Charles Bukowski | Photo by Herb Ritts
POETRY DISPATCH No. 360 | December 10, 2011
John Bennett
Sometimes You Feel So All Alone
I’d like to address the court. I’d like to address the hung jury. I’d like to address the envelope in the best penmanship possible. I’d like to dress up like a Lilliput and go traipsing thru the streets of Chicago. I’d like to dabble in redress to ease my distress. I’d like to respond to the warrant. I’d like to warrant your love. I’d like to live in a warren and watch the world pass by.
I wish I could stop tap dancing and snapping my fingers. I wish I could take off this grease paint. I wish I could lay down and die. No, seriously, how bad could it be? Except I wonder how long my brain will continue to churn after my heart has stopped. I wonder if they’ll be unkind to my body.
I’m partial to a funeral pyre pushed out to sea. Or just lay me down in the leaves in some deep forest dressed in everyday clothes. I don’t need a service where people show up who’ve stopped thinking about me years ago. Let’s not make a lie of it on the cusp of my last breath.
Sometimes you feel so all alone it just feels right.
Goodbye, Charles Bukowski.
poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 
This prose poem has all the beauty of the profoundly ordinary. This universal ache is widely familiar, but seldom captured in such thoughful prose. : ” I wish i could stop tap dancing—-” and again ” I’m partial to a funeral pyre pushed out to sea–“. It captures both the torment and relief of parting and leaves the rest unsaid and lets you spin your wheels. I like it, Phil Hansotia.
Realy like this a lot, and a great photo too.
Fine words from a man who is “not part of anyone’s barbershop quartet.”
It peels the layers away, it could be skin or feelings, raw and uncompromising .. it’s a damn fine prose poem
I wanted to find out more about John Bennett and tried Google to little avail.
Any suggestions?
You certainly choose thought-provoking and sometimes “over my head” blogs, but I appreciate the stimulation.
to find out about John Bennett:
Visit the Vagabond/Hcolom Press home page at:
http://www.hcolompress.com/Books.html
John always goes to the core. His reflections are always right, not always flattering. He has this in common with Bukowski.
my ashes will be spread under the birch trees in the forest in oulu. there is no more beautiful place.
Awrighta, Nazzzz….you are in New Year’s Eve form already…ahem…
I’m reading this by John and I get this from John:
The Essence of Injury
John Bennett
The essence
of injury
is that
a function
of the
unconscious
gets shifted
to the
conscious.
Bennett, like Bukowski, just lays it out.