jonberger

They brought me back from the future
so I could let you know
that about an eighth of the galaxy
will end up worshipping you
if you just don’t do the thing.

I can’t tell you what the thing is
that you’re not supposed to do
because that would upset the timeline (duh!)
and also I do not know what it is.

But it is very important you avoid doing that thing, Vera,
if you want to end up forming the religion
that about an eighth of the galaxy’s sentients will follow
in the future
– and also change your name to Vera,
apparently.

I know you’ve been wondering
what to get me this holiday season
for Krinklemas and Hysterectomy Week
and whatnot and wherefore
and I’m happy to tell you what I’m hoping for:
Piece on earth.
Wait, hold on: pieces of earth.
Pieces of land.
I’d like you to get me real estate.

I know. I’m sure
that you can’t afford to get me much.
I’m not asking for the world here
but if everybody does their part
giving just a little bit
I might be able to end up with a pretty parcel
a hunk of a chunk of land.

That’s all I’m really asking for:
a crapload of property.
A chance to be a landsman.
An opportunity to be a lord
a master of serfs
a commander of lessers
a better person than all around me!
Is that too much to ask?

Well then,
think of it as a combined gift
for Krinklemas and Hysterectomy Week
– and Kwanzaa too.

The hands of a hero are seldom clean.
The hands of a hero are often mean.
The hero’s hands are fast & blasting,
quick and rarely seen.
The hands of a hero are red, not green.

The feet of a hero, when found, are brown
from walking through the nastier parts of town.
The hero’s lips may frown, traipsing
hither and yon & up and down.
The feet of a hero travel all around.

The cries of a hero may frequently be bleak
and the efforts to be humble might seem meek
and the hero’s quest for peace may make the hero seem a freak
but that she’ll fight ’til the end means she’s not weak.

The back of the hero is raised up high
but the hero is never gazing at the sky
for that hero can never zero out the danger lest she die
so the head of the hero must stare you in the eye.
The hero will always stare you in the eye.

The worst of the lot
is not necessarily the biggest
or the most powerful
or even the most effective in evil.
He is the ringleader, though,
and he keeps the others straight
in being creepily crooked.

The chairman of the boors is bad,
basically bestial in his bent buyways.
He is one to be avoided,
his barely humanoid id
runs rampant up ramparts
of taste and decorum.
The forums he lays waste
are lambasted and blasted and
he’s got to be squeezed
from these places just like that!

For he’s mean and he’s wrong
but the throng he controls must be beat
so how sweet it’ll be when all we
that will do it can get through it
just by finishing the task to completion.
It’ll be complex.
It’ll be precarious
but finally, it will be concluded.

We need to close the case
quickly and quietly
on the chairman of the boors.

There is a song that Sinead sang
originally by the Pogues
called "Haunted."

It is about a romance
that could never die
or so says the narrator
who "wants to be haunted
by the ghost-ghost-ghost-ghost
of your precious love."

But in the year
that Sinead and Shane
both ruthlessly left us too soon,
"Haunted" somehow signifies something else.

The Irish Dead are multiplying.
They are rallying their best,
among the most child-like trusting people in the Universe.

Sinead said that once
but then, she said a lot of things.

It’s kind of weird that nobody wanted the Roman Empire to fall.
I mean, like, individuals wanted it to fall
so they could pick up the pieces
and take ’em for themselves
and maybe the recently conquered
who remembered being free
were thinking “all right, we can get up
from under the yolk of oppression!”
but after being held down by Roman chains
it probably proved to be kind of uncomfortable
to end up being flogged by Vandal rope.

So, yeah.
Everything was struggling to destroy the empire
individuals and armies
and historic cultural forces and all
but if they all gave it a little think,
they probably would have decided
that things were probably better under Rome
and Ravenna and Constantinium, too.

The money and the roads and the running water
and the science and the polytheism and all that
were probably worth it, in the long run,
if they thought about it.
Maybe they could have kept it going
and not gone dark
for those few years.

Anyway,
something I was thinking about,
you know?

You’ll learn at some point
– perhaps today –
that there are days
when you have to stop your regular acts of conquest
to enjoy the fruit of your labor:
enjoy the slaves and spoils
you have won in your campaigns
and exploit all the victims
of your various victories.

Some days are for digging trenches,
using truncheons,
transferring terror through the ranks of one’s enemies
and then there are days to rifle through the bodies of corpses to collect valuables
and find just what treasure can be collected.

This can be one of those days.

Which sort of day,
I hear you asking?
On that, my little warrior,
you decide.

Forgive me my nineteen nineties’
proto-emo reference point,
but Dear You:
your presenting ideas for an upcoming poem
entitled “Ice Cream Sandwich,”
rathering than simply writing a poem
entitled “Ice Cream Sandwich,”
was a daring move.
Not necessarily a good move,
but a daring one.

I could see why you might not be overly interested
in composing any of the concepts you created.
They weren’t all that grand.
For example:

You went off on a rhyme-scream
about how an ice cream sandwich isn’t a real sandwich
because there’s no meat
and how the Earl of Sandwich
would be rolling in his grave
down in hell
if he had to eat one
every day as some kind of punishment.
Did you ever stop to think, though,
that perhaps, after centuries,
the Earl of Sandwich might be
a vegetarian?

Wouldn’t that just upset your little applecart of assumptions? I should think so!
Moving on…

You allude to an idea
that ice cream sandwiches
ought not to be eaten in Autumn,
for they belong to the warmer months,
and it thus follows that Fall should have foods
of a far more fiery form.
I could accept that possible poem,
but the bigotry behind it,
the sheer isolation
where all things are ghettoized in their place
and never allowed to move beyond –
that is simply limiting.
I defy it, sir!

Finally, you knew enough to self-censor
when you said that black biscuits surrounding white
was a weak metaphor for multiculturalismness.

You could tell
that your literary bones were too weak
to flesh out as pomes
which is why you left them as they were!

Maybe you had better thoughts
that you kept to yourself
that you’re preparing for publication.
Certainly, I hope so.

If I am wrong, of course,
feel free to make the case
by writing any of these
ice cream sandwich masterpieces
and showing us all
just what you really had in mind.
I look forward to your work.

Make it snappy.

You wake upexcited, determined, nervous.
You have a mission
that you don’t really understand.
You stretch the inches
from the bed to the recliner
to get to work on the poem.

You know its title
but nothing else about your work today.
It came to you in a flash
as your eyes were flickering
just moments ago
and now you need to capture the energy,
the bottled lightning you felt,
when you heard yourself think
“ice cream sandwich.”

“What will this piece be about?”
you wonder.
“Yes, of course: ice cream
shaped between two choclatey biscuits, naturally…
but what is it about?”
The metaphorical pen presses on the metaphorical page
(it’s really a thumb on the mousepad
but that ain’t so lyrical, so…)

“Perhaps I could write about different shades,
the darkness of the biscuits
encroaching on the milky center,
how these elements are better together.”
You pause in consideration,
“But wouldn’t that better be served
by imagining a shop for self-serve yogurt
with all its wonderful mix-ins?

“Maybe it’s about the brain freeze
one experiences
when trying to delight in Summer pleasures
out of season
and how Autumn is for Autumn things
when the Summer should be left behind?

“Or possibly about that ancient Earl,
and how he’d never have dreamed
that his invention would have gone so astray,
that perhaps for him it’s a cold cold day
down in a place where the devil holds sway
where he sees these out in ice creamy display
presented to him for delicious buffet
where he has no choice to opt to say nay
but wearily has to say ‘yea!'”

You start scratching out ideas
onto the metaphorical legal page
(yes, it’s a legal pad now.
Metaphors can expand).
You’re still not sure where it’s going,
but you like the train of thought.
In any case, you’d better finish quick
because suddenly
you feel a hunger coming on
and it’s a doozy.

There is a trick that I used to try
when I wasn’t able to rev myself up
to do the thing I needed to do.
I would look at myself
(if there was no mirror around
I would look down at my lap)
and I would say,
"You can’t do it.
You’re nothing.

"You’re incompetent.
You’re insignificant.
There’s no way you can get it going.
She’s not gonna like you.
You can’t make the call.
You can’t even cross the street.
Don’t even try it, man.
Fuck it: quit."

I figured, I think
(I never got a definitive answer
as to what the hell I was doing),
that I was fucking with myself
playing devil’s advocate.
If I could psych myself down enough
to argue, to prove me wrong,
then I could get some steam going
and do whatever it was that needed doing.

It worked maybe twenty percent of the time
which is twenty percent more
than the other times
when I was a whimpering simp
off in a hole
doing nothing about nothing.

Somewhere along the line
I guess I stopped using that strategy.
Maybe I’m all about positivity now!

Go… team?