4 Hour Hard On

I don't want anything to do with any poets ...
don't bring me any poets ...
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson

In the summertime, we went about
with no socks, in toe-less clogs
and Japanese flip [ flops


sabe lo que son las pesadillas?


We watched bruised pastel sunsets chase the Ten O'
Clock News, sometimes placing tiny platinum ingots
in the microwave, with O. Redenbacher popping
corn on the Fourth of July


ker splat! bafluie ping
pow zap ka Boom!


By All Star Break, we cried out
for bratwurst and Pabst, all the suck-ups
and buskers like car hops with condiment
trays strapped to their thrust laps,

El Presidente tossed out
the first pitch, he pontificated a
spicy blend of pigeon Mexican with
megaphones point blank at ashen
firemen,

he was counting
on the masses
to understand. He was counting
on the masses to understand.


si ... muy cali - hentay mi
hombres esta las casa por
de salsa quesadilla


Dog Days brought a strange rankling, as of scorched
lentils and mustard seeds, forgotten on some back
burner, a teleprompter feed sabotaged
with swear words naughtily

and Jim Lehrer
ogled Vanna's vowels
on the Wheel. Jim
Lehrer ogled Vanna's
vowels nightly on
the Wheel ...


Oh, how we longed for late September,
with all the classic rock bands having gone over
to Mariachi, and Guiliani, studly lion-maned
front men and divas doing Voice Over work
for the Stouffer's Corporation, blood
pudding, pop tarts and baked
crow pasties


partially hydrogenated
yellow matter
custard deep
deep Orange
Alerts

and Ethan Hawke read HOWL
at Summer Stock ... Ethan Hawke
read HOWL, at Summer Stock


What you do to the least
of my brethren you do
to me


Yet was anyone the least
bit surprised when Barack Hussein
Obama johnny walked
the Potomac on the Weather Channel?
Never, ever it was some kind
of trick, with Telestrator
and balsa sticks,

we were quite nearly bedazzled,
but for something still sickly
unraveling, and nagging, as when
one descends, for no good

reason to a root cellar
in thick pitch
black air,

and the poor feet never know
when they've hit the last
stair,


hay mantequilla ... hay mantequilla


Seals kept on clapping
for salted herring at Sea World,
the corporeal sunlight dripping
blazingly off the aspens in October,
we tied our shoe strings
to the tongues

raging in torrents
around the base of Babel, we shook
uncontrollably, and rubbed Perma Frost
on our gums.

REFILLS ARE RISQUE,
NO SUBSTITUTIONS

Milestones amalgamate;
My tasty world, it narrows:
So many passages; but only one plate;
A salt shaker versus red wheelbarrow.
This Hamlet? Scared to order, I think
of Daisy Buchanan spitting fountain arcs
of bile, past lazy susan into kitchen sink,
a wavering pea-green lantern heaving sparks
of memory in Dashiell Hammet's greasy spoon:
Plot twist, maguffin with parsley garnish.
Decades swilled, in one long afternoon,
Starbucks on my bird bust, call it onyx varnish,
or Slam, with blood thinners, and library fines.
Read my damned artery. Good to the last line.

AFTER LIZZIE BISHOP @ The ESSO
(say that fast ... 5 times)

Thoughts turn to words, and it gets on my nerves,
like gossip, guessed at, through hotel air vents:
"From what I heard, he got what he deserved."

I've whistled past bone yards, and blind man curves,
with rhymes of reckoning I've spat on many pavements;
but thoughts turn to words, and it gets on my nerves.

Got lost in meditation, a Transcendental reserve,
but a drunk landlord arrived, demanding his rent:
"Bodhisattva," he slurred, "gets what he deserves."

Shall I confess my every fetish? To be shunned, as a Perv?
Only leggy Jongian stewardi are hip to what I meant:
When thoughts ... turn to words; gets on my last nerve.

Dictaphones and schizophrenia, a terrifying preserve.
Deadlines, gang signs, such solemn commitments;
Eulogists inevitably ... get what they deserve.

In cock pit of dune buggy, ugly snatches, overheard,
Oh, I've breathylyzed my every prayerful sacrament ...
Set thoughts down, as verbs, fuck with nerves;
The poet only wrought what he thought he deserved.

NEUROTIC GHAZAL

Those crenelated sidewalk cracks of west Coeur D'Alene
oozed dark thoughts, which I skirted, with rope skip lines.

Half-empty tea pots, self-fulfilling, go off like throttles;
I check my burners, every ninety seconds...9 times.

Call that pawn shop. Ask nicely to speak about a Grace
Periods. See if your ensuing dread matches up to mine.

Online, I've made some enemies for no damned reason, answering
earnest e mails with " WTF? " It all goes up the Down Grapevine.

Dunno ... about you; but my Deja Vu's gone plum specious,
like hearing sex in the tennis matches, & pity for the blind.

Alter Ego with coon skin muffs, mumbles like Eddie Vedder
in a Starbucks, heart of dark,, ever thing gone be jess fine

Can’t get off that Sellwood bus? Circling the city, an agoraphobic
with wanderlust? Reach out, blue tooth. Use my freaking dime.

Little Dip, phalanx of crickets, drowned by Rainbirds @ sundown.
Far, far faraway dogs, whose barking I've controlled, with my mind.

A SHARD & FOUR POEMS
(c) 2009 by John Bennett



A Million Words

There are a million words in the English language. A third of them have to do with losing weight and coveting your neighbor's wife. Another third have to do with exorcism and circumcised goats. The rest are divided evenly between science, art and codependency.

Compare this with Spanish where 60% of the words have to do with spicy food and male supremacy. Or Russian where each and every word is in some way tied in with tanks, executions and potato famine. Or Gaelic where the whole language is drunk on whiskey. Or an obscure Amazonian jungle dialect consisting of nothing but tongue clicks.

There've been studies made, but the whole world still waits for some tongue-tied anthropologist with the aid of six chimps and a coral snake to sum up just what it is we've been trying so long to say.



A Japanese Gardener

There's this
Japanese gardener
who looks 40
but is
probably 60.

He's less than
five feet tall &
looks so
Japanese he's like
the essence of
Japanese.

He drives a
rusted 50s pickup
loaded with
tools &
garden trimmings.

I clean windows
for a customer who
last time
I was out there
asked
if I knew a
good gardener.
Then yesterday
I saw the
Japanese gardener
in my
rear-view mirror,
loading his
tools on the
far side of a
grass divide.
I got out of
my van &
walked over,
told him about
the people
in need of
a gardener.

"I don't take
new customers,"
he said in a
soft refined voice.
"I have
regular customers,
and if I were to
take on more,
it would
detract from
the quality of
my work.
But thanks
for asking."

He smiled.
"You're the
window cleaner,"
he said.

"Yes," I said.

"The window
cleaner & the
gardener,"
he said, &
still smiling,
climbed into
his truck &
drove away.



Timing

There's no way
to know if
your timing's good
until it's
too late.



What's Going On

The complexity
of the universe
is beginning to
come to full blossom
in the
human brain,
& it's
more than
we can handle.



The Perfect Exit

Three years ago
death left her
calling card &
somehow I
spun away &
kept dancing.
But the
handwriting's
on the wall.

Sitting up on
this hill
with my
coffee &
cigarettes &
my yellow pad
would be a
perfect way
to go,
my head
down on the
steering wheel,
the horn
blowing non-stop,
agitating
the hell
out of
kids on
skateboards &
young lovers
in their
air-bag cars
dreaming sex &
graduation.

Until now
they had
no idea
I existed.

EXPERIMENTAL GREETING CARD

Oh, the arbitrage of Hallmark! Memorial Days, running
head on w/ Breathalyzer, wrong way on the interstate,
and a poor camper van family can’t get out of the way.

Ever wonder why the undertakers
get no Holiday? Chew on that one, with the Valentines
for thrice bitten, and Father’s Days for our boys in
Iraq. For the chip off the old block selling corona
in lieu of immortal soul, in the bowels of a
Passaic shooting gallery. High time

we made a day
for the goners shot by L.A.
cops with no provocation,
24 hour Honor Guards for
schizophrenics w/ rickets
and wanderlust, listless
scriveners with cyanotic
cuticles and arrhythmic hearts
can’t ever be satisfied, or young Bob
Marley at Yuletide past,
letting cancer eat him fast
as Yellow # Five snack crackers
from the inside, as good a day
to die, as look alive ...

Let's just
quit all the fiddle-fucking around,
and choose one of these long ones,
like they previously named for Dogs in
August, and christen it, SOPORIFIC,
for Christ's sake call it
rage, call it:

Payback’s Abyss,

on this special day, there will be no
work, of course (okay, are you getting
all this?) but
neither any
leisure, nor play. Instead,
everybody sits around,
in uncomfortably tight semi-
circles, fanning themselves
silly w/ silk cravats
on the hot seat,
like the worst 12 Step
Intervention ever, and we'll
shake with helpless tremor, tell
our kids grandiose lies, sever
ties, deny, buckets
of sweat.

It will be
a day to suffer.

It will be a day to forget.

Kreskin In Azure