Benito Vila’s three poems


Death is Always a Surprise Even When You See It Coming


Simplicity is elegant, beautiful and rarely simple.

"Jesus wept" is a two-word sentence with worlds of meaning.

Pelicans glide, they never stop to explain where they’re going.

Death is always a surprise even when you see it coming.


You and Me Are Sacred


Simultaneously inspired fireflies make momentary constellations. A panther crouches, ready, awaiting her distracted prey, who won’t know she’s there until it’s too late to realise what’s happening. An expert knows all things and has trouble saying, “Wow, tell me more. I haven’t heard that before”. A house full of shrines is hard to clean, nearly impossible to move. Give a flying fuck, it’s time, this holy holy holy day. Today. Every day. Every day is entirely new. You and me are sacred and we each deserve to be treated like saints, welcomed, fed and cared for in a way that allows every you, me and us to be more different, more together, than we've ever been before.


Here Now


Here now, there’s no past, no future, there’s an everywhere at once, free of form, coming to be in a womb, here now, young, old, dead in this world, that fast, beyond what I thought I was, free of who I came to be, a cosmos shift, here now, a wordless hum, free of thought, colour and touch, isn't being alive something, here now, where there’s no past, no future, only an everywhere at once, free of time, making up everything about myself, digging it, here now, chanting I am sacred, holy, this old stuff works, this becoming new again, this being everywhere at once, coming to, that’s the trip, here now, gasp, grasp and let go.


Benito Vila lives in a remote fishing village on Mexico’s Pacific coast. His poetry was first published in 2020 in Love Love, an underground magazine based in Paris. His other published work includes profiles of “counterculture” instigators for pleasekillme.com, and editing email correspondences from poet Charles Plymell into two books, Of Myth & Men and Keyboard Intercourse (for Bottle of Smoke Press, 2021 and 2023). In 2024, his poetry has appeared in VOICES (from Cold River Press), MAINTENANT 18 (from Three Rooms Press) and BEAT LIFE MAGAZINE (National Beat Poetry Foundation).

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