Open your eyes and look?
What do you see?
Last night’s second injury to Granderson.
A season of so many injuries it’s hard to believe.
So, what’s the problem?
Girardi.
Jeter.
Cashman.
Look at their faces, their body language.
LOOK AT THEIR EYES!
Girardi in particular.
Robot.
Military mentality.
He favors Gardner over Granderson in center?!
You gotta be kidding me, right?
The team is unhappy!!
The team is out of balance.
What happens when things are out of balance?
We all know.
The body gets sick.
The nation gets sick.
Things go awry.
Think about it. Kim Jones. What happened to her?
She commented, if you don’t already know, that
“Things have to pass Jeter’s desk.”
Ho!
You think the woman is going to stick around
after this remark? Or after this understanding?
C’mon, now.
Open your eyes.
Look!
Check out the faces of Cashman, Jeter, Girardi!
All the same.
It’s in the eyes, man, it’s in the eyes!!
As for Wells and Overbay, hey, I love them.
Yeah, thank god for them.
But they don’t contradict what I’m telling you.
This is an extra for them, the Yanks.
They’re having fun. Not part of this problem.
They benefit from the injuries. Good guys,
don’t hear me wrong.
But they’re only interlopers.
The Yanks are on the DL.
So, bottom line: military, corporate mentality
rules the Yankees now.
Girardi is Donald Trump without the money.
The Yanks are in big time trouble, bro.
Big time trouble!
Snow huddles me
over gritty stone pavements
on a Visigoth winter
along Cambridge Common
wanting a coffee
without a Kennedy dollar,
crossing the Square
by red cab headlights
punctured with cold
in my pea jacket
found on the club’s bar
resting comfortably
after an all night gig
with a redeemed sax
in a self-made sling
from an injured hand
trying to break up
a rowdy bar fight
when an autograph seeker
helping me out
who claims he knows me
from my urban read
in denim and cowboy hat
recently tattooed,
with a lone star accent
follows me
in his broken down cab
standing on Mass. Ave
with a tiny case
as Dizzy riffs dissolve
on the car radio
like snowy kisses
from a dirty windowpane
with my new collection
called “A.M, PM.”
in the front seat
offers to drive me
and put me up
in any motel
if I sign on the dotted line
to Tex, my friend
feeling like
a hammered vagabond
burnt out
from Cambridge weekends
without any sleep
running a heavy fever
sliding on the street
now filling with drifts
the driver telling me
a round about story
about rescuing his shy kid
named Bobby Bob
nearly killed in traffic
jumping on the backseat
with a pocket trumpet
for the school band
obviously high
who asks us for directions
to nowhere.
“You’ve fought a harder, cleaner fight than anyone I know.” — Charles Bukowski
COVER ART: Scott Mayberry. LAYOUT & DESIGN: Jeff Cleveland & Scott Mayberry. All shards written and read by John Bennett. All beats by Seed Verb except: The Audience, Seed & Mike Elkins; Choosing, Seed & Nervous; CIM, Nervous; Leeboy, Lee McCullough & Nervous; Snake Skin, Nervous. Seed Verb and Nervous appear courtesy of Puppetfangghost.
Some of the shards on this CD have appeared in written form in the following books and magazines: Books:Domestic Violence; New World Order. Magazines: First Class; Pudding; Pulpsmith; Lost & Found Times. Copyright 1999 by John Bennett. A Vagabound Production, 605 E. 5th Ave., Ellensburg, WA 98926. Produced at the Bombshelter, Ellensburg, Washington, by Seed Verb, Nervous and John Bennett.
Tracklist: 1. Only Business 2. Choosing3. The Audience 4.A Bird’s Eye View Of The Problem 5.Feel Up (Instrumental) 6.Blowing The Lid Off 7.Costello: The God Of Creation 8. Cim (Instrumental) 9. Ghetto Poem10. Let Them Eat Biscuits 11. Much Ado About Nothing 12. Russ (Instrumental) 13.A Pep Talk To The Class Of 9714. Snakeskin 15. Junkyard Dog 16.Leeboy (Instrumental)17. Ascent Of Man18.Molecular Conspiracy
Please Note: If you’re interested in ordering Rug Burn, and you live in the continental U.S., a cheaper way to do so would be to send $10 (postage included) to:
Hcolom Press
605 E. 5th Ave.
Ellensburg, WA 98926
Photo by Sean Maupin
BALLAD OF A SHARD WRITER
I hit the road when I was ten. Carnival gigs and fruit-tramp days. Shady doings in South Philly and Cleveland. The army shot me straight off to Nam. I was the only tunnel rat over six feet tall, a contortionist from the school of hard knocks. I spooked the hell out of Charlie. For the first time in my life, I was grounded in purpose.
But good things never last. I hit the streets when the war crashed and burned, and the next thing I know l’m on a chain bus to prison. By the time I got out, I was rug burn all over. It’s what happens when you get dragged naked over life’s carpet by the hair, by the heels, by betrayal.
I know this next part is hard to believe, but one night a princess came down from the sky and began spinning spells around me. It took years, but when she’d finished, my skin had grown soft as a baby’s. Then she rode off without warning on some prince’s white charger. That’s when I began writing shards. A shard is a knee-jerk reaction to rug burn. A blowtorch in the face of betrayal.
This CD contains a selection of spoken shards, jazzed up by the musical imaginations of Seed Verb and Nervous, two cats from the rap group Log Hog. Happy listening. –John Bennett
He was beginning to not like himself again. He wasn’t sure why, probably because of his festering childhood secrets. They’d been buried so long that they were secret even from himself. Most of them anyway. There were a few relating to his father that kept refreshing themselves in his dreams. Nightmares really. After listening for years to other people talk about their dreams he realized his dreams were nightmares.
He didn’t talk about his nightmares. He was afraid a secret would slip out if he did. Instead he made up outlandish stories that people found hilarious. They told him he should become a comedian.
The one secret that stayed vivid in his mind was when his Aunt Alice tied him up naked with clothesline and dropped him in a full tub of ice-cold water. He almost drowned. He was only three, but the memory remained fresh in his mind, except as time went on the person Aunt Alice dropped into the tub of water aged, until now in the nightmare she was tying up a 38-year-old man and with great difficulty, hefting him over her shoulder, carrying him to the tub and dumping him in, water cascading all over the bathroom floor. “That’ll teach you to behave!” she roared, as if she was talking to a three-year-old.
He was pretty sure that’s what it was, that his secrets were making him turn on himself, but a lot of help that was. He didn’t start liking himself just because he’d figured out why he didn’t like himself. Things got worse in fact. He was at a point where either he took his own life or he he went around hurting people.
It was obvious that Aunt Alice didn’t like herself, or his father either, for that matter. And what did they do? They took it out on a three-year-old boy.
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