Yours, and yours alone

You know what's funny?
There's this strange sensation I've only tasted a few lucky moments of my life and no matter what I do I can't seem to get enough of it.
It sounds a little weird, especially as it rolls so smoothly, so effortlessly off of my tongue, but it's the small moment I get when we hug goodbye and as I'm shorter than most people, and you taller than many, I turn my head (so as not to bury my nose into your sternum) and you pull me tightly in, encasing every ounce of me, and as I turn, my tiny ear buries itself in the endless nook of your sturdy chest--the place between your broad shoulder-blades, leading precisely where your heart is--and I listen.
I do more than that.
I push my ear softly and feel your heart beating, loudly, so loudly, and I can't help wondering how no one else has the satisfaction of hearing it, of falling passionately wild over the quintessential beauty that rhythm of organ brings me.
I can feel it pulsing through my ear, rushing through the canals of my blood straight to my own racing heartbeat--creating wild ideas about us, making me as alive as a falling star about to meet a supernova and then, just as swiftly as a tear is wiped away, it's gone.
And I wait for the next time we say goodbye, only for your strange rhythm to allay my senses, to awaken me once more and remind me why saying goodbye can be so beautiful.
And I'll have you know, if I were a little more brave, I'd whisper to you the truth about your heartbeat. I would gather myself close to your ear, breathe in the ravishing smell that has become you, and I'd tell you it's the most beautiful I've ever had the accidental pleasure to feel inside me.
I would say, quietly close to you, my heart racing as I draw nearer, "If I could have but one heart, and I've heard thousands of heartbeats in my small lifetime, to listen to all my life--it would be yours, and yours alone."

-k.p.b.
January 17, 2015
Sunday 10:01PM
"Pavane pour une infante défunte" by: Maurice Ravel
(it almost perfectly encapsulates the sensation of hearing a beautiful heartbeat)

My friend Caitlyn

Vincent

[11 March, 1883]

In my view I am often immensely rich, not in money,
but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich
because I have found my metier, something I can
devote myself to heart and soul and that gives
inspiration and meaning to my life.

My moods vary, of course, but nevertheless I have on average acquired a certain serenity.
I have a strong belief in art,
a certain faith that it is a powerful current that
carries a man to a haven, although he himself has to put
in an effort too. I think in any case that it is such a
blessing when a man has found his metier, that I don't
count myself among the unfortunates.

I mean that even if I were in some considerable
difficulties, and if there were dark days in my life, I
would not wish to be taken for one of the unfortunates,
nor would it be right.

-v.v.g

together

we sat together listening to "clair de lune" by Claude Debussy
just us too
nestled in a beautiful moment
and it panged inside me
the realization as she said, "i love this song"
that no matter how much I cared for this song too
nothing would stir me into ardent care as much as her--
nothing on this earth and beyond compared to the great veracity of loving my dear sister
"so do i." i replied softly, "but it makes me sad."
she "humphed"
"it's a good sad." i finished, "the kind of sad you want to have tea with."
yet little did she know that a portion of my sadness,
through no fault of her or my own
was because her heart was beating
so close to mine
and someday wouldn't.

-kiersten p. benson

Skate Blades on Ice

Skate blades on ice,
a night full of snowflakes.
We're lost for a moment in
the piles of white winter,
in the flurry of movement from the vast
sky above us.

I feel small.
It's a good small.

Through the midnight river
and through the
sea of cars we make our
way through the coldness and
we find our way
to a small,
near abandoned rink.

It feels like
the brim
of a steaming mug.
The folds of its
arms
circling themselves around
its few
appreciators--
making me feel
somehow
home.

Homes can be found and made and broken from
almost anything, or anyone.
(Like nests or cuckoo clocks)
A pocket full of stars, a fraying red sweater, a tall
boy, a chipping coffee mug, a dog.
Home is anywhere you nestle into.

Like lost birds
in the wake
of winter
swimming against
the pushing nothing.

We always fight
for home.

Skate blades on ice
softly
puncture
the sweetly slick icicles
and scatter numbers
like molecules
across
an almost empty
ice rink.

I ask him,
the tall boy,
when did he ever
learn to
skate
so
beautifully?
He answers through a figure eight
that resembles a
curvy question
mark.

Oh how the cold night
slaps foolish thoughts
into
an almost
lovers heart
like it
slaps
red roses on
innocent
cheeks.

If I ached to reach
for a hand that did not belong to
me
entirely
I would let you know.

So believe me
when I whisper in your ear--
and I hardly ever whisper
for anybody--
I dreamed near
a thousand dreams upon that snow littered
skating rink
and
I watched as my fragile
glass fingers clenched themselves
into lonely fists
until they felt
better
opened to the
snowflakes
falling heavier than
any
snow fall I had ever before felt
for such a young
and red, red heart.

I'll tell you now so you don't
get the wrong idea:
I didn't let my
pale
glove-less
fingers wrap themselves around
any others.
Rather, I quietly
and peacefully marveled at the
endless ways a person can fall
over
and over
less gracefully
and much less captivating than
a snowfall.

One small
moment
of standing there
praying
not to fall,
not to be cradled by an ice bed,
but that's carefully
eroded by the
wanting
of another's intentions
and slowly
you fall over,
like a snowfall--for once--
and collide
with a tall boy
who could care less
about the ice
and more about you.

Or so you dream.

Skate blades on ice,
a pink sweater
and blood red lips.
You're hair clings
to the piling snow
and drips
like the salty
tears
warm against
your red cheeks,
your slippery ice blades,
against
him,
against
the snowfall.

Against everything.

-k.p.b.

{written for: December 30th, 2015, Wednesday, 6:00PM-12:00PM, Park City, Bridger Wilcox, Josh Gubler, Rachel and Kiersten Benson}

Plugs

Wednesday 
December 2, 2015
9:22PM

Sometimes, I feel as though the plugs and wires and buttons of technology are like veins and tubes connecting to my heart.
They pop and push inside my arteries as if they belong there, as if it is their home and not mine.
Without them I will die.
My lungs dance up and down for them, but my heart doesn't seem to like them. Deep down it knows they are not my friends.
They don't keep me alive.
Not really.
They eat me.
Bite by bite, shovel by shovel their stomachs are never quite satisfied.

I could drown in the monstrous shadows of my bedtime room and they wouldn't blink one tear for my loss.

Not one.

Are you following?

-k.p.b

Darkness

Do you ever feel your heart expanding so vastly you almost can't breathe--
like the world around you is no longer a world but an exquisite cage, full of dreams and life and love, closing in on you breath by breath?
Slowly the cage gets smaller but with each retraction you are somehow bigger and more open than ever before.
The cage becomes you and somehow you aren't dull and empty but alive.

Claude Monet once whispered in the darkness of his lover's ear--or perhaps the sky's--"I paint like a bird sings, in every harmony."
What could he mean?
Who was he speaking to?
To whom or what did those words erupt from?
Was it in a thought or a piercing moment first?
In the lover's ear alone could we ever find the answer.

I am in love.
I am erratically and irresistibly pulled by the stroke of love, the compelling fluid movement of Monet's brush itself. It swims around me as if to drown me in its gorgeousness and momentary existence.
I am a happy, but hopeless victim.

Why is that?
I once thought I figured it out.

James Dean.
His name has been seemingly in the air this week. There he is with rebellion ablaze in his blue, blue eyes. And I can see him now rolling them like the tongue of waves rolling off the ocean's breath, with tumult and anger and passion wrapped up in each other.
It's aggravating what one pair of electric blue eyes can flood the chambers of your heart with.
Aggravating.

They stare at me as if I ignored them half my life and the other half I nurtured them tenderly and purposefully, as if they know me all too well. As if they see into the dark unabashed corners of myself not one human has or ever deserves to see in their lifetime. As if they know every piece of me.
Am I crazy to think such thoughts when I am just a small girl with hair far too big for her body and two wicked eyes that see too much in too little?
Are my words nothing more than poetic dreams on my pillow, whispered in the only way my voice can whisper--sadly?
Sometimes, when my thinking dances wildly in the flicker of my nightlight, I let it swim around me as I stand waist-deep in thought, wondering what the sweet and innocent sensation of holding your hand, loving you entirely, would feel like.

Could I rather be peaceful like the Setting Sun on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect, and barter my time for a slipping coin of glittering gold? Could I rather let my rosy cheeks dash into pearly white ridges, tranquil and robust like Ice Floes? Could I rather be the throbbing heartache of the Water Lilies enveloped in rippling pools of passion and poetry? For once could it be me that catches the thirsty, racing heart beat and not the other way around?

For once could someone or something break their heart over and over again because they glimpsed me? Because they realize destruction is a form of creation--and a heart breaking is also a heart being born?
Am I nothing more than a shadow killed by the daylight of expectations and false ideas? Does this stark world see my red lips as blood dripping from the martyrs of poetry and true art and love? Or does this pale world see me as the rose petal falling from the Autumn bloom, alluring for one moment but gone and stepped on when the season is over?
Am I destined for nothing more than moths clinging to a flame of enchantment in the light, but bored the moment the candle flickers out? Is there not beauty in the darkness also?

I guess I am alone--
waiting in the darkness,
not for a light to come and fix it,
but for the one who finds the darkness as beautiful and wild and perfect as I do.
Perhaps someday someone will find me, writing on the pages of the night sky about the heart that made mine first skip a beat.
Perhaps he'll clasp my hand in his cold ones and tip the ink of starlight into my heart and then,
oh then, we'll be in darkness, perfectly lonely together.
Perhaps one day I'll be braver than the sad whispers of my aching midnight poetry.

Someday James Dean's eyes won't provoke me so and someday I will miss the way they teased me into insanity of heartache.

Someday I will be equal with the passion and hurt and sorrow of the world--
and we shall both suffer together,
in the dark.

-k.p.b.
Tuesday
"Claude Monet"

Snow Song

Have you ever had the good pleasure of hearing Schubert's D 957, No. 4 Standchen,"Swan Song"? I couldn't think of one single thing, sound, or taste that could compare to it--especially as the snow falls heavily, but delicately beside me. There they are like falling angels, drifting in a world stark by comparison of its purity. And here I sit wrapped up in euphoric melodies of great winged beasts and swelling hearts of misfortune and somehow all the fortune in the world seems to follow me deeper into my own heart as the perfectly elegant melody plays on.
First it's sad.
The small umbrella like creature isn't fully awake yet, its wings are only forming it's idea of flight. They're like broken branches still clinging to the crisp air of winter, not ready for the blush of spring to warm them and rub them into consciousness. How its tiny heart beats rapidly with anticipation of the world it has yet to know.
A crunch and crack. Next the wings stretch. They bend in a misshapen fashion until the delicate bones almost snap, pushing themselves against their fragile cabin, at last freeing himself from his ivory prison and home in one flicker of pressure.
How the golden flower awakes his senses and drowns his broken wings in diurnal goodness.
For a while he merely sits there taking in the vastness of color and smell and concoction of chill and warmth around him.
His little feet can't take him far, but he seems to have felt the course of the whole earth with each footstep he takes.
Yet in an instant, an idea pulses through him.
His wings begin to itch with intoxicating yearning. The desire to forsake his feet and stretch toward a bright domain he's never tasted devours all other senses. He must taste the sky even if he can't ever explain why.
Slowly he lowers himself from his solitude and in a rush of pure insanity he leaps from his broken house and lets the wind taste his feathers, the clouds kiss his muscles, feet, eyes and lastly the sky itself--how it looks at him as if he were only the first creature to ever experience flight. He lets the world of colors and expanse and freedom delight his spirit. His wings beat with the wind in a beautifully chaotic dance until the scintillating sky of night welcomes the moon and drenches his greyish wings in night light.
He sleeps for a moment in the starlight he has never before seen.
For many days this is the life he knows.
But night is not always so constant.
One fresh night of Summer, as his purring heart slowly sinks and rises to the usual rhythm of darkness, another being of night has a heart that is pounding and swiftly drawing closer. It yearns for his in a manner far more powerful than of his yearning of flight many moons ago.
The beast cloaked in darkness draws close to him.
He doesn't wake just yet.
The beast stares for a moment. It has seen this slumberous creature many times before, but never had it been so close.
Another heart race and then it lessens.
Softly and with the sfumato of moonlight just barely peaking around her, the creature bends down and gently pushes her lips against his own dreaming lips, possibly tasting his very dreams as she does it. It's so gentle he almost doesn't wake, but then a spoonful of moonlight shimmers on her body and dances against his eyelids in a rapture of waking him.
His eyes flutter open to her rapid heartbeat, but he doesn't move.
How could he?
They merely look into each other's eyes for a long moment. The night grew unusually quiet.
Sorrow comes at first, for the awoken beast, for surely he has never seen a creature so beautiful, so pure and white as fresh fallen snow. But his heart breaks at the thought the sky might've heard his aching thoughts. Perhaps he has betrayed the sky. He doesn't know. But suddenly, somethings shifts. The white angel moves away and with a tear sledding down the pillow of her white cheek she's gone.
Autumn follows where she wanders and leaves the sleeping beast in elegiac chill and sorrow.
A few tides of thought wash upon him, as the world he once knew is spun in gold and musk once more, "Will she ever come back? Does she know that Winter is coming? And could it be the sky has forgiven me yet?"
And lastly, "Was it all nothing more than a sad dream of toil and pleasurable pain?"
A flake or two begin to fall as these thoughts race through him night after night. He can't sleep without those haunting eyes of Summer starlight keeping him company.
On the first day of real snow, everything changes. Through the flurry of ivory music a dancer falls through it, as if making a waltz of the Winter around her.
The starlit girl.
She's here, inside the sky and dancing alone with the Winter wind and the sky's falling angels.
For one moment, and just one only, he stops and watches the way the snowflakes tangle in her pure white wings--and then he joins the dance.
It is the waltz his heart had always been searching the skies for.
And last, happiness.
-k.p.b.
Monday 10:23AM
The first breathless fall of gentle snow.

Euphoria

I am breathless by the eyes of the stars. They stare at me as hungrily as I stare at them; as if I am a fox with big brown eyes of curiosity and mysterious innocence, and they--they are little birds cooing at the toil and wreckage of the earth. With unorthodox voices that haunt you in your sleep, they sing to you a melody that only your deep and cachet soul can hear. It's a sound of spirit and pure submersion.
The stars are lingering poets in a graveyard of Romanticism and abandoned abbeys where the winter sun rises slowly, palely, personally. It always seems they are for your soul, and yours alone. I am exasperated with teasing provocation when they see me--like an almost lover lingering near my lips but never quite pushing them against my own. They tickle my insanity in a sweet and sadistic way. Yes, the stars--against common belief--can be cruel and devouring creatures.
They can cut you open with an double-edged fork and shovel portions of your heart into their stomachs.
They don't need a reason to stop, either.
But they are kind. Truly the stars are kind crackles of light illuminating our dark world. Like lanterns they path the way into our souls without a thought of obligation weighing in their arms--it's what they are made to do, I guess.
Tonight my breath was caught between their warm arms and spun into a "quintessence" of rapturous awe. I felt my chest heave and ho, fall and rise, jump and sleep, jump and sleep all over again until I felt with a real palpable yearning to kiss somebody. Did I wish to kiss the stars? A boy? The cold crisp night air slapping rose petals on my cheeks? Does it truly matter who or what my lips yearned for when the impulse of loving life and breathing overcame my senses? (Overcame myself even?)
You see sometimes I yearn to be alone. I yearn for it so fiercely I forget what great fear and loneliness most people find in it. So tonight, a boy drove steadily through a thin road drenched in nightlight, as I ached to reach for his hand and hold it tightly, as the small rattling car was filled with the sound of unfinished stories and people who couldn't compliment each other more perfectly. First a girl with thick curling rays of sunlight and ridged cheeks to match her merry spirit. Second a boy who lost his lion's mane and found true friends instead. Third a boy with exquisite blue eyes that sparkle like dripping water on a sunny day and strong hands as cold and meticulous as branching ice crystals. Last a girl with tangling hair and curious fox-like tendencies. She is the misfit. The first is the light source. The second the never-failing anchor. And the last a flame.
There we were late into the small abandoned world around us, traveling through soundtracks and cutting through the dead, silent autumn night to venture around the forsaken bones of a cement factory. The sky was partly-cloudy but speckled with bright stars and all I felt my pounding heart say to me was, "Chase those blasted stars"!
 I climbed and climbed, often getting lost from the group, but finding my own strength and bravery with each stolen step toward the pinholes of heaven. I wasn't afraid--I had no fear for the strange words and pictures left by humans miles and miles away probably sleeping or doing something I could only wonder about. I wasn't afraid of the shadows creeping around me, twisting my hair with the quiet wind and collapsing into piles of crumbled stone. I didn't even fear the lingering idea that followed me up the broken building and slept beside me as I stretched out on top of a narrow pillar curved perfectly for a human body--"Do you really love that boy you talk about in your sleep? Or do you tell yourself you must?"
I don't know stalking beast of quiet devouring.
But I know, as surely as I did when I asked each of my friends if it truly is possibly for someone to love you as much as you love them, that love exists. I know that pounding hearts, stolen breaths, and endless nights of tears and poets and exhaustion of emotion are what we live for--we live for love or we do not live a life at all.
I sat up at the top of the world (or perhaps only an abandoned cement factory littered with thoughts and words and four wandering people) for who knows how long before my friends followed me and broke the silence I had grown to love more than fear.
We talked of life.
We silently pretended we had a clue.
The sun-ray asked each of us, "What's one thing you want to do before you die?" We all stayed silent until one admitted it was love they wanted, and then we laughed for truly that was the answer we all wanted to say but somehow lacked the courage to. I responded, "I want to feel love as pure and raw as Victor Hugo." I want a love that I know will love me back.
So we stared at the stars and acted like we had a clue and that we, so small and frail, were running the show. But the more I look up at the stars, the more I sit alone and fall madly in love with the quiet, the more I realize I never was running the show--and I never will.
What an exquisite thought that is.
-k.p.b.
November 5, 2015
2:00AM (When poet's are alive and awake)

Potpourri

Nov. 3, 2015 11:15PM, [k.p.b.]:
Professor [c.d.],

As I was taking the exam 2 today, I was spending a lot of time on my concluding essays and I wanted to be very thorough, but as I was finished and heading for my class I realized I had completely forgot about the simple and easy bonus question--our favorite piece of artwork from this semester! It's so silly and I feel slightly stupid asking you this, but could I submit it to you now in this e-mail? I know it's only a bonus question, but one point may be that extra little umph needed to do my absolute best and as I worked hard on my exam I feel it would only feel complete if I told you that my favorite work we studied this time was: (First) Bernini, "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" -- for the raw passion and poetic perfection. It's as if Bernini has fingers of paint and hands of fluid creation. I absolutely fall weak in the knees at his masterpieces. I only wish I could see them for myself, I'm not sure my body could handle it, but I know my soul would soar at such an exquisite sight! St. Teresa's words pierce my soul, much like the "fiery dart of love" that pierces her own. It's incredible. 

(Second) David, "Death of Marat"-- for the uncensored outrage and seemingly gentle and soft exquisiteness, the pure elegiac sfumato just drives me insane, but in the best sense. I just want to understand the fury behind such a painting, the sorrow David must've felt with each stroke he created of the death of his friend (even if it was a vain and asked for death). I truly could never understand such an emotional potpourri of anger, sorrow and hope for the figure of his friendship.

 I truly love both of those pieces, so wildly. 

Anyway, I hope this is okay for me to ask and even if I don't get the bonus point I still want you to know I truly enjoy every second of class and I'm finding a new passion for history and art as I've never had before and I want to thank you for giving that gift to me. It is a beautiful gift. 

Thanks again Professor [c.d.]! I hope you have a wonderful night. 

Today 10:19AM, [P.c.d.]:

Hello [k.p.], 

First off, may I just say that your beautifully written email, and your explanation of your appreciation for Bernini's and David's work brought a tear to my eye!  I completely agree with you -- Bernini's sculpture is absolutely jaw-dropping, and as for David, he is in my personal pantheon of artists :)  

I would be delighted to give you the bonus point for your answer -- in fact, I just pulled your exam to the top of the stack to grade and wow, absolutely outstanding work!  Excellently written, articulated, and supported answers -- your final essay is one of the best comparisons of West and David I have read in a long time.  You should be very pleased with your work -- your newfound passion for art history definitely shined through (in a chiaroscuro kind of way) ;) 

And thank you, thank you so much for your kind words -- you have made my day!!  

Have a delightful morning -- see you in class in a few hours,
[C.d.] 

Post script: This, as I cannot explain in words alone, has made me happier than anything I've been blessed to experience this week. I contemplated e-mailing my Professor at all as it honestly seemed like such a trivial matter, but as my mother is almost always right I decided to listen to her advice and how I wish you could only see the smile that crackles across my face right now, ridging my cheeks and spreading elation throughout my body like hot cider from following her advice! I opened that e-mail with the hopes that it was positive (I meant it when I told her I could care less about the bonus point), I just wanted her to know that what I said was from my heart and not my head for some bonus point. I wanted her to genuinely know that what I talked about meant something, something monumental inside me that hardly I could understand. And there it was--she understood and honestly flattered me in the greatest way I've ever been flattered. I'm honored by her compliment and only hope I can be as happy as I am now someday along the road when I look back and remember this. It's strange. This unusual joy feels more like a beginning than anything else. I await this class every time I come to school, but there's an electric feeling coursing through my body, like something is beginning and even though the horizon is all I see right now, I await the day I finally understand what all this means. I do not fear ambiguity, nor do I think it bad. I know it to be my friend and only walk beside it with an open mind and flaming curiosity I simply delight myself at having. 

Thank you Professor, for what ever beginning you have ignited. I shall be thankful always for your spark--of intellect, curiosity and above all, beginning.  -k.p.b. (smiling to myself in a yellow coat and a happy disposition.)
And by the way, these are the pieces of perfection I referenced above, in case you're wondering. 

Bernini, "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" (1645-1652)

David, "Death of Marat" (1793)