The Down Side of Personhood
If corporations
are persons
it means
they
must die.
Category Archives: poems & short jabs
the down side of personhood
Filed under poems & short jabs
the center of the universe
The Center of the Universe
Things become
infinitesimally small
even as they
become
infinitesimally large.
Wherever you are
when you
realize this
is the
center of
the universe.
Filed under poems & short jabs
the cheshire cat of catastrophe
The Cheshire Cat of Catastrophe
One of
those dreams
where the
full catastrophe
of your life
comes into focus
& puts
its nose
right up
to yours.
Like the
Cheshire Cat,
done
playing games.
Filed under poems & short jabs
hush now
Hush Now
Do not
sit down
in direct
conversation.
Do not
mention the
name of
your heart’s
thunder.
Do not
come down
off the
mountain with
your tablets
of stone.
Do not
forfeit silence
for a
warm place
to sleep.
If you
must talk,
talk in
metaphor,
unless you’re
ordering coffee.
Filed under poems & short jabs
the alienation series
THE ALIENATION SERIES
“Dialogue enhances mayhem…”
TRANSITION
Generations wash over me like ocean waves.
I wear smooth slowly like a stubborn stone.
The rough edges are the first to go, and I begin to tumble
amongst the pebbles and the sea shells.A small child who no longer reminds me of myself skips me over water.
I sink through silver bubbles to the waiting sand,
fetal with my eyes screwed shut, curling into rebirth.
LIFE ON EARTH
A lifetime of tentative gestures, each gesture with its hallmarks and its pop-up cards.
No one lives a single life. They morph one into the other until it’s over.
You are not your lives. You’re a green-visored apparition
counting beans behind a teller’s window.You’re a witness.
AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY
Try to listen with your eyes closed and report back what you hear.
Everyone reporting back has the same song to sing–the horror, the horror.
The deep compression of the black hole of truly knowing.
If you don’t know that, you have no idea what the universe is made of.
TOYING WITH SURRENDER
For years now I’ve been waving my fist in the face of time.
It’s time I straighten up and fly right.
Come in from the cold.
Pay tithe.I hail from an age when mothers called their children in from porch steps
when darkness began to fall.
For this if nothing else I’m deeply grateful.Just kidding about coming in from the cold.
There’s nothing to come in to.
The house door is off its hinges and the windows boarded up.
The fire in the hearth has turned to ash,
and the echo of a mother’s voice has long since vanished.
ONE SMALL STONE
I’m one small stone in a parabola of stones across a dead man’s creek.
It’s been ages since a small child’s foot
pushed off my clustered words towards the next stone
in a daring dash for freedom.The last escape route has been sealed.
Whatever’s left to say is mop-up action.
ALIENATION
It came to him while taking out the trash–
alienation is having allegiance to a mystery beyond the human race.He hears a twig snap behind him, but when he twirls around, there’s nothing there.
Filed under John Bennett, poems & short jabs
sunny side of the street
Sunny Side of the Street
I directed
my feet
to the
sunny side
of the
street &
got attacked
by chickens.
Filed under poems & short jabs
