So
it looks like we’re gonna have to walk back
a bunch of recent decisions.
The Tesla’s gotta go.
The Malibu vacation?
Another year.
No gold-encased shrimp boat for the foreseeable
and all subscriptions to servant-of-the-month clubs
have had to be cancelled.
Purchases were premature, apparently.
Financial planning should have been made more responsibly.
The future will have to wait.
Turns like she’s gonna live.
Maybe next year.
What?!
Why on a night like this
so cold
so cutting
would you go so deep
ask such penetrating questions
so smoothly
so sharply?
Did I offer permission
give any hint
we had reached such a point
that you could sift through my soul
quite so easily
picking up pieces
like, like… clams?
What made you think I’d find that OK
other than how I’d wish and pray
you’d look my way,
just give me a glance with those gorgeous greys?
Why would you conceive you’d have sway
as to how I would possibly go about my days?
Stop. Cease in this razing of my spirit
assessing me so excellently.
I do not need from you
what professionals have failed to glean
after decades of attempted shrinkage.
I will not be decoded quite so easily.
I refuse.
Please
don’t prove that I am so easily uncovered
and restlessly cast aside.
Let my disguises
be better prepared than that.
I always wanted to get to know you better
but you never seemed to care.
All my offers, invitations and presented opportunities
fell like lead zeppelins
plopping pointlessly into the seas.
You just weren’t that into me
in any possible way.
It was so frustrating:
I could taste the temptation of you
but you refused to see
what we could be
even as possibility.
It just wasn’t something to conceive.
Like Dylan
I wanted to make you feel my love
but I wasn’t monster enough
to know how.
I understood the impulse.
I still can feel the desire.
I continue to taste that temptation.
And the absence of you
is not the greatest loss I’ve ever experienced
There are other spirits in the rooms I enter
but when I think of you
there remains a specter
of the you I yearned to meet
and the ghost of the friendship
we never ever had.
As it turns out
in the discussion we were having
last night
I was less right
than I usually am
and I am now
somewhat less confident
in the decisions I made
when I left the house
to sleep in the car
at three AM.
There may be
an easier way to say this,
yes.
I suspect
you may have had more knowledge
about that particular issue.
It’s something that happens.
Perhaps it’s true.
I could rephrase that, too.
You are capable of good points
on some occasions?
Fine, fine!
You were right,
all right?
I was wrong.
When you’re on the phone
in the midst of a conversation
– maybe the conversation –
and you’re trying to say important things,
things that have perhaps been fomenting
longer than they should
like some toxic stew you just knew’d
be bad for you
but you can’t help taking a dangerous dollop of.
So you’re talking,
reporting serious statements,
trying to get to the bottom of
whatever it is
going on between the two of you
from whatever distance separates you
in the city
but the city is wide
and the city is loud
and the people all around you
on the street
out the window
in the apartments to the sides
on the floors
everyone everywhere
is making a noise
that distracts
from the point you wanted to make
and just when you’re trying to say something
really serious
that you’ve never shared before
when the Taxi Federation downstairs
blasts off with their honking.
And the other person
on the other end of the line
says she knows what you mean
about olive juice
and you feel
the city is trying to tell you something.
Not everyone is ready to hear
the same conversation.
My therapist says he does not
in his professional opinion
believe I am experiencing any side effects
from the medication.
He does not ascribe these symptoms
to an undiagnosed mania
nor a heretofore unknown sort of delusion
that is leaving me misconstruing any number of previously understood context clues.
My therapist has no suspicion
that I am undergoing an undue environmental stressor
that is creating some new disorder
that is leaving me, suddenly,
with an affliction
of distraction
nervous energy
fits of laughter
and general unfounded optimism.
He believes, my therapist says,
what I am experiencing
is a thing called “joy,”
also knows as “euphoria”
which is somewhat like “mania,”
but with healthier connotations.
He is collecting some literature on the subject and soon
I will report back
with further explanation
as to whether it truly applies
to my current state
and whether I can allow it to continue.
Lately your voice has gotten so much quieter
when we talk.
I don’t believe you’ve grown
any more timid.
I am afraid that you’ve become afraid
are walking on eggshells
believe you fear you might crack me open
with an errant angry word.
You keep suggesting
softly, tentatively
ever so carefully
that I open up
become a less protected soul.
You want to help me
seem to know me
which is all I’ve ever wanted,
I think
and you ask why I don’t let go
to just be brave
before you leave.
You always leave.
And of course you are walking on eggshells
that I’ve carefully collected
cultivate decade after decade
strengthening a wall of weakness
an accurate although mixed metaphor.
You are careful, supportive, warm,
helpful, encouraging,
suggesting you care
but I can see
it will never be enough
and I will not get what I want
when you leave
so it is just as well
that you’ve turned down the volume
to three
and are so delicate around me
for neither of us
is quite sure
with just which word
I will finally shatter.
When you asked the question
I wasn’t thinking straight.
As I look around
through an elephant’s memory
of paintings
and scarves
and poems and stories
and tales that would change with every telling
that blanket my weird walls
through all my life…
You wondered if she was creative.
I didn’t give her enough credit then
because I was failing to view
with a lick of the creativity
with which I was taught.
Why was I so late to see?
Maybe it’s better
rushing down this icy path
at increasing speeds: faster
faster, collecting snow,
at growing alacrity
ever closer to some blinding terminus
with the glare and the ice pellets
pelting and causing no end
of disturbing dissonance.
Perhaps this fate
is preferred to the alternative
of stationary and still
waiting at a crawl in the cold
for the front to creep through
every inch into entrails
and recognize every part until
there is nothing within,
without or wherever
that isn’t ice.
The world is frozen.
The world will end
and you will end with it.
The choice of how is yours,
but speed,
speed is the better one, surely.
A good artist knows
when it’s time to drop a failed project.
A smart scientist can see
when an experiment has not gone
in the expected direction.
An adventurer who has gotten lost
should know enough
to eventually ask for native help
or change course
or just go home.
In delving into the unknown
and creating something new
it makes sense to fail.
It makes sense to give up.
It makes sense to abandon your toys
and leave them in the rain
to rust and putrefy
and forget about them
as long as you can get away with it
even if you live a very very long time.
Maybe that’s not everyone’s approach
but it makes sense that some creators
wouldn’t be so responsible,
so detail-oriented, right?
Right?
jonberger 