jonberger

It doesn’t have to be so hard.
Your tension
is of your own preparation.
These problems
creations built over years
by concentrated design.

You are so afraid of being known
and recognized for what you truly are
and being judged
duly.

Can’t you just quit the shit
and admit it,
admit what you are
for once?

You will be able to breathe easy
if only for a moment
after what you’ve done
as you wait for the axe’s fall,
knowing that peace is coming
at last.

Relax.
It’s time.
Open up.
Tell your story:
finally.

You think you’re looking fine
that your moves are all right.
You think you seem bright
right in the middle of the night.
Don’t matter.
It don’t matter.

Your weight don’t matter.
Your wealth don’t matter.
Your smile
your strength
and your stealth don’t matter.

It doesn’t matter what you wear;
I assure you she doesn’t care.
She ain’t gonna dance with you.
I said she ain’t gonna dance with you.

You thought for a minute
you’d become something good?
Let me tell you brother,
it best be understood
it don’t matter.
Never matter.

Your job doesn’t matter.
Your grades don’t matter.
The ways that you’re
always kind to maids doesn’t matter

You’ll never gonna be but
the nothing that you are
sure as you will never touch
the light upon that star.

Whenever you hear
the little voice in your head
saying something good
trying to fight all the dread?

Allow me to remind you
of the common sense approach:
the dread knows what it’s doing, bitch.
Get on your knees, you roach.

You don’t matter.
You don’t matter.
The things that you believe
are just deceit and don’t matter.

I see ruins all around me.
I am not ruined.
Everything in decay;
I’m still here.

Whatever you got coming,
Lord, I’m ready.
Lemme say it clear:
I’m putting this on blast: I’m gonna last.
I’m gonna last.

Whatever you’re gonna throw,
I’m still here.

I don’t get you sometimes.
Isn’t this what you wanted?
You asked, pleaded even
and it was provided.
We’re not talking Monkey’s Paw territory here:
you wanted intimacy.
You wanted us to be honest about the important things
and here we are
talking about the important things.
I’m here to help.
I’m not laughing.
I’m not judging
and I’m here for you.
All the arch and irony
and alliteration is left at the front door.

I want to help you now.
Don’t shut me out.
This is what you asked for
for the longest time.
What is wrong with it now?
Let me in.
Let me be your friend this time.
Don’t make this such an impossible job.

You may ask why
your name doesn’t come up
in my poetry and stories,
songs and essays,
and I’m sorry, my dear,
if I begin to snicker in your face.

Were I to start citing referenced inspiration,
I’d be here all week
and you’d be tired,
so very tired of hearing your name
hiss from my lips,
almost as tired
as I’d be of repeating those same beautiful syllables
in such glorious redundant succession.

I’m guessing, then,
that this is the end
of our correspondence.
From the words I’ve failed to hear
been unable to see
have been completely without any sense of
these past few evers
I’m pretty sure that all the words between us
have now been explored
and exploded
and all that’s left
is for the last few particles to settle.

I suspect that there are only my particles left
occasionally blowing
landing here and there
reaching out to you sporadically
and hoping there is something left to say.

But the resounding silence
is all that responds
proving again and again
the posited theory
that this is the end of our correspondence
the minute I push send
for the last time.

At a placard describing the ginormous statue
of the ministrostrophic magnifity of the leader-in-chief,
the word magniloquent was proudly on full display.
This was a foreign country
so their mastery of the angled tongue
might be construed as minority-portioned
at best
but I found it curiosity creational,
that, with such little grounding in anglespeak,
such foreign tongued teeth would dare
to give rise to such barbarish innovations
and assume they’d have means
to make something
that would serve us better
than we’d serve ourselves?
What in our history
would suggest that?

You scare me.
Goddamn, you scare me.
You scare me more than you did yesterday
and you scared me then
but mostly because I was so frightened to talk to you.
Now, I’m scared of what you might say
what you might know.

You know too much.
You seem to know too much.
I’m scared you know too much.
I’m scared how much you know.
You look at me
and say things
and ask things
and allude to things
that suggest other things…
Just what DO you know?

I’m pretty sure I could learn to hate you
twice as much as I now yearn to know you
want to learn you
hope to have you
in any way that possession makes any sense
for one of your sensitivities.
But you don’t make sense to me
for as much as you seem
to unearth every gleam of me
and as much as I try to inch into understanding
of any aspect of you
I find over and over again
that I am lost
just as I am lost
by your confounded pronouncements.

You scare me
with so much that you say and advise
and I don’t even know
if all of what I’m saying’s meaningless
but if anyone could tell me
I suppose it would have to be you.

We gave each other mixed messages.
You said you wanted me
but didn’t like men.
I said I was all man
but acted like a frightened baby boy
howling at the smallest smart.

You seemed like you could take on the world
but any contradiction
would throw you for a loop.
I claimed I wanted to be with you
but made no room for you in my life.
You said nothing was wrong
but made clear that everything was wrong.
I made like I could handle it.

We gave each other mixed messages
pulling one way
then another
delivering signals to all sorts of stations.
In this way
our affair was truly unique.

You say you are happy with who you are
and I would like to believe you
but nobody tells the truth
so why would you be the one
to be honest in a way
like no other?

I wish you were happy with who you were
but I am not happy with who I am
so why should I expect
anything else from anyone else?

You are certainly unlike any creature
I have ever met:
stronger and more secure
but strangely delicate
seemingly sensitive
at the strangest times.
Try as I might
I can’t begin to decode you.

So you may be exactly as you say
but I think you’re sad
even when you say something else
and I wish I could change that
even when I say something else
no matter how unlikely
any of that may be.