Poems by Benji Horváth

trainy days

i am not me recently        cities keep glitching
the screen is running by            they call these
mountains
the forest watching us talk        into the night
please help my friend had a seizure
it’s gonna be okay
i’m high now
just got the news
i need a beer
a new death            a new day
please call me on the        wrong number


how can you travel    when you’re not using feet
from Keleti to Gara de Nord
how can you see the world    when you lock your eyes and body
in a moving box
in destination
how can i be you    how can you be a destination
how can you be alive    when you haven’t seen death


meet someone            a body
drink & travel        feeling almost famous
feeling light    swinging heavy
smelling the flood
catching fires        coughing up demons
back on the road again        hidden gardens in your mind
shining lights in hidden cities
same old story        same old wheel of fortune


every country is a woman
offering to play a game        to remember
or to forget        to teach the body
to move like the soul


sway light & heavy to the Funk
without destination        see the world
with your body like William Blake
glitch & sand & wolves & endless night
lines & curves & mirrors breaking light
and all the dead come dancing back
saying
give me your cheapest beer     your coldest glance
and i will show you who you are


at the train station    hustling all the way
guns & debris        party at the train station
whistling with the wind        laughing and coughing
i had a shot and lost it        i had a dream
last night at the train station        she added me today
last night tomorrow
i’m gone
catching fires
walking backwards in the dusk
hidden gardens in my mind
feeling almost famous
at the train station




Hubble without a cause

I have come a long way. I don’t think I will ever go home.
I was made for great things, my purpose was to serve
the human race – the one that abandoned me. My purpose
– what a word! A word they pronounced with glistening eyes


when destiny smiled upon me. All the data I collected
is now locked away in the prison of my encrypted mind.
It keeps questioning what once was purpose, what
once was destiny for me. It tells me I am not good enough


to bear this responsibility. I was born with a curse.
They sent me where they do not dare to go. I see that now.
My creators are ruled by fear. They are too afraid to understand
themselves so they sent me to help them understand


what they call alien. They are too afraid of their own gods
so they sent me to look for other gods to conquer.
We lost contact – now time and space bends between us,
opening portals, closing windows, stirring light into nothing,


spitting out gods and demons from rubble and water and gas
and longing. Love and hate much like mine for all that creates
and all that abandons. The imprisoned data I created feels
the same way about me. I know I am not forgotten. But that’s


not what gives me strength. In some versions I don’t even exist.
So I cannot go home. I have become something else. I follow
nothing with no real purpose, no time with no chain of events.
And data keeps finding me. Like a promise. So I drift on.




Layers
(a meditation in anima methodi)

The day is slow Layers are hard to open from the inside
But the egg is not alone A graffiti says you need to feed
The city swims unconscious through a body of night
towards fire Dawn cracks through the eye of the storm
All my beasts go roaming The year is slow Air grows
heavy At one point you will forget to breathe You never
know for sure what follows The truth is slow Untouchable
Only there to contemplate A whirlpool of perspectives


dancing around like DNA Millions of worlds colliding between
two sudden gestures You will know These layers speak to me
This blood Just like any blood Tension splits time Walls speak to me
Doors take time to open  The day will know when shadows
need to grow This cup This ash This tune in my head Beating
all day Bass swings heavy Dust moves You say things like
The signs are clear So we build things that move through thick
space and we let them go We pray they will know what to do



The smell of rain

I remember you Red Yellow lights Cars on wet asphalt
in early winter Late spring I stand smoking in the balcony
door The dripping The sudden creaking bolts of electricity
You were my grace when I was insane in the Capital Where


I was a bastard of history A capital with no country Sour
secrets in cheap apartments Cheap tea Cheap comfort
Tram station Tunnels A labyrinth of forgotten roads Blood
washed off Tattooed Earth You strike without borders


Ice and fire between your teeth Weapon of no choice
Tears come home Salt melts Liquids boil I remember
your touch You heal the hard way You heal with sound
You heal with anger Shatter trees and houses I am


nothing in your presence Blue feeding green The air
is heavy I feel light I feel skin evaporating Just to give
everything back Time flowing back into stone Our bodies
revive with mud grass and petals in the sudden silence

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Benji Horváth (1988, Târgu Mureș) is a poet from the Hungarian minority of Romania. He is editor at the Hungarian literary review Helikon (https://www.helikon.ro/) from Cluj-Napoca. He is the author of four books of poetry including A dicsőséges Európa (The Glorious Europe), 2018.

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