Jon Bennett- Three Poems

Our Wedding

We took the bus to our wedding.
An old bum was getting off
as we sat down
and there was this smell -
another case
of fecal incontinence on MUNI.
In the City Hall bathroom
I got most of the stain
off my tuxedo pants
but it was the smell
that wouldn’t go away.
I should’ve known then
it would all be shit.


 

You Can’t Win

My friend comes and takes me to dinner
“let’s talk about your show,” he says,
“you sucked, I’d like to tell you
I feel bad saying it, but
I’ve been carrying it around
for two weeks.”
He’d been carrying it around
then he gave it to me
and started chatting up two German girls
out of his league.
I do all this fucking art
I figure
something has to give
either me or the world
but I’ll never give up
of course, an old man
saying, “I’ll never give up”
is almost the same as saying
he already has.
 


G.

Someday I’ll have
a scar on my cheek
too, I think
though
5 years older
than Greg
I try to be
slick
and as he
goes to the juke
say, “play
some songs
for me, Greg”
slip him the 50
bucks.
 


Jon Bennett is a musician and writer living in San Francisco's Chinatown.  His novel "The Unfat," scifi about autism, is available on Amazon.