Ben D. Straw Creative - Of All the Things I Never Said

A calendar for 2021:

Illustrated original poetry about love and (mostly) loss

Images drawn by hand and colored in Photoshop

7" x 14" (open), 7" x 7" (closed)

Rt. 22 to Dullmeadow

(Jan)

I often fantasize about driving you home. You’ll never know, because there’s no way in Hell I’d ever tell you. I’ll never tell you how you’ll leave the battery running by accident and have to ask me for a ride. I’ll never tell you that I’d drop whatever shit I’m buried in to give you one, screw my schedule. I’ll swipe away the garbage on the passenger’s seat, slightly embarrassed; I won’t be expecting any company. I’ll just pray to void and freezing air that the hoard of empty water bottles under your feet don’t make you think less of me, as if you could think less of me. We’ll get in my car and I’ll say you can plug your phone in if you want. But you’ll leave the music up to me. So I’ll blast the one country song on my iPod because I still remember the one time you told me you liked country. Right before you told me you had a boyfriend.

Maybe that could change if you think I’m funny, so I’ll try to make you laugh, a suicide mission on my part. But all the one-liners and corny puns that have been lined up for this exact moment will be tangled in the cobwebs of my brain, curled up in the fetal position. I know I’ll end up regretting every word that comes out of my mouth, but you’ll still chuckle at them out of pity. I know it’s out of pity; but you still have the best laugh I’ve ever heard. For as long as I’ve wanted to tell you that, it’s the one thing I won’t be able to say.

By this point, we’ll be on the highway and I’ll ask if the heat is OK, if you’re not too cold. You’ll tell me you’re fine but won’t say much else. I know it’s because you’re uncomfortable around me, but you’ll never say that to my face. You’ll never say how the five other people you asked before me had somewhere else to be, or that you’ve been second-guessing every moment since you opened the passenger side door. You’re too nice. We don’t have sex or anything; I don’t even try to kiss you. I just pull into your driveway and stay there until I know you’re safe, waiting until you close the front door to set up my GPS.

Maybe it’ll be more than just your car battery. Maybe I’ll end up driving you home every night one week. Maybe then we’ll get close enough for you to want to make out in the backseat or at least slide your hand down my shoulder. But for tonight, I’m just driving myself home, blaring the music loud enough to feel like I’m not driving alone.

Quasimodo's Disguise

(Feb)

A balaclava

for the freak to hide behind

a rose clutched in his fist

he only wants you to love him to keep him in mind, but you never did

did you?

A cauldron seethes beneath his skin

boiling over, burning baby’s pink

from the splash of rose smashed

in your fist, married off to a kick in the shin

and what you call a favor to mankind:

a balaclava

for this freak to hide behind

The Lone Goose

(Mar)

I often wonder what I have done

to harbor a loneliness so profuse

The hours and years all fade into one.

My brain has been spun

into wisps on a stick, pummeled to juice

over words never said, things never done.

I know all too well that there isn’t a ton

of women who’d want to pick me to seduce.

It seems that if she exists, she isn’t the one.

Some nights I wonder if I’d owned a gun

would I melt it into David or put it to use?

Put the barrel to my ears. Pull the trigger. Call it done.

People kissing by bonfires as hot as the sun

while I’m stuck playing catch-up, playing caboose

How long must I wait to belong to someone?

When faith to keep going has dwindled to none

I often fantasize of becoming a goose

I’ve glued all the feathers; the suit’s almost done

For geese don’t get lonely. There’s never just one.-

Dump Pinocchio

(Apr)

Strings hidden up his ass...Are you really in love?

Otherwise, you deserve so much better.

Go in for a kiss get a face full of leaves. The tree feeds on lies.,

You deserve so much better.

Vultures perching upon his nose turn their gaze

upon your sweet chickadee self.

Sorry words melt into laser beams shooting from their eyes:

you deserve so much better.

Even the thickest of wool won’t camouflauge

a snarling snout. You’re smarter than that.

Boot his brain in the crotch, Dear, it’s not a surprise,

you deserve so much better.

Innocence twirling like snow in your eyes

melts to obsidian at his touch I want to see you

embraced by one of the beluga-hearted and honest guys

you deserve. So much better.

You’d rather disfigure that beautiful face

in an industrial shredder, but no worries my love,

I won’t be the gentleman waltzing with you once you realize

you deserve so much better.

A Simple 'No' Would've Been Nice

(May)

Two weeks, dead silence

I don’t normally do this

and now you know why

$100 for 45 Minutes (Scratch That)

(Jun)

Sometimes - no, a lot of the time - actually, scratch that -
all the fucking time I wonder why I even bother trying to fall in love
with somebody when it always seems to bite me in the ass.
See, the thing is, I don’t “catch feelings” very often. I need
to really get to know them first. And if they have blue eyes
that usually does it. I don’t know why but blue eyes always make me weak.

Almost like ice cream, fluffy orange cats, all those are weaknesses
too. I mean, it’s not that I find other colors unattractive, it’s not that
at all. I mean, I think it’s because my first crush had blue eyes
and I guess no one ever really forgets their first love
Kinda cheesy - scratch that - pathetic, I know. Like ‘hey, I needed
to tell you, I still think about my high school crush’. I’d make an ass

out of myself. It’s no wonder no girl wants to take my pathetic ass
out on a date. I mean, it did happen once, though, like a week
before the world smoldered into a ball of ash in space. Needless
to say, I did not get a second date or anything at all after that.
I guess I just want so badly to fall in love
to hold somebody’s hand and stare into each other’s eyes

that my brain becomes this dorky cartoon character with hearts for eyes
like it’s all me and my sentimental-as-hell ass
can think about. But does any woman really see me as potential lover
material? She’d have to be washed out in a real moment of weakness -
scratch that - total desperation for her standards to sink as low as that
and someone trampling my innards like effigy ashes is not at all what I need

And the last thing she’d probably want is some needy
sap like me clinging to her like a lash stuck in her eye
or scratch that - pet hair on black pants. I tend to be like that.
I’d like to think I wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass
if I wasn’t trapped in my head 120 hours out of the week.
To finally have a girlfriend who’s not imaginary. How lovely

A sweet girl with an elephant’s heart who loves
cuddling and cheeseburgers as much as me. Well she doesn’t need
to love cheeseburgers, as long as she knows I couldn’t go a week -
.scratch that - a day without saying ‘I love you’ or how pretty her eyes
are or how badly I want to kiss her or some other corny-ass
sentimental crap like that.

Well complaining about it isn’t gonna do shit. I know that.
But just think, this would be a way different-ass
story if it wasn’t so difficult to look people in the eye.

Sorry for Staring

(Jul)

Two

vibrant

sapphire blue

poison dart frogs

where your eyes should be,

sparkling like Perrier.

Has it gone straight to my head?

Or has the sunlight in your smile

evaporated all my senses?

Their poison burns through, slow death commences.

Every last one of my defenses

crumbles into a heaping pile

at your feet. My brain goes dead,

fixated on the way

your eyes smiled at me.

Light turns to fog

around you.

I can’t

move.

She Hates Him Once the Cameras Stop Rolling

(Aug)

The thick

black

oozing

line that separates cinema

from the rest of us:

the way platinum gazes at rusted iron

wants him,

kisses his lips

because she wants to.

I’ll become a Monkee,

a believer myself

when eyes half as beautiful

see something in me.

Sunflower Bouquet

(Sep)

My sunflowers

are likely dead by now.

Shriveled golden autumn on your tabletop

swept so gracefully into your palms

and tossed away.

Is "Bloody" Just an Expression?

(Oct)

The auburn hair, wide green eyes

remind me of a girl I knew,

too sweet, too innocent

to be a siren,

still her voice submerses me

*

Could you be the Marr to my Morrissey,

the Calvin to my Hobbes

the Harriet to my Dave;

I need you now.

*

Improbable it may be,

but I believe

time-travel’s the only way

two men could infiltrate my sleep

and put my life to music

*

In my head’s wasteland, you lie;

“You have a lovely singing voice”;

But why do what you’ve already done

with a charred intelligent wit

I can only dream of?

Shelter Mutt

(Nov)

It seems to be

that you and me

are vanilla ice cream and warm apple pie.

Something so sweet that only liquifies

to a sticky puddle in the end,

when you melt

me.

I was and I wasn’t

a mutt of yours to foster

(crooked ears, crooked posture)

until you abandoned me

to drown in a sea

of naked trees behind your house.

*

I lie beneath them

on a rainy night,

waiting

To Her Father Thou Art Somewhere, Hollowed Be Thy Name

(Dec)

Any daughter of God

is bound to have some daddy issues.

He's never even read her a bedtime story

from the brown brick of a book in her nightstand.

Because of Daddy and His issues,

she could never fall in love with an atheist,

or the brown brick of a book in her nightstand

might tear their fucking face off.

If she ever did fall in love with an atheist,

Daddy would read them a new bedtime story

about the man who tore their fucking face off

for touching a daughter of God.

Chicken _____

(Important Dates)

Lovelessness tends to run in the family. My

grandparents, my parents, it’s only a matter of

time before you run away from me. But you

haven’t run. Not yet. I’d tell you to run while you

can, before my inhibitions run out and I latch

onto you like a tick. But I’d just end up running

my mouth and running out of time before you

inevitably

run too, leaving me a runny mess of ruins.

So I’ve replaced my running shoes with bags of

concrete. When I try to run to you, I might as

well be running on a hamster wheel. Take

them off and I run the risk of snowy-colored

dust flying everywhere and making it look like

a blizzard had run through the place. I run the

risk of being able to move.

All that’s left to do is wait for this thing

to run its course, for the inevitable

‘we had a good run’. At least that’s what I’ll

tell myself as the cement running through

my veins runs hard and cold:

‘we had a good run’.