul. I can't quite remember the circumstances of No. 7, but it could be from when I worked at Berlitz in Japan. The teacher's room had a small lending library where we lent books to one another for a while. I may have been reading marginalia of another teacher at the same time I glimpsed him looking at scribbles in a book I dropped off there.

Total tangent, but Machida had a fantastic, department-store sized used bookshop. Floor four was entirely foreign language books, and I picked up many interesting things there, like a surprisingly slender (but totally fantastic!) paperback called "The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays." All 37 are discussed, with the printed material the Bard used cited and quoted. Needless to say, it's very informative 

  • Love 2
8 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Thanks, ReaderPaul. I can't quite remember the circumstances of No. 7, but it could be from when I worked at Berlitz in Japan. The teacher's room had a small lending library where we lent books to one another for a while. I may have been reading marginalia of another teacher at the same time I glimpsed him looking at scribbles in a book I dropped off there.

Total tangent, but Machida had a fantastic, department-store sized used bookshop. Floor four was entirely foreign language books, and I picked up many interesting things there, like a surprisingly slender (but totally fantastic!) paperback called "The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays." All 37 are discussed, with the printed material the Bard used cited and quoted. Needless to say, it's very informative 

Wow, a department sized bookstore!  I went once to a four-story used bookshop (many years ago) in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri.  Unfortunately, it went out of business a couple years later, as the internet made victims of more and more bookstores.

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