jonberger

You see a cavern before you
a dark and foreboding space
the kind that nightmares are made of
but in the darkness is also potential.
Who knows what mysteries lie within the black?

You have a choice before you:
You can venture in
experience whatever wonders might be there,
just feet ahead.
Who knows what treasure or action you might face
if you brave the cave?
But you could trip in the dark
and hurt yourself
which would be pretty stupid
to say nothing of looking
humiliating at work in the morning.

This is no RPG here
no party,
no disco.
No fooling around:
this is your life
and a darkness is before you
and you must decide what to do
now.
However you got here:
is the unknown
worth the risk?

Is it ever?

When the flea fights the storm
flying angrily into its eye
to face her enemy
and seek to tame it
to conquer its wild fury
when the flea makes war
against an empire of environment
the storm does not laugh.
It does not ridicule the flea
nor disrespect her.

The storm in all its power
accepts the sacrifice of its enemy
as a noble combatant
and does what it can
to destroy the flea
as best it is able.

Usually, the storm wins.
Sometimes,
the flea rides the storm,
tames it,
leaves the weather wasted by the flea’s will
and they part,
if not friends,
then at least mutually respectful.

The entire ritual
is respectful
and has lasted
as long as fleas and storms
have coexisted
and will continue
so long as the two reside together.

Would that humans
in their war with the weather
could be respected quite so well
by their enemy.

Relax. You’ve got a staying order,
a temporary reprieve.
No decisions being made just yet.
We have no need to execute anything
today.
All positions are perfectly safe for the time being
which is not to say you should get too comfortable.

Who knows where we’ll end up?
Will you stay or will you go?
Who can say? I dunno!
Until someone else tells you so,
keep your hopes up but your head down low.

This is what happens in dangerous times
when the guilty leer at guillotines
hangmen hang by Police HQs
and criminals have cornered just about every market.
It’s where we are:
all near the chopping block
one step away
from some potential end.

The matter
of that strand of hair
that will not disengage
from the center of your face
when your hands remain otherwise occupied
is one of the seven hundred wonders
that make it difficult
to ever turn from you
though I have so very many reasons to.

To be fair
I have not actually gone out
to count the reasons;
I’m ballparking.
But the fact that you probably took that
as assumed
would almost certainly be one of those things
to be included
should
I ever opt to take tally.

She said, "You will never know the real me."
And I said, "You are not so hard
to figure out.
I am not the sharpest knife
in the shed, but I
will find a way
to uncover your strengths
and weaknesses. I will learn
just what it is you love
and hate, who you think is grand
and why you will want only three of my babies,
not four.
I can understand parts of you already
that you think are hidden.
I am more perceptive than you think, Jocelyn."

"My name is Fred," she said.
"I think," I said,
"this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"Where’s that from?" she asked.
Said I? "Goodbye."

Fuck you to construction this morning
and the traffic on the way to work.
Fuck you to the breakfast place
which forgot my order.
It’s not like I haven’t been there most days
the last three fucking years.
Who doesn’t love cream cheese
sprayed over their fucking well done hash browns?
Fucking everyone fucking doesn’t,
that’s who.

Fuck you to the meeting
that couldn’t start without me
even though I wasn’t presenting today
so that when I slunk in at
whenever the fuck time I eventually slunk in
everybody stared at me
settling into my spot
before we could get down to the business
of whatever it is the subject of the meeting was about.
I should’ve taken better notes.
Fuck you to Sam next to me
who also should’ve taken better notes.

Fuck you to whomever opted to use the toilets
for urinals all fucking morning
so that whenever I went,
I had to go through a fucking cleaning project
so as to avoid the dreaded Wet Ass.
There are like three urinals just adjacent, fuckers.
…Fucking use them!

Fuck you to the breakfast place
for getting my lunch order wrong.

Fuck you to my suitemates
for calling my political jokes “inappropriate”
and my religious jokes “a little edgy”
and that sexy joke “fucking racist.”
Fuck you to HR for that mandatory sit down taking an hour
at the end of the day.

Fuck you to the noodles
in the soup that slurped all up in my face
and the shirt that proved to be one day
out of the store
and one day into the crap pile.
Fuck you to the exercise regimen,
which, the less said about, the better.
Fuck you to the sex life, which, same.

Fuck you to the weather
and the shortening days
and my greying hair
and plants that keep dying on me.
Fuck you to broken contracts
and women that won’t talk to me
and men that won’t talk to me
and words that won’t come out of my head
and onto the page
and… and thank you for listening.

Oh, fuck you.

My old room’s been getting cleaned up in the ancestral homeland, which means, when I visit my mother, there are lots of photos to pore through of my younger years. It is amazing to see how I looked at various points in my history. I am simply amazed to see how not fat I have been up until the last couple of years.
I always knew I was kind of chunky. We talked around the house how I never quite got rid of the baby fat, but to look at the photos of me at eight, at ten, at thirteen, fifteen, eighteen… there was maybe a little bit of pudge. I can see how, shirtless, I wouldn’t be showing off sixpacks. But I had a convex stomach. I had musculature.
This is me at twelve:

My mother labeled this shot, at the time, “Body Beautiful.” And she’s my mother, so you know she’s objective!

I know that body image issues isn’t exclusively a women’s issue, but never dreamed how problematic it was for me. I mean, no question, my body because exactly what I always imagined it to be – I grew into the shape I saw in the mirror. But I wish I had been able to look more closely at the pictures of the me that were there all along.

They were something to see.

It’s the same shit
shoveled into a new hole
on a different day.
He sees that.
It’s not a new revelation
but it’s been revealed
in a different way.

Maybe the shit had been changing colors before
or maybe it had different names
like “muck”
or “filth” and “goock” or some such.
But its clearer now.
Same shit. Different day.

He’s tired
of the redund-dumb-dundancy of it all
and wants to get off
the automaton of idiocracy
that he’s found has been his life
for so long
but its not like he’s swallowed a red pill
and found a better path.
He’s just stopped taking the blue pill
and feels stupid
about what he used to think.

Dude, you think you’re expressing some kind of inner peace
but I’m an unrepentant heathen, pagan, and evil-doer.
I’m a bad guy, careless of the world,
inconsiderate of others
and I can hear your ego from here.

Every pronouncement you make
about the betterment of the Earth
starts with an I
and includes some judgmental “you.”
You’re always telling everybody what to do
as if your words the world’s overdue.

I’ve heard you hold forth.
I know what you think of yourself
and know how you think of others
and think that the scales might be somehow
a bit off.
I’d offer you advice
but I’m afraid how I’d come off.
It’d seem a somewhat hypocritical,
you get me?
Still, the way you talk
and the way you walk?
Streets apart.

I can hear your ego
all the way from here.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the anniversary of my first big dumping.
I was in college, and I’d protected my heart pretty well for the prior eighteen years, too scared to get into it with anyone, too tender to dare to be touched before Kathie. But she was pretty and she was smart and she liked me and even though she’d been seeing Scott when we had gotten together, we’d started dating earlier in the month, and I felt like I was growing up. I was old enough to vote now, and I was kissing a girl. Except this is the anniversary of the day that I wasn’t anymore.
Kathie decided she had unfinished business with Scott, that she truly loved him, and that it was that true love that had made her try to flee him into my welcoming arms. She was sorry for hurting me, and she hoped we could still be friends. And I was alone, again.
I would never love anyone again – until Kathie came back to me, weeks later. It was college, and the drama was high.
I took her back, of course, because I didn’t deserve anything better than part-time loving. I had been scared to be available for anyone in the first place, and saw how right my tentative approach had been. Dipping anything more than a toe into the lake of love was most unwise. By winter break, Kathie had dumped me again to go back to her high school boyfriend. Anyone, apparently, was better than me. And still I missed her. Still I thought, this is all the romance I was worthy of. And who knows? I remain snarky and distant and cruel to even my nearest and dearest. To this day, affection escapes me, and a brutal honesty is why I consider one of my most valuable traits. Maybe Kathie’s constant betrayal is, in fact, the most that I deserved.
Sometime in January, we got back together, for the third time – “but this is IT!” I swore.
And it was. When she left me again, this time for Chris, it was for good. Last I heard, Kathie was still with Chris, so she finally found what she was looking for, and she found it her first year of college. Good for her.
Me, I’ve gotten dumped very rarely since then, because I’ve made very little active romantic effort. Far better to opine from a distance and sigh, the baking about what might have been, then to let my tender heart be touched again and again. I didn’t like the light mauling it received way back when, or the few other times it came out for air. It’s smarter that way.
I’ve got a very smart heart.
Clearly, its weak and withered. Wizened. But perhaps, in its own weathered way, it’s also wise.