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.
