JACO BENEDUCI -

OBAFGKM

O.

The void is nobody

The entrails are told by nobody

Every speck wants to meet the bigger speck

Too many specks in the space of one

Till all want to be a piece of the biggest speck

All that dust in one spot, so heavy it gets hot.

In the cradle of gas and dust

A star is born for reasons null,
On the old obscure, in an open womb.

Made by the entrails of other dead stars

The star in indigo cries.

Oh be a fine girl, kiss me

Violent violet, on the onyx ocean.

As if lightning was fire,

The rage-baby burns her gassy yolk

And cries till she turns the deepest blue.

The star has no heart,

She has yet to make ashes.

It’s a long way to the Goldilocks Zone

You burn too bright to kiss me.

B. 

Be a fine girl, kiss me

Blue-star on the abyssal bed

Bright baby of beryl flare,

Burning the loam of other dead stars.

Blue necrophage,

Your heart is starting to form.


A star is hotter than a god.

As a star burns, 

She takes Dust;

Turns it into Water,

She takes Water;

Turns it into Iron,

She takes Iron;

Turns it into Flesh.


And she locks it all up in a heart

Brazed by the first ash of sorrow flame;

Cerulean, white and wishly.


We fantasize stars as blue fairies

Gentle, dainty sparkles in a somnolent dark

Because we can’t hear how loud a void can be.


Stars are balls of violence on a violent plane.

A shivering sea of plasmic screams,


You burn too bright to kiss me.

A.

A fine girl, kiss me,

Star white on the melanite.

Ghost of the bright child,

Your heart gets heavy with sad metals.

She’s getting fat with fire,

She’s making big ripples,

On a blanket of darkness.

Some lost pebbles in the void

Get stuck in the ripples

On the fabric of when and where

And dance around her against their will.

Worlds surround her; dead and rocky,

A fire as white as apathy 

–star white and the nine stones.

The worlds you light are roasted,
But you are not lonely in a screaming void.

You burn too bright to kiss me.

F.

Fine girl,

Kiss me on the sable’s frieze

With lips of pyrite fire

You fool’s gold star of dream-flame.

The heart drenched in the ash of dream 

–almost there,

Bright but not brightmother.

Not warm enough to turn rocks into eggs.

You are a glower too fair for me.

G. 

Girl, come kiss me on the black blanket

God-fire star of the auric aria.

You lash your light through a cold sea,

It’s gold enough for Goldilocks.

Are we your favorite pebble?

Or, are we third down the line?

We might pretend our pebble is alive:

It has hot veins of raging blood,

Sores of magma under a skin of stone

Lungs with the volume of the sky

And glands of tears sitting in giant pools

Deep enough to drown the pebble

In its own taste.


The pebble might be alive in this

Systematic way of spheres

–in our day-dreams,

But it doesn’t feel the emotion of alive.

It does not care.


A star doesn’t care if her pebble is alive.

One fat golden star,

One life-bitten rock.

You burn just bright to kiss me

K. 

Kiss me on the cold kaos

You are orange like yolk and

Yolk-fire burns when pregnant with the end.

Care no longer for the third rock,

It’s dead.

Your peel bloats as it corrodes

Getting fatter.

Getting colder.

Getting older.

You may have eaten a couple of those rocks.

The heart has become heavier than skin.


A frail and gentle kiss for me.

M.

Time to die,

Old red on the black horizon,

My carmine star of rust-fire

Afterburning into the abyss

And live through the cremation.

Some of these rocks

–maybe two or three,

You swallowed with

God-fire.

You burn in funeral blood-flame.

Red Giant,

Your skin is thin, changing colors as you age.

Once you were Violet

Before you were Blue.

After blue, you were White

Falling into White-Yellow,

Going on Yellow,

Kept going till Orange 

–and finally

Met your end,

Red is the coldest fire.

Your heart:

From Dust,

From Iron,

From Carbon,

You were so heavy,

You were so hot,

You were so dense,

Your heart became pure diamond.

The star vomits across the void.

All that’s left is a glowing core,

A star’s bone;


The only hot thing left in a dead star.

A bone so dense, it never stops glowing

Like a ghost of fire, an eternal ember.

Dead stars have being glowing

Since the first star died.

White Dwarf

Cooling in the foam of your

Regurgitated guts,

Falling into the somber;

The fossils of light.

Bone-white and the seven stones,

In the dense and all alone,

In the blackest black bemoan.

Jaco Beneduci graduated from UC Berkeley in December 2018 with Bachelors in English and a Creative Writing Minor. As an aspiring poet, he has been writing all his life and spent most of his childhood submitting to school magazines and performing at open mics. He has been published in One Report Magazine. He was born in Singapore and currently resides in Los Angeles. Spiders are his Gods.

He is a Scorpio. find him online @blackmews