My best ones are stifling,
The good days, the good works,
I am still not saved
From having to try again
In the future, not released
From doing anything at all,
What good is good? It buys
No trip, hides no responsibility,
With every thing done well,
Comes more questions, more demands,
More empty things
That everyone else
Does not trust themselves to fill.

BEN NARDOLILLI is a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

I am with Homer, and Homer
Is next to clips of men
Falling down, failed stunts
That make me successfully laugh,
While they slide over rails
And roll down stairs
To Beethoven and Zeppelin,
I talk in the present
To friends, leaving
Messages that they will find,
Car wrecks on this highway
They will have to stop and read
And think about me now,
Infecting their memory with my voice,
Trying to communicate with them
I am remembering someone I loved,
And thinking a stranger’s face,
Revealed to many,
Resembles her, but the shade of skin
Just isn’t right, as I get
Tomorrow’s weather and let everyone know
That I love them but will not make it,
Because I am sick
And tired from traveling.

BEN NARDOLILLI is a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Now loose, we start again, at that way
We thought we had, but were too heavy
To bend down over and conquer,
Now our knees are not tied together
And our tongues let loose serpents
Barely constrained by teeth,
We can reach only out to sky, earth, and water,
With steps that gape, over a road
That no longer yawns at our presence.

BEN NARDOLILLI is a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.