A poetry collection – by Jon Bennett

When You Dream Your Teeth Fall Out

 

I finally fell asleep

next to a person

it’d been 7 years

I took lorazepams to do it

but then I had a nightmare

There’s a subconscious

man in me, I guess

and he started saying

“There is a body

next to you,

a body

next to you!”

I woke up screaming

kicked the bed on accident

and moved to her spare bedroom

The odd part is

I want there to be

a body next to me

it’s the man inside

I’m afraid of.

 

No New Center

 

Tom Waits once said

of sobriety

“When you drain the pool

you find out

if there’s anything

down at the bottom.”

Friends,

all I found down there

was concrete

and concrete is boring

I’ve said so many prayers

at AA meetings

my atheism

is starting to waver

so I’m giving up on art

all I did was complain, anyhow,

and things are, God help me,

getting better.

 

The Black Domes

 

The 1st time I noticed the black domes

I was working Centerfolds strip club

if I sat down to rest for a minute

even in the dark

they’d see me and tell me

“Get back to work.”

These days, in the casinos,

the black domes are everywhere

and in the gym, the hotel lobbies

the libraries

I guess the kids don’t mind them

and for all I know the black domes

are only pretending to watch

“Half don’t even work,”

is what I tell myself

but which half?

I guess the safest way to go

is to be a watcher

instead of the watched

because even if the world ends

the watchers will still

be watching us.

 

Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.  You can find more of his work on iTunes and Pandora.  For booking please contact jonbennett14@hotmail.com.