John Bennett

The Pygmy Revolt

You're either on the bus or in a cab. Heading across town to a tryst or off to work. Dreaming the dream or living the life. Short-changing blind monks or leading pygmies in revolt.

Well, maybe it's not that cut-and-dry. Maybe you're just sitting at home watching TV and shoveling in the pizza. Maybe your dreams aren't fulfilled, your bones made of iron. Maybe you'll never soar like and eagle and wind up with a chauffeur or a mistress or a goose that lays golden eggs. Maybe your wife will never divorce you or your children grow up to be champions.

Breakfast of champions. A straight shot of bourbon with a beer chaser and a Camel straight. See how the world comes into focus, your dreams resurrect covered in hoarfrost, the mirror tells you lies you can live with?

People who nag you to become well-adjusted never lived in your skin. They have a cockeyed take on what life's about. Always tip your hat to them, give up your seat on the bus, relinquish the cab to their crazed destinations.

This will buy you time to get in touch with the pygmies and start the revolt.

 

Flying South

Three geese
flying south
thru a
gray sky
at the
end of
January.

It's a
long story
why they
didn't leave
with the
other geese

 

John Bennett was for many years the driving force behind Vagabond Press which operated on the run from Munich to DC to New Orleans to San Francisco and beyond.  He’s published four novels, two novellas, five short story collections and numerous books of poetry, essays and shards, a poem/story hybrid of his own invention.

He keeps slamming out the words, if anything with more ferocity than ever. As Henry Miller said so eloquently around half a century ago, “You may as well have your say, they’re going to shit on you anyway.”