4 Hour Hard On

You heard right. ;)

Bennett reads his classic shard, entitled "Only Business",
with musical accompaniment from

these guys

3 SHARDS
(c) 2007, by John Bennett
All Rights Reserved



CPR

They gave him sixteen minutes to come to a conclusion and then triggered a stop watch. He choked on the ultimatum. He had a log jam of ultimatums, stuck in his throat like splintered chicken bones. The only outward sign he gave was a pained look he got up with in the morning, and took to bed at night. It was his prize possession--and it kept people at arm's length. When things got really bad, he could throw a switch and shut down everything.

The few people in his life who claimed to care plied him with self-help books; the one thing the books had in common was outside advice, which seemed to him to be the opposite of self-help. These people who gave him self-help books told him he had to get out of himself, which drew his attention to the vacant look in their eyes.

Trying to ignore the eyes, he made a play for acceptance; he built a bookcase out of pine for the unread self-help books and displayed it prominently in his living room, his version of coffee-table literature. No one ever came to visit, but building the bookcase gave him something to do with his hands.

The people who gave him the ultimatums and the people who gave him the books claimed to be different people, but he knew they were the same; this realization was like another chicken bone shoved down his throat, and it came to him just under the wire of the sixteen-minute deadline. The clock ticked into the seventeenth minute without anything happening, and he knew then, with the exploding certainty of an epiphany, that everything was arbitrary.

That's when they lost him and pulled the sheet up over his face.



Notes To Destiny


Sterilize pigs.

Genetically engineer ants.

Purge grapes.

Advertise for hit men in obscure journals.

Seduce homely women.

Strangle sopranos.

Club baritones to the ground like baby seals.

Practice the coy glance, the winning smile.

Hang out on the corner. Stop whatever it is you're doing if a passerby asks for directions; steer them wrong.

Join at the hip at least 22 organizations. Exclude tax exemptibles--isolate them and give them what-for.

Stockpile drums of crude oil to boil heretics in. They'll be easy to spot. They'll glow in the dark. In broad daylight they'll appear disoriented and will puke green if the sky clouds over.

Shake hands with anyone who gets close enough that you can smell their armpits. This includes heretics.

You are destiny.

Somewhere, someone is waiting to swear you in on a Bible.



The Big Tent's Closing Night

The take was down at the Big Tent. The circus was deep in the red. All the clowns and lions and promise of high-wire death wasn't enough to bring in the rubes. Lizard men and fat ladies and two-headed dwarfs couldn't compete with the glitz of cyber space.

The trapeze artist had sweaty palms. Perpetual motion was the only thin glaze of hope in this preposterous conundrum, but there wasn't enough rope left to swing into a net-less future. His partner had run off with a talk-show host years ago.

There was almost no one left who had grown up without television.

***

His nephew sent a picture of his ten-month old daughter sitting on his lap in front of an I-Mac. The child's eyes were gleaming and riveted to the computer screen; her small hand cupped the mouse. That's when he knew it was over.

He applied his make-up extra thick, and walked from his trailer to the Big Tent. It was two hours before show time. He climbed to the highest platform and drew his composure around him. In that moment he was one with the Buddha.

With closed eyes he did a swan dive into darkness, and a packed house of memories gave out a gasp.

It was the end of an era.

THE PINBALL WIZARD (c) '05 by John Bennett

He scooped up a handful of brain cells and hustled down to the pizza parlor. He thought it high time he took on the video games. Although he suspected he was over the hill.

He had a theory about the video games. He saw them as preparation for war. Sure-fire death for a quarter. A way to vent residual memories of trees and such. You know--babbling brooks, the sun coming up over the mountains. Clean the slate, that's what he was out for. Tabula rasa. La Raza, off to war. A way to earn college tuition. Free games to the victor, the man with the high score.

High score, high school, the dropout kings. Even on downers he couldn't stop his mind from racing.

***

He had a hard time getting his eyes adjusted once he stepped through the door. Being blind didn't help matters. Deaf and dumb. Hobbling around on a wooden leg with a parrot shitting green on his shoulder.

He followed his nose past the take-out counter and into the dark enclave. He was enough to make a few kids look up from their screens. He didn't compute well. A fleet of jets crash landed, and a hip-hop girl missed her chance to lop off the head of the Dark Knight. He held up a shiny quarter and someone led him to a long-dated Pac Man. He dropped in his quarter.

He held the control gun wit his left hand and with his right fished a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket; flipped the thing into the air, flipped his Bic, torched the cigarette on its way down, caught it between his lips, the whole while gobbling everything Pac Man had to offer.

All other action came to a halt. The kids gathered around. Someone out front called the cops.

***

At the station a blind deaf-mute from the Special Ops Division of Homeland Security was brought in to do the interrogation. It went on for hours, and then the Special Ops guy scraped back his chair and felt his way along the wall until he came to the door. He told them in Braille what they already suspected. It was the Pinball Wizard, resurrected. He was in subversion mode, verging on terrorism. He was hoping to drag a whole generation back to a time that was Greek to them.

Within a week all music that had originated in the 60s was banned from the airwaves. Within a month it was treason to play or even own a Who LP. Mark Morford of San Francisco Gate wrote a column on it, and then things went back to normal. The Wizard spent six months in Guantanamo and was made to eat a Koran, one page at a time. Then they dropped him off at his house.

He sat in the dark on a kitchen chair for an hour or so and then he went to bed. This was the day the music truly died, but no one noticed.



SOMEONE'S FORCING MY HAND (c) '05 John Bennett

Someone's forcing my hand. A molecular hanging judge comes galloping through the synapses of my brain waves. Phantom of thought, he wavers like a mirage. Voiceless, he talks a blue streak with his eyes.

"Look what you've bought into," he says.

I'm not sure I know what he means, but then I do. He means the tall buildings that fell and left Humpty-Dumpty hanging. He means the greed and the war and the trinkets. He means the bottom feeders of the soul.

"Fly like an eagle," he tells me. "Like a turtle dove. Hate no one and nothing," he says. "Have you forgotten the rules?"

"Lusting is one thing, remembering lust is another," he says. "Sin is a bad word choice for consequence. A selfless world is seamless, there are no consequences."

Once you know these things, to not do them is grave beyond consequence.



THEIRS IS A FRANKENSTEIN WORLD (c) '05 by John Bennett

I have to confess that they render me
speechless. I have to confess that they
beat my head with a stick and deny it.

"You do it," they say, "to yourself.

"Here hold
this baby," they say,
"while we tuck in our shirt."

It's a trick of course. It's not a baby. It's a bag
of bad endings. A seaman's knot and a corn cob.
Some sticky substance of super glue and
chewed gum. Never the same thing twice and
never a baby. They can't make babies. They
have a gigantic womb like a meth lab, but no love.
They make monsters, little green things with
scales and addictions. Theirs is a Frankenstein world.

"Come on in!" they sing out, and when I turn
the knob I get a high-voltage jolt.

"Wrong!" they say, and then turn off the juice.

"Come on in!" they say, and I try again. This time
a pail of acid comes cascading down from a ledge.

"Wrong!" they say.

"Come on in!" they say.

And so it goes.

****

"He's slammed the door
in his face," they say.
"He's made his bed."

They don't like my tone. They say they want me
to join in, and then they hit me with shock treatment
and acid. There's something they want me to do
I'm not doing. For thirty years they put me out
of their mind, and then one day there I was again.

They jumped back in surprise.

"This is the last straw!" they cried out. "This
has gone entirely too far!"

They joined hands and lit candles.
They closed their eyes.
They tried to will me out of existence.

I cried out
like a new-born and alarm shot thru
their ranks. Wall-eyed with their arms out
they walked stiffly away. The moans that
escaped them were like a sick person's
soiled linen. I called out after them,

and their leather hands
came up over their ears.



We interrupt these shards to bring you


John Bennett's Website


HUMANITY, YOU NEVER HAD IT TO BEGIN WITH (c) '05 by John Bennett

People voting fear. People voting revenge.
People voting terror. People voting their
pocket books. People voting like lemming,
stampeding cattle, like consumers.

The true minority has no color , no race, no
religion. The true minority is sexless. The true
minority evaporates into thin air.

Up go the flags, down go the people. Over and
over again. Humanity, you never had it to begin with.
Along comes Monday Night Football, and the
stadiums fill to capacity.

It's a reap what you sow situation. A fraternity
of collusion. No one here gets out alive.

Code red. Up go the fighter jets.
Down come the moon and the stars.

It's not that we no longer are what we
once were, we were never that to begin with.

It's that we no longer
long to be what it is we
once thought we were.



AS USUAL, AS ALWAYS AD INFINITUM (c) '05 by John Bennett

Jimmy Crack Corn. There are other more
important things to be doing.

As usual, as always, ad infinitum.
I don't care. Jimmy Crack. I'm spit back
out like a plug nickel each and every time.

Perhaps I should write the lyrics to a popular
song. About the way we were. Put it to music,
this incessant din in my inner-most sanctum.

A close call and a curtain call. Actors queued up
for free soup-- something warm in the belly
to clear the head.

An expanding future. A dilettante past.
A rocky-road present. Hovering over a modern
convenience with a ticking clock down my pants.

I wipe my face with a towel
and there's the image of Christ
staring back at me. Jimmy Crack.
The plot thickens.

A paper bag filled with shake-and-bake--
there's been a turn for the worse. A milk truck
rumbles by, and I burst out the front door
screaming epitaphs.



MISCELLANEOUS (c) '05 by John Bennett


To return a gift
is an act of cruelty.

***

Fear is a full definition
of self.

***

He transformed his transcendence
into something useful.

***

Fathering children is a function.
The womb is like the lair
of a spider.
The process goes on
no matter how bad
we botch it.
We're not calling the shots,
and our opinions are
dust.

***

Now that I've made a stab
at getting honest,
I'll return home
and fabricate a novel.

INVASION OF THE FLEET OF FOOT

a Shard by John Bennett


This could be something arranged by the Committee, to foil my attempts to defy history, or it could be pure chance, but no sooner had I cut the engine after pulling into my usual spot on the hill with my mocha and legal pad than a herd of runners came stampeding my way. Two herds, actually--one of young boys, another of girls about twenty yards behind. And a guy on a bike in front of them all with a whistle hanging around his neck and a stop watch in one hand.

The guy on the bike stopped even with my car and gave me a disapproving look--smoke was billowing out the driver's side window. Then he began ticking off the seconds: "78, 79, 80--go! go!--83, 84..."

The runners put on a burst of speed until they reached the guy on the bike, and then they slowed to a jog and milled around the median grass. I lit another cigarette and was about to turn on the radio when out of nowhere this guy who fancies himself all sorts of things, including a runner, popped up out of nowhere and stuck his head right in my open window.

"Just chillin'?" he said, a lopsided grin covering his face.

"End of the day routine," I said.

"I'm not with them," he said, which was obvious--he's 50, desperately trying to hang on to 25. "I'm going to do push-ups," he said.

"Cool," I said, and blew a jet of smoke his way.

He popped his head back out the window, jogged over to the grass, and sure as shit dropped down and began doing push-ups.

By this time the runners had drifted back down the hill, but here they came again. While I was watching them approach, the creepiest guy in town pulled in next to me. Staring out his windshield at the valley, without looking my way, he gave me the finger.

"...78, 79, 80--go! go!" yelled the guy on the bike, who this time had stopped a safe distance from my car that probably looked like someone had set off a fumigation bomb inside it.

Just as I was going for the radio again, someone called out, "Those things will kill you!" It was the other window cleaner in town, running with the high-school kids. He's 40 desperately trying to hang on to 18, but he can run, I'll give him that.

Well, fuck a duck!

I laughed, and lit another cigarette. I used to run this hill working out for 10-K races when I was in my 40s, but I did it solo like I do just about everything.

***

Everyone's gone now. The hill is quiet again. Another attack warded off. It's getting easier to do. I may be on the verge of completing my initiation, but it's hard to tell for sure.

4 SHARDS
by John Bennett; (c) 2006
All Rights Reserved



A WAY WITH WORDS

You've got a way with words, people tell me, a gift, but they don't ask me to dinner. Sometimes they drive by the house and crane their necks, hoping for a glimpse of who knows what.

I began to feel obligated. Like I should give them something. Something more than the writing. Perhaps a holographic image. Yes, that would do the trick. I'd project a holographic image onto the front porch late at night. I'd have it pacing like a caged animal, slightly bent at the waist, puffing on a pipe. They could drive by and say, "Look, honey, he's thinking!"

Her husband would grunt. Give it the gas. Get her home and fuck her blind. Snap her out of it. Show her what a real man is.

Maybe I shouldn't do that. Do I really want my holographic projections breaking up happy homes? Most likely there'd be children involved.

That's something else that bothers me. It's always middle-aged women driving by. Or being driven by by their husbands. In a scenario like that, we all lose.

Where are the young ones? Not terribly young, say 25 or 30. When's the last time one of those knocked at my door?

It's not all it's cracked up to be, being a writer. It's the saddest pleasure. A high percentage of us take our own lives.

If you only knew what goes on in our heads.



HIT HARD

I know I've been hit hard when the writing stops. The writing is all that sustains me in the illusion. It doesn't often happen. But sometimes I get hit hard enough to think maybe I should let go of the illusion.

It's illusive, the illusion. The word itself has been rendered rotting tripe in the hot sun by the psycho-babble crowd. But behind the veil of every word lurks a reality. Yes, yes, reality too, tripe in the hot sun.

Here's the point: I may be using the wrong word. In fact I'm sure I am. Why the fuck did I say that? If I'd been properly potty trained in some creative writing program, I would go back and edit that out. If I'd been properly groomed I'd scrap everything I've written to this point. But that's not my style. I tend to lunge on.

Check out, that's what I meant to say. Check out of this fucking mad-hatter world. When I'm writing I'm in another world. I'm an illusion within an illusion. There, I've swung back around on it.

I'm working over illusion. The word illusion. I'm mauling it, making it mine. I'm reshaping the language so that I can talk to myself.

I've got no hope left. Except for the occasional ground swell of bitterness when I get hit hard. Well Jesus, why do I set myself up for it? Usually it has to do with love.

Love and bitterness, two forms of hope. I've just had the illusion of love torpedoed and it tilted me into bitterness. Leap-frogging from one wobbly stone of hope to another, slick with moss in the swift creek of life.

Writing is all that sustains me, not bitterness, not love, not hope. So what am I holding out hope for?

I want out.

But then there are the small children and dogs. Sometimes just watching my blind, diabetic dog peeing in the back yard with her nose in the air and her ears back, or watching a small child's face light up for no apparent reason, sometimes then I want to cry.



CROSSING OVER

Some people think the world of man is hideous. Usually people who think like this also think things could be better. So, they fight. Not fight, exactly, what most of them do is hunker down in refusal. All this does is make things worse.

The thing to do is shift gears and drive off into a world all your own. There's no reason to feel guilty. There's no reason to fear you'll be found out and punished. There's no way anyone is going to recognize where you've gone. If they did, they'd go with you.

Once you cross over, you'll have more happiness than you can bear.



INVISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE

He scared himself more than anyone else. Not more than he scared anyone else, more than anyone else scared him. And it made him seem odd to others. People were forever telling him he didn't make sense. Then they'd pick out an example of someone who did and they'd say: "He makes perfect sense." It could have been a she as well as a he; it wasn't a gender thing.

He wasn't sure what sense meant. The people who were held up as examples of perfect sense inevitably had a bland smile on their faces. They were fully insured and were working hard toward retirement. They voted and sent their children to college. They celebrated birthdays and decorated their homes with strings of blinking lights at Christmas. They watched the evening news every night to keep abreast of things.

He puzzled over the mystery of sense. He looked around. He saw flag poles with two or three and sometimes more flags hanging from them. Flags of the nation, flags of the state, POW flags, corporate flags, all in descending order. He saw people taking pictures of themselves with cell phones held at arm's length and somehow emailing them to loved ones who printed them out and stared at them. He saw six-lane ribbons of freeway teeming with traffic surrounding and burrowing through cities.

The people in the vehicles on the ribbons of freeway were either talking into their cell phones or taking pictures with them or tuned to the news. Some of them were surreptitiously snorting cocaine up their noses or toking on a joint, popping pharmaceuticals or buzzed on after-work cocktails. A minority smoked cigarettes, but if their windows were rolled down and traffic was ground to a halt (as it often was), they received sour looks and sometimes snide comments from the passengers of other vehicles.

He finally concluded that sensible meant fitting into all this. He got a cell phone and a computer and tried to take a picture to send to himself. But he couldn't figure it out. He went to see his cell-phone salesman and the man shook his head in disbelief.

"What's wrong with you?" said the salesman. "Of course you can't take a picture with this cell phone. You can't even play games on it. This is a three-year-old cell phone, it's obsolete."

He left the store, embarrassed. He stood on the corner of a busy intersection and watched the flags flapping on the courthouse flagpole. He thought about turning himself in.

At home, he pushed various keys on his cell phone, looking for games. But the salesman knew what he was talking about, there were no games on there. He turned on his computer and a window with his picture on it came up.

How did his picture get on there? Did someone take his picture with a cell phone when he wasn't looking and email it to him? Under the picture was a box asking for a password. He tried for over an hour to figure out what the password was, but he wasn't a cryptologist. He gave up and went out to sit on the front porch.

In the fading light, tiny birds were swooping and soaring, feeding on insects invisible to the naked eye.

ROCKY RACCOON
a shard by John Bennett
(c) 2007


Holy sweet Jesus, mother of God! Was Jesus a woman? Not God but the mother of God? It wouldn't be the first inaccuracy recorded in the annals of history. Someone, or something, has torn down the fences in my mind. Oh! Give me room, lots of room, under starry skies above!

Fences make good neighbors. A frosty reception when you cross the property line from one part of your mind into another, armed with a picnic basket full of grenades. Grandmother Wolf took a bum rap. Little Red Riding Hood was out to get her. Do you see what I mean?

It doesn't matter. Step aside or get trampled. No time to say hello, goodbye--hello? Goddamn sonofabitch, they hung up on me. If you think you're confused now, keep reading.

I'm the stenographer of instinct. A natural. Grade A, #1. An Asian bride to take home to your Presbyterian family. At first they won't like me, but once I do my table dance and slip into your father's lap, their feelings will get a little jumbled.

"She's not all that bad," dad will say.

"Hell, she can sleep in my room," says little brother.

"That woman cannot stay the night in my home!" says mom.

Sister Jane slips her a note that says meet me out back when the lights go out.

You check the byline of this story, and it's a man's name. So how can I be an Asian war bride decades after the war has moved to greener pastures?

Life is full of riddles and questions. Life is riddled with questions. Life is like a heart that keeps beating long after it's been sliced out of the body. I'm a mild-mannered reporter who every time he steps into a phone booth turns into Superman. It's not a matter of personality transferral. It's a severance, without pay or gratitude.

It's just a job. The voices say Asian war bride, and I jot it down. I like my job. Once I punch in, I'm as free as a bird. It's punching out that brings the roof down around my ears.

Rocky Raccoon punches out some invented foe of vast proportions halfway through round ten. He stands ring center, one gloved fist raised in triumph. The crowd goes wild, and inside Rocky's head a tornado of insufferable existence rips out fences. His father goes twirling by with an Asian girl in his lap, and Rocky's fist floats down into neutrality.

It feels like there should be more to this story, but there isn't.

THE TRAPPINGS OF AN ORDERLY MIND
copyright 2006, by John Bennett

Barristers and barometers. Bean bags and beauty queens. New Year's Eve rolls on by and the parties go down, he doesn't get invited to a single one.

A sign of the times. A sign that his time is rapidly coming to an end. Time and the rising river. Sandbags piled to the moon.

He's lost the ability to assemble his thoughts. They're in a state of anarchy. They wander in and out of the union hall of his mind like dock workers gone soft on too many fringe benefits. They light up cigarettes in defiance of the universal ban and blow smoke rings while he stares vacantly at a passing world.

He needs to take action, quick and decisive, like a karate chop, like the glint off a straight razor in sunlight, gliding past the throat of an adversary. He makes a list of simple sentences to reduce the swelling, hoping they'll carry him through, make him appear almost normal.

1) Do you want to fuck?
2) Which way to the toilet?
3) I think I'm going to be sick.
4) How much is that doggie in the window?
5) Isn't the weather grand!
6) Sign on the dotted line.
7) You show me yours, I'll show you mine.
8) Help yourself to seconds.
9) Don't push your luck.
10) I have to be going now.

He looks it over. Has he left anything out? What about rejection, possible negative responses to the simple sentences that are actually question, requests, pleas? What if no one wants to fuck? What if the toilet is occupied? What if the doggie isn't for sale?

Ten is such a tidy number, but he has to give up on order. And isn't that an irony? His thoughts have exploded like an 8" length of pipe packed with nails and alienated him from everything and everyone, himself included, and the reason at the bottom of it all is a severe yearning for order; and now he's reducing himself to a tidy list that forsakes order entirely.

He wishes he were still Catholic. He wishes he could confess his dilemma and make things right again, make them right as rain with a string of Hail Marys at the altar rail. Hailing Mary. "Hey, baby, where you been?"

He has to stop it. He has to curb himself, reign in the galloping stud stallion of his mind that sires all this chaos. Make the concession, cross the threshold, write down number 11 and be done with it.

11) That's OK.
12) I understand.
13) No problem.
14) Maybe another day?
15) Which way to the Bahnhof?
16) Put me out of my misery.
17) Thank you.
18) De nada.
19) Coyotes and cryptologists.
20) Fingernail clippings in a porcelain sink.
21) The last pink baby on the face of the earth...

He pauses and looks up. He's Sisyphus with a large rock bearing down on him. He loads his incontinent dog into the car and heads down to the video store.


THE PROBLEM

Harry Potter is not the problem. Harry Potter is a mild-mannered symptom of the problem. Symptoms don't know they're symptoms. The first blush of the plague on a small child's cheek thinks it's a rose.

Moby Dick is not a solution to the problem. It could be a symptom of a solution if it were being avidly read (and understood) by the multitudes, because it would mean bigger things were afoot. But it's not being read by the multitudes, and it never will be.

The White Whale is obsolete.
Harry Potter is inconsequential.

***

What is the problem? Is it George Bush, Tom Cruise, Osama Bin Laden, TV violence, guided missiles, Iraq, North Korea, Fox News, Memphis Tennessee? A punctured ozone, polluted oceans, global warming, genocide in Dafur, dwindling oil supplies? These are not the problem, they're freight on a Death Ship on which we are all passengers, a ship with a poop deck, a dance floor and a plank, with first-class cabins and a slave galley, a ship with a fixed destination. The ship is not the problem or a symptom of problem or a solution to the problem. The ship is a conveyance for the problem.

The problem eludes us. It dazzles us with its myriad symptoms. The problem is not something we've created that we can rectify, it's something that has mutated from our creations and our actions. It's autonomous, it does not conceive of itself (which is something we cannot conceive of) and it extinguishes everything indiscriminately.

I wrote a book about it, but I'm having a hard time getting it published.

Advice To A Freshman Composition Class
From An Adjunct Professor Who Got His
Walking Papers The Next Day... (c)'06, by John Bennett


"Just do it, pick up your pen and slam down the words, don't examine your motives, you don't need motives, you need motivation, an air-brushed word for fire in your loins, an air-brushed phrase for a hard-on, a hot pussy--wait now, where are you going? The bell hasn't rung, your time's not up or at hand, you haven't got your money's worth, and God knows you're paying through the nose for it..."

He regroups around the six students who are still in their seats with a barrage of suggestions: "Write about how it makes you feel to be labeled a consumer, how it makes you feel to have education labeled a product, write about your sex fantasies, about your wildest dreams, put down on paper what you've never admitted even to yourself, write down 'Geronimo!' and then jump out of your fear, call it a manifesto, a haiku, a grocery list, come out of the gate like the black bulls of Palermo, gore the matador in his tight sequined pants flashing his distracting red cape, break your chains, do it and I'll give you an A, fake it and I'll fail you, try to change classes and I'll wait for you after school. I'm not here to hold your hand and administer euthanasia, I'm here to brand your mind with the hot iron of freedom!"

Then the bell rang and the remaining six students filed out of the room without making eye contact. He shuffled his papers into his satchel, leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. He smoked it down to the filter and then snuffed it out on the floor under his desk. He walked home and cracked a beer from the fridge and sat in the dark drinking it. He came to a conclusion: "Fuck it," he said.

***

There were three hours of meetings the next day, this committee and that, a faculty advisory committee, a closed-door administration committee, the Students for Straight A's Committee, they even dragged the janitor in and encouraged him to sign an affidavit about the cigarette butts he swept out from under the renegade adjunct's desk every night.

Everyone on the various committees did his level best to remain oblique (directness courts reprisals), and in the end it was left to the non-tenured and therefore easily disposed of Committee of Adjuncts to denounce one of their own and draw up the dismissal draft, which was praised off-the-record by the president of the university for its courage and honesty before his secretary printed it out and stuck it in the mail.

***

The letter was returned by the post office a week later, the addressee had moved and left no forwarding address, which left all of them except the janitor with a vague yearning for closure. This yearning quickly segued into indignation: they felt that they had been wronged and denied redress.

A tenured professor took over the renegade's class, apologized to the students for his outrageous behavior and violation of their trust, and then gave them an assignment they could sink their teeth into: a one-thousand-word essay on what it means to be an American.

Four of the 32 essays began with the identical sentence:

"America is like the coolest place in the whole country."

Obviously someone with a little writing talent was picking up some spare change writing papers for other students. But so what? Free enterprise was the background of the economy, so why should it be barred from the education industry?

Feeling vindicated, the faculty settled back into pushing product.



John Bennett is a writer from a sleepy little college town called Ellensburg, Washington. He once watched Charles Bukoski turn pale as a ghost while joyriding in a jalopy, purportedly driven by Neal Cassady.

3 SHARDS BY JOHN BENNETT
(c) 2006; all rights reserved


LSD

Is it a good thing or a bad thing no one ever dropped it into the water supply? I think it doesn't matter much one way or the other. I've seen people go permanently stark-raving mad on acid. I've never seen anyone turn into an instant sage, which isn't to say that's never happened. I saw one guy who never did drugs and seldom even drank drop a hit before going on stage to play banjo, and his only comment after a night on stage was: very interesting. I saw an artist abruptly change the nature of his art in the middle of a trip; twenty years later his new direction has taken him to a place of national recognition.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Politicians smoke marijuana but they don't inhale. Legions of artists and poets and musicians smoke grass and drink like there's no tomorrow. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe were opium eaters. William Butler Yates did peyote buttons. Ken Kesey wrote one of the great novels of our time in six weeks on acid.

The only thing to learn from all this is that we are utterly doomed unless we create a world in which if you drop acid, nothing seems to change.



THE BACK OF THE BUS

Take your place on the great Mandala. Take your place on the streetcar named Desire. Sit at the back if you've got any dark clouds in the sky of your soul. If you don't the conductor will come along and bop you alongside the head with his change purse. This will trigger a chain reaction of hatred. You will become the lightning rod for a huge disenchantment.

How will the conductor know? Why do you think he's the conductor? He's there to collect dues. You're not paying yours. That's what the dark cloud's about. Guilt. Not playing your part.

Protest all you want. Say it's not guilt. Say it's pain, say it's suffering brought on by suffering. Whip out those pictures in your wallet of napalmed babies in the Nam, raped women in the Sudan, a million starved cousins across the continent of Africa. All that shit. All that propaganda. All that un-American activity.

The more you protest, the more worked up your fellow passengers become. Yours is the kind of behavior that leads to lynchings. Yours in this particular case. Pretty soon they're out of their seats and beating on you. You're down in the aisle and they're kicking you in the groin and the face.

The driver stops the bus and they throw you out the back door. Drive off and leave you in the gutter. People walk by you like you're not even there. Then a cop ambles along and turns you face up with the toe of his boot. Calls in for a wagon. They cart you off.

Two days later you're wearing an orange jumpsuit and up before a judge. You're in worse shape than ever. The inmates have been having their way with you, the real House un-American Activities Committee. The judge gives you 5 to 10. He tells you you're lucky you got a trial at all. He tells you that un-American activity is terrorist activity, which is a sure-fire way to abdicate your God-given rights. They drag you back to your holding cell. Inmates jeer and give cat calls as you pass.

None of this was necessary. All you had to do was sit in your assigned seat. The Buddha had it wrong. Awareness is suffering, not life. Or, life is awareness. The rest is a zombie parade. Awareness is like a lightning rod. The sky is charge with lightning. It will strike you down the moment you reach out a hand to help someone. Don't do it. Hold you cards close to your face. Swallow your vomit and die in the shadows. At the back of the bus.

Where is the Rosa Parks for this high-stakes game?



THE SORT OF WORLD WE LIVE IN

This is the sort of world we live in: imagine you're the greatest tap dancer the world has even known, and they give you one square foot of space to dance in.

And even then they grow uneasy when you begin to move your feet.

***

All true art is a multi-dimensional transcendence that stirs hostility. They rip away at it, tearing out strands that bear a resemblance to linear existence. "Is this supposed to be me?" they say, and prepare to file a law suit.

***

It's almost 5 p.m. on the 14th of January, and there's still light in the sky, wind-swept orange and powder blue over the far ridge.

Now you see why the winter solstice is my favorite day of the year. Then again, maybe you don't.

It's a lonely business, reveling in nature's robust joy.

SHARD by John Bennett
(c)'06; All rights Reserved


Making do with what the doctor ordered. A shelf loaded down with pharmaceuticals where the spice rack used to be. Bye-bye Miss American Pie, sirloin steaks and a half rack of Bud; hello Stairmaster in the cellar, a weight set and a Jacuzzi.

Trim and dapper he lies naked on his silk sheets by candlelight and stares at himself in the mirrored ceiling. He longs for a woman to show up, and do the impossible. Deep within his computer behind a chain of passwords--his porn stash. The quandary of crisis in a deep-throat world.

A woman with disrupted anatomy, her clitoris 8" down her throat, the premise of a blockbuster porn flick. Howard Hughes had 8" nails, a long-shot chance for satisfaction, just a seance away.

Listen to your damaged self, it will tell you what you have to do-- to make the best of things.

***

Love is not a many-splendid thing. It has nothing to do with clits, cleavage or climax; nothing to do with freedom or the First Amendment. It's not encoded in those three magic numbers on the back of your credit card. It has to do with enduring pain and a gentle touch.

If your heart doesn't fill with joy when you see a child skipping down the sidewalk with two different color socks and an untied shoe, you do not know what love is, and your chances of finding out are less than average.

John Bennett, from Ellensburg, Washington, is a novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, humorist, and travel writer-- and a publisher as well. His seminal indie lit imprint Vagabond Press has brought out the work of such writers as Linda King and Maia Penfold, not to mention the amazing 2001 tribute to beat poet Jack Micheline, entitled "Ragged Lion."



These first two poems are taken from the chapbook "John Bennett's Greatest Hits", published by Pudding House Press in 2001.


"Substitute" (c) 2001 John Bennett

When my father was one of six children
& the bills were piling up,
his father walked out the door
& never came back.

The new father was
Irish and feisty
& had a strong sense
of right and wrong.

He could lift a broom
by the end of its handle
with ten books
piled on the bristles,
used the belt freely
& could
not stand a lie.

He was a
hard man to love.

A pipe fitter by trade,
he spent most of his life
in the bowels of a
New York hotel,
descending daily into
darkness and heat.

He died one April,
a shriveled substance of grey,
the hospital window open,
trees and flowers in bloom &
the cries of stick ball
on the street below.

The last thing to die
was a question in his eyes,
answered by my father's tears,
his great head descending
to the shock-white sheets.


"The Most Noble Part" (c) 2001 John Bennett

I'm getting tired of all this. I mean really, fuck it. I am going to turn in my badge again. What bothers me is that they let you turn it in and check it out as often as you want. Doesn't that seem strange? But like I said, I'm getting tired of it, I don't want to think about it anymore. I'm just going to pull the wool with the peek holes over my eyes again. Play at stances. Four days of this and I'm fed up. Fuck the world. Fuck the truth. Fuck the pull from the other side. Traps, traps, traps. It's all traps. There is no way out. Thinking is the biggest trap of all. But sometimes, it's like when you don't get enough exercise, you know what I mean? Your mind starts going flabby on you. Your real mind. Not the thing that writes checks and ties shoelaces and gathers degrees and parking tickets and love letters-- I mean the mind that is sitting perfectly still in there. The mind that is waiting to die

***



Now, here are two from "Cheyenne Of The Mind", a chapbook from D Press published in 2004.


"Twice He Struck Her" (c) 2004 John Bennett

Twice he slapped her across the mouth, and when she didn't cry out, just stood there holding the back of her hand to her bleeding lip and slowly shaking her head, her eyes full of something weird he didn't know what, a mixture of pain and confusion, a reflection of a beast she was seeing in him-- when she did that he hit her with his fist, hard, right on the cheek bone, and then there was only one look in her eyes. She staggered backwards, her hands dangling, and made a sound like Unnnnhh, as if he'd hit her in the stomach.

Tucked in his bed safe and sound with the door ajar, their eight-year-old son drew a map in his head. The world was flat again, made of glass, and he was a spider on the underside, looking up ladies' dresses. Now and then someone fell off and he rushed to save them, but he was always too late, wisps of spider web adrift in a cosmos of dark emptiness, looking for something to cling to.


"Screen Test" (c) 2004 John Bennett

Something to stand behind while slipping out of your street clothes into the outfit you wear when you want it. All that diaphanous silk floating over your body like cloud cover, the peaks of the Himalayas poking thru, dazzling in the icy white sun.

What's a poor guy to do, standing there in his young man's suit clutching briefcase, an iron rod ramming hard in his trousers? This was supposed to be one drink after work with the boss lady.

Out she steps, cinching her robe tight, smoothing silk down her hips, her chestnut hair that he's only seen in a bun cascading down over her shoulders.

She takes the briefcase from his clutched fist and drops it on the floor. She presses against that ferocious protrusion. In her head she's already filed for divorce.

She unzips his fly and out springs her bright happy future.

***

Last but not least, here are two shards from John's 2000 chapbook entitled "Betrayal's Like That", published under the Vagabond imprint:


"Two Hours To Tattoo Time" (c) 2000 John Bennett

Decaf. Filter cigarettes. Zero the key to numerology. Ignorance the key to wisdom. The snap on. The snap gone. Turn the key and turn over the engine. Ga-rah-rah-rah. The sound of machinery without spark. Draining the battery with the 36-month guarantee. Stop turning the key. Just sit there. Watch a bird thru the windshield fly overhead. A lion on the upper left arm, scheduled in for five-thirty.

Bitterness and madness, a gruelling concoction. Something has to give.

Two hours to tattoo time. Take a hard look and see what poison spurts from the tip of the needle.


"Think This Over" (c) 2000 John Bennett

Think about the way moths fly to the flame. Think how the flame licks their essence. Think how still with secrets a dark night on an empty street can be. Think of yourself, walking those streets, thinking these thoughts. Think how foreign the beauty of your heart or the pulsing of your blood is. Think how it continues in spite of yourself, all those soft busy organs, gurgling and processing, having nothing to do with you. Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing at all.