jonberger

Sometimes the client wants to build a shittier mousetrap
and what can you do?
Capitalism is a crappy economic system
and the only ones worse are all the others
so when the client says,
“Corrupt the efficiency of your device,”
you say,
“By what percent?”

(Particularly when the client
is tall and elegant
and waves in such a way
that makes you giggle like a Japanese schoolgirl.)

So you get to work
designing
reviewing
correcting
effecting change
to do everything in your power
to make the mousetrap
that has worked like a shark for generations
into something hip
now
a device for a new generation
the kind of memetic application
that everyone can get behind.

And it works
sort of
in that the thing
that had
by intent or coincidence
evolved into the almost apotheosis of the form
has been made by your hand
into something
else.

The shark has been devolved
into a different thing that no longer traps mice
because after all
why would we do things in the old way
anymore anyway?

At least it wasn’t your suggestion.
At least it was somebody else’s orders.

Well, the day’s a wash.
Your thoughts are in a swirl
and nothing good’s gonna get done anytime soon
that much is clear.
You won’t be able to focus until…
well, you don’t know what.
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
You don’t know what.

It’s not lack of sleep.
Yes, it is lack of sleep.
That’s not the cause, though.
It’s just another symptom
of your mind at a million miles a minute
speeding faster and faster
past all possible stops
with no terminus to taper to
anytime at all.

The rush isn’t so bad
every now and again.
These days are fun to semi-experience
but its worrisome
not really living these days
barely understanding
half the words you’re saying
or a third of the things you’re doing
or a quarter of the people you’re screwing over.
Who knows what’ll happen
when you wake up?

These are strange days.
You know they’ll end
You think they’ll end, rather.
At this point
you don’t know a single goddamn thing.

This pizza here
I’m not sure if you knew
but this is the pizza of my youth.
It is the first pizza I loved.
After I had sworn off the food
for an early five years
because of a primordial trauma
in a truck stop somewhere upstate
involving English muffins and ketchup
I went to the local place and said
“This
this is good.
I will never eat from another place.”
And for years
it was true.

Until college it was the only pizza I ate
and even then
it was the only pizza I truly loved.
This pizza here
is the pizza of my early years
that I grew with
that helped me become
the man-child I am.
I hope you enjoy it
the way that I do
and will partake of it
often in the future.

I hope you have many a chance.

You will survive this night
but if you don’t
make sure you fulfilled your destiny
as best you could.
Tell the truths you had available.
Keep the oaths you swore.
Dance with what ones that brought you
and fight whatever enemies you made
to a standstill
or to the pit.

You will live through this
as you have lived through everything before.
I have faith in you
but you must have faith in you, too.
Become what you deserve to be.
You previous life-death hurdle has been overcome
with one hundred percent completion success.
What makes this different?
This
will prove nothing.

The sun will rise
like always
and you will see it
blurrily
like always
and you struggle with the next
as always.
It is tedious
and frustrating
and scary
when the night looks gaping and horrendous
as tonight does
but you shall overcome
until the day.

And if not
then tomorrow
you shall have that over me
so you may take some solace there.

These are all the same poem
– I know that –
just a favorite eighties’ cassette played
with auto-reverse
over and over again
and over and over again
and over
and over again.
I can’t help it.
I still feel it.
I can’t get these words
these feelings out of my system
so I keep writing it
ad nauseam
ad infinitum
ad ultimum.

I’m sorry.
You have no idea how sorry I am
to be this kind of repetitive creator.
I’d change me if I could change time
and stop vomiting out
this same damned thing
over and over again
and over
and over.

Maybe you’re not what you think you are. Maybe the attributes you believe you have you indeed do have
but not to the degree you believe you have them
Maybe you’ve read about Dunning Kruger?
Maybe not.
Maybe the face you put forward
isn’t really the face that people see
and what you imagine is being presented
isn’t actually what is being presented.

Maybe the skills that are first
and foremost in everyone else’s eyes about you
are incredibly divergent then those that you see?
What if you are not the perceptive soul you believe?
What if your perceptions are shit?
What if the you in your head
and the you in our heads
about who you are
are nowhere near the same?

What if my you
is a much better you
than your you?
Are you willing to take some notes
and return your you
for my you
and accept that you really weren’t
all that good a you all along?

I think this is a fascinating supposition.
How about you?

Please stop.
You look too deeply.
You look too dangerously.
You look lovely when you look at me
under that microscope
but please stop.

What perplexes me so
is that this is what I’ve always wanted:
someone who seeks to understand me.
Someone who has tried to take me in
stared deeply and clearly
recognizes something past all the shields and disguises
obfuscatory language I may occasionally present to distract
from a direct honest opinion
and has not looked away.
You have not looked away
but still
I don’t know why.

Is it because you find me
fascinating
like some creature you barely understand
some curious species?

It is rare
that I am scared to be interesting
but under your penetrating gaze
I am horrified how I may look.
How will I appear under the microscope?
I do not want to be pinned down
on display at all.

What sort of experiment
must I be
what freak do I appear like
in your eyes
that look at me
so softly
so pityingly
so dangerously?

Just
could you stop?

I will never admit this to anybody in the world
including you
but we may be better together
than apart.
It is possible
that the sum of us
is greater than the components.
Is that how math works?
That might be one the strengths you bring
to the partnership.

I cannot quantify what it is that I
or you or how we too
add to one another
but it seems there is something there
betwixt and between.
Something that happens in the air
some tension
some tangible thing
that is absent
absent us.

It may be too big a risk
for us to separate
if we don’t want to lose
that mysterious thing
I can’t describe, don’t you think?
I think.
You do the math.
You’re good at that, right?

I wish you’d answer
but then
I’d never say any of this to you
will I?

She says you’re shallow
and you know you are
but you don’t know just which shallow
she knows you are.

Obviously, you’re afraid to ask,
not just because that would admit
that you don’t know how you’re shallow
(which, as stated, you certainly do.
You are shallow
in such a multitude of ways it’s funny.
So funny, in fact,
it’s sad,
but she thinks it should be obvious
how you’ve been proven shallow to her,
and you are not smart enough to puzzle that out).
You are frightened to death
that she just might tell you.

She could blow a charge
in your placid pool
killing all the guppies of your well-being
or… maybe the flounders of foundational knowledge
or perhaps the grouper of germane agreeability.
You didn’t know what you’re talking about.
You didn’t know what she was talking about
and you didn’t think you want to.

You’re scared as shit, aren’t you?

She probably knows that, too.

You are so out of your depth.

You know your dreams are stupid.
Rubber tree plant stupid.
First act horror stupid.
You can’t help it.
You can’t drop it
– not yet
not without digging yourself a little bit deeper.
You hold onto these stupid irrational incessant dreams
despite the ridiculosity or impossibility or whatnot.

Hope – despite reason
and effort, sense,
and a good talking to
from your better angels –
marches on.
Dreams last. You strive
and will continue to reach
for that piece of the pie.

Sure, it’s bad for you.
Probably, when you grasp it,
you won’t have the utensils
to properly eat it.
Maybe you can’t even stomach that kind of pie
or maybe pie isn’t even the right metaphor to begin with.
Maybe you’re reaching for pie
but you’ll actually be grabbing a mathematical concept
and you can’t put your arms around an irrational number.

Whatever. The real issue is:
you can’t quit yet
even though you should.
You’re just too stupid
today.
Maybe tomorrow.
We’ll see then.