4 Hour Hard On

Space Out, Mi Homies! ;)

From the book, Flowers For Hitler
McClelland & Stewart © 1964
All Rights Reserved



WHAT I’M DOING HERE

I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi

Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess

The Early Bird Queue
forms over yonder ----> ...

... ...


Meanwhile,

let us breakfast
on some leftover



Rooster



Hope you don't lose your lunch.

(c) 2007, by John Bennett
All Rights Reserved



TEN-ROUNDER


Expectation and Hallucination are duking it out in a 20-foot ring of fire. By round ten they're throwing round-house punches and the crowd is on its feet, booing and throwing bottles. The ref gives a warning to the two fighters and then bangs their heads together. This brings cheers from the crowd.

Expectation shoots a straight jab to Hallucination's jaw, but it's just an illusion. This is part of the problem that the crowd doesn't pick up on; they think they're seeing things as they are.

Expectation starts in with the foot work, hoping to win points on style; the last thing he wants is a draw; a rematch; a called fight. Expectation wants victory.

As for Hallucination, it's not easy being someone no one believes in. Hallucination, longing to get KOed, steps into a right cross and goes down.

The stadium goes quiet as Expectation drops to his knees with his head hung and his arms dangling, shedding tears on a scuffed empty canvas.





GIVING AWAY TRADE SECRETS

It's what anyone in his right mind will do after a few weeks of waterboarding. Of course no one's in his right mind after that much waterboarding, and there we have it, Catch-22, hard at work.

Two weeks of waterboarding and they put you on the day shift. Just kidding. They put you in a cell with a Koran and a wool blanket. You scream after them that you're Irish-Catholic and it's 102 degrees out, but they don't listen. They already have what they came for: a list of names comprised of an entire Brazilian soccer team; your admission that the bong they found in your Madagascar apartment could be made into a bomb; and receipts from the money you've been sending the Christian Children's Fund to support two starving children, one in India and one in Indonesia, hotbeds of terrorism.

A barber comes in and gives you a shave and a haircut and they start pumping 4,000 calories a day into you, mostly starch and fast food from the franchises that have settled in around the Guantanamo perimeter. Four weeks later they drop you in jeans, a white t-shirt and ankle-high tennis shoes on the night streets of Cleveland in an all-black neighborhood.

You may be ignorant and think waterboarding has something to do with surfing. Maybe you're paranoid and a bad speller and have begun connecting the dots between trade and traitor, traitor and terrorist. But the big question is, do terrorists have trade secrets, and did Dylan Thomas cross over to the dark side when he wrote Adventures in the Skin Trade? He was, after all, Irish-Catholic. And what about the slave trade, for God's sake, no secret there, still going strong way over a century after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Carry the logic to its bitter end and you wind up scrutinizing, abducting and interrogating people who trade picture cards of Brazilian soccer players. The ramifications are staggering, the threat everywhere.

If you're still alive when the sun comes up over Cleveland, there's an off chance you'll live to fight another day.





SMOKING ALONE

I want a smoking lady to fill the empty hours with. I want to wake up singing arias at the top of my lungs. This is how the hardcore write when they've been stripped down to the bone. With a scant bit of information, we restructure the universe. It's not as hard as it sounds.

You wake up singing arias in a loud voice, your own homespun Big Bang. You turn to share your creation with your lover, but she's locked up in dream. Your whole world turns to shadow.

You reach for your cigarettes on the bed stand.

You smoke alone.





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ROUND ONE

Teddy Bear stands ready
in fighting stance, wears
the Tai Chi knickers
of Bagger Vance!

Teddy strikes Cobra Pose

--Bal-ance!...Bal-ance!--Bal-
Ance! - BALANCE!

while left paw
rainbows
like a sheep
herder's lance.

--"Yeeeee-owwwwww!... YOU
MAY STRIKE FIRST BLOW BUT
IT WILL GLANCE!--

Come the wicked
spinning back kicks

--Ad-vance!--Ad-vance!
ADVANCE MOTHERFUCKER
C'MON... ADVANCE!!!!--

Teddy locks you up
in agate-eyed trance,

growls:

"Is that stuffing,
or mashed potatoes
in your pants?...
Your ass is mine, so dis-
regard those other plans!"

Boo Boo he float
like so many dust
motes,silkensunny husks
of long-dead ants... ...

Teddy he got you
by the throat,

you never ever
ever ever

had a chance.

Well,

Would ya?

Of The River

Alice In Chains + November?

Why, they go together like
flies in a mason jar of honey.



I hope U dig this first song, but that,
by the same token, you do NOT take Title
of Said Song to heart, when deciding
whether or not to revisit


my blog!