john bennett | the day begins

The Day Begins

I woke up this morning and a worm fell out of my ear. I rolled over on my other side and a tiny beetle fell out of the other ear. The alarm hadn’t gone off yet, and it was still dark out. I got up.

I walked naked into the kitchen and flicked on the overhead light. I noticed my stomach was covered with tiny red spots and my toenails had grown long and black and curved down so that they scratched against the linoleum as I crossed the floor. I washed down three aspirin with a tepid glass of tap water and went back to bed. But I couldn’t get back to sleep because of the ticking clock.

Wait a minute. The clock is digital. I went up on one elbow and stared at the glowing red numbers, watched a four turn over into a five. The ticking stopped. But the moment I lay back down, it started again. I pulled the pillow over my head and soon I was dreaming.

There were elephants in my dream, marching thru a corn field in Kansas. Then a swarm of locust blackened the sky and swooped down over the corn. The elephants began to trumpet. They raised their trunks in the air and sucked up the locust as they descended, then shat them out in the form of tiny rodents that began nibbling at the corn. Big game hunters materialized and blasted away with their elephant guns. The elephants stampeded thru the corn.

I woke with a start. The alarm began beeping, my cell phone started ringing, and the TV came on with the morning news.

Wait a minute. I don’t have a TV. I got out of bed and shut it off anyway.

First light was in the sky, and I noticed that the red spots on my stomach had turned phosphorescent green.

I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes. I knew I should get up and take a bath, but I was afraid of what would come out of the faucet when I turned on the water.

click the Hcolom Press logo to visit the web page...HCOLOM PRESS is the heir to Vagabond Press, which began as a main player in the Mimeo Revolution of the Sixties and continued publishing right into the jaws of the new millennium. HCOLOM PRESS embodies the spirit of Vagabond Press, retooled for the times we live in.

Hcolom is Moloch spelled backwards. Moloch is an Old Testament deity to which children were sacrificed, a practice society still engages in with increased enthusiasm. Consumerism is the new Moloch, manifesting itself like cancer in war, politics, the arts and religion, in every nook and cranny of human endeavor, draining the intrinsic beauty out of life and mutilating the innocence and magic of childhood with its commercial meat hook. HCOLOM PRESS intends to publish books that by their nature repudiate this pernicious force–novels, poetry, children’s books and books that transcend genre.

Our launch book, in June of 2006, was John Bennett’s novel, Tire Grabbers, a fable of sorts, a reality book rooted in the fantasy of our times, the story of the coming of Moloch and the children who rise up in rebellion against it.

Books of kindred spirit will follow close on its heels. Go for it by clicking here… or hit the Hcolom logo above…

0 Replies to “john bennett | the day begins”

  1. Dear John Bennett,
    I am moved by your sequences in your imagination.
    So terse and elegant of phrase which breaks silence
    in a poet’s melodious and luminous tone.
    My best wishes,
    BZ Niditch

Leave a Reply to bz niditchCancel reply

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