jonberger

Good morning, pal! What’s news to you, bro?
The sun is out, but there’s still something you’ve gotta know.
I have to remind you of something you hate:
Yeah, it looks like a birthday kind of a date.

You’re old, yo. You doing anything about it?
You’re old, yo. You so deaf I gotta shout it!
You’re old, yo, and every day it seems to worsen.
You’re old, bro! You’ve become an aged person!

I wish there was something that could change it in your ancient eyes
but anything that I could say would be lies, lies, lies
and were you to scrape away all of that grave deceit
you’d find beneath a kernel of an honest truth receipt (which reads)

You’re old, yo. You’ve gotten antiquated.
You’re old, yo. Everything about you’s dated!
You’re old, bro, you’re surely looking worse for wear.
You’re old, Oh, I so wish I was your heir!

You’re old, yo. You doing anything to change it?
You’re old, yo. Could you maybe rearrange it?
You’re old, yo, your youthful bell will not be rung again.
You’re old, bro and you will never be young again.

Mother said that she knew
as soon as she saw
the body
collapsed on the floor
halfway in the bathroom
halfway in the hall
that it was no longer
a husband
no longer
a father
no longer a living/breathing thing
but rather a former/living/breathing thing.

Mother asked me when I knew.
“When the doctors called it,” I said,
but that is not entirely accurate
as an answer
because they only called it
when Mother announced
that he had a DNR order in place
which is a thing that occurred
only because I reminded her.

It is in this way
I suppose
that I killed my father.

I had spent
some time before
failing to resuscitate the man
then watched the medics
take a more relaxed approach
at attempting the same.
The fact that they were so calm
put me at ease.

In retrospect
they were probably
so laid back in their technique
because it was such a lost cause.

When they placed him in the ambulance
there was only space for one relative
so I brought the car to the hospital
and was looking for a parking space
while they cut the cord
on my daddy’s life.

Minutes later
I bid goodbye to his corpse.

It was around then
I suspect
I realized
he was a former/living/breathing thing.
So Mother, it seems,
was a bit quicker on the uptake than I.

News on the street reminds me
of something I’ve always known:
my family which has been in the city
for generations
also lost generations
in the old country
in the war.

In the Holocaust.

In my immediate clan
there are four Berger boys
to carry on the family name.
All the others are children.

I am the only child-rearing one available
at this point
and for all my life
I have tanked it.

I have been a bad heterosexual
inactive and frightened
naive and unstable
unable to get things done
but I have also been unengaged
in increasing the population.

But now I am looking through another lens:
Repopulating Jews.
Repopulating Bergers.
I have been derelict
and time is running short.

I do not know what I can do
to change my errant ways.
Are there red states, perhaps,
looking for spare breeders
of weird stock?

We met at the assigned location.
At the hour of our meeting,
there were few witnesses,
as was the plan.

He set up the camera
and I set up the scripts.
I had nothing memorized
(as per usual)
and when he said
he was ready all I had to do
was bury my head
into the words and start shouting them out.

“Maybe you could be a little more natural,”
He suggested between takes.
I took to directions
like a horse to electricity.
I thought he liked me the way I was!

After about six attempts at a piece
we would move on
to a different script.
In this way was daylight burned.
It was a quiet park
on an early morning,
but the later it got,
the more people rumbled in
wondering what we were doing.
We were making magic, baby.
It was brisk enough
that there were never many crowds.

Long hours passed
but not enough for my throat
to crap out.
It wasn’t cold enough
for the water fountain
to have iced over
so I could replenish at will.

Eventually, he folded his tripod
and I collected loose sheets
and we went and got a late lunch.
We talked about how it went
and what we’d do
with such awesome raw material.

“I should be able to cut these together
in no time!” He said.
There would be no stopping us.
We parted company.
It was an exciting opportunity.
It was the kind of thing
that could make a life.

It was a decade ago, I think.

I wonder how it’s going.

If the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, then inquiring minds wanna know
what the prophets are spittin’
in this day and age.
So I slip my metrocard through
and jump the stile just to be real
to get a look as to what the prophets speak of today.

The prophets are cloistered, isolated,
ignoring and ignored,
even when the loudest shout maddened truths,
begging for change
asking for fruit
offering song.

The prophets offer blessings
but few take them.
Few respond, eyes down,
shielded by screens,
by plugs, by masks.
The prophets provide connection.
The world avoids.

I avoid.
I avoid this system,
a tourist here.
I view with widened eye,
distant from these affairs
as if I know better.
I know not a thing.

What these prophets could teach
if I would but read the writing on the walls.

The places I wanted to take you to
in my town
from my life
were special – to me at least –
but as you clearly could tell
didn’t seem to work for you very well.

I wanted to show you a rodizio.
It’s not native to the city
but still…
pretty great.
Of course
you’re a vegetarian.
Oh. Vegan?
Sorry. Didn’t realize.
I also didn’t realize how egg
was used in just about everything that’s not straight out murdered. It really makes you think, huh?
Well, not you, I guess…

I figured we could go
to my favorite comedy spot
but I had no idea
they would be so triggering.
Sexist pigs, am I right?
It’s good we got seats so close to the door, though.
Escape was pretty easy that way.

And I guess my drunkard friends
were not the kind of folks
that fly with your kind of 12-stepping folks.
I should’ve figured that out in advance,
really.
I don’t know why I didn’t see that.
It’s a wonder you and me got along at all!

Right, you and I.
Anyway…

I’m really glad you came to visit
and I’m sorry
that the sights of my city
were not quite in keeping
with what you’d like to see.
I should have known better.
I should’ve thought ahead.
I should have been better.
I… I should’ve thought ahead.

The challenge of the sestina
not unlike a Czarina
is to be effortless
yet composed and express
all the beauty and poise of (a) marina.

Once there was a little boy whose name was (Jon,
but for the purposes of this story, we’ll call him) John.
He was young, and he was confused,
and he did many a thing without knowing why.
This will become important later in the story.

I shouldn’t have to point this out,
but there it is, anyway.

He was toilet trained
and in school
and he’d even skipped Kindergarten
so he was somewhat sophisticated
– though maybe that socialization could have done him some good.

The bathrooms in the public school he went to
were not the best.
Urinating worked out fine
but the toilets had really low stall walls.
Privacy was not a thing,
even for a short kid like John
so John did what he could to keep his Number Twos
away from public school.

This was not a sustainable practice.
It did not last through First Grade
but John did not find comfort in sucking it up
and dropping trow and going where so many could see.
When it finally proved necessary
he found an alternate solution.

And when his father came
to pick him up
because little John had soiled himself,
Dad asked "Why didn’t you use the bathroom?"
John shook his head.
"Why didn’t you tell someone you had to go?"
his father further queried.
John gestured weakly. wondering how to explain
not sure if he understood enough
about his embarrassment
in the face of being seen on the shitter.
Better to be taken out of school.

They trudged home shedding material
with every step.

Things would continue for the boy
with mortification and manure
going hand in hand
or hand and butt
or something else entirely
for years to come.

When I started the Johns series the other daythere were certain plans and conditions.
The plan:
crap stories about when I couldn’t hold it in
and had to get creative
on the streets
and on the town
and tried not to be embarrassed
or found myself completely embarrassed
or somewhere in between.

I found that I could associate the stories
with people named John,
a plus, because of the pun,
and because of my name
which is John
(but not quite).
I had two tales ready to go.

There’s a rule of three
that I subscribe to
more religiously
than I do
more than most anything else
but I figured
just this once
"What the hell?
Caution to the wind!
I’ll work on the two
and the third story will come.
I’ll dig deep into the dung
and develop something dynamite!
Eventually, from excrement will excellence evolve!"

I said none of this, of course.
And none of this happened.
I haven’t been able to think of the third occasion yet,
where I could have enough stories
for the endeavor to be worthwhile.
And now I’m stuck.
I’ve got two of these things out there
part of a trilogy
the beginning of something
with no satisfying completion in place.

That’s it.
I’m fucked.
It’s like I whored myself for some half-baked idea.
I pimped my fecund creativity
hoping it would produce results for an army of johns
paying with their interest.
But I got nothing for ’em;
nothing but shit.

So John (not that John. Another John)was just talking about being at the end of the train station
near the omnipresent Do Not Enter sign
that is really more of an invitation
than a threat
and he waxed poetic
as Johns do
about seeing someone sneak in
before his train came
and he rolled away.

And all of that reminded me
of one time back when I was riding the municipal rails
waiting at the end of a lonely subway stop
intestinally unsteady
wondering how long I could hold in this load
I had within
and where and how
I could, if necessary,
let loose.

Do Not Enter
read even more like an invitation
than before.
No one was looking
and no train was coming
so I stole past the sign
but only just steps.
I didn’t need to plumb the secrets of the train station;
I just wanted a hidey hole.

I lowered my pants
and I held onto the railing
and I pooped onto the tracks.

Thus blew out of me
geyser powered discharge
and I didn’t have to hold the position long.
Certainly, I didn’t want to.
I was vulnerable.
So I picked up my pants
and I walked into the light
and everything felt brighter
and righter
and the trip home was a lot more comfortable
if perhaps slightly smelly.

This is not my proudest moment
and yet this is not my greatest shame either.
There is industry in this tale
and an ability to get something done
in trying conditions.

While not a story I’d put on my CV
I think it still speaks well of me.
I did what I must, yet still kept free.
That’s how all legends should be.