jonberger

The wizard says It’s not so hard
is it?
You can choose to stay
as you are
in your safe
curated existence
or
you can step through the door
and see
what lies on the other side.

The sage looks you over
and adds It’s really just a calculation.
Look over the ledger of your life
and decide.
Is what you have right now
satisfying enough to maintain?
Do you like the world
you already live in
or is that you’re scared
of the danger
on the other side
of that oak and steel?

Is it the darkness that frightens you
the seer ponders,
The possibility
or just that chance
that difference might be uncomfortable?
Do you know
what is stopping you
from making the choice?

The professor chuckles kindly.
No one else needs to be involved
in this conclusion
but you.
But you
do
have to choose.
It is here
or there
and the door divides them.

He smiles the tiger’s smile.
Well…?

The outcome is never truly in doubt.

For god’s sake
whatever you do
keep your eyes off of her magnificent tits.
Look straight down into the hole
in the table
as she reaches across you
to touch you
to oil you
to reach and tease and push
and pull your skin
making your muscles ache and moan
all in the name of relaxation.

She seduces with minted voice
and soft palms
pushing against your flab.
Stay vigilant.
Stare down
and ignore her siren’s touch.
Control your ragged breath
while she firmly controls
the rest of you.

Think calming thoughts
while she lays atop you,
penduluminous breasts swaying
grazing your back
raising hairs you thought you’d lost
sometime in seventh grade.
Keep your content clean, chum.

Remember:
this is in the name of science.
Remember:
this is in the name of health.
Remember this is in the name of medicine
and good repute
and when she kindly
sweetly asks you to turn over
know that the moment will be awkward
and the place doesn’t take your insurance
and maybe
just maybe
this could be one of those all-service joints?

But no.
Apparently not.
You have failed the test
and you’ll have to find another chiropractor, probably.
Definitely.
Absolutely.

Young artist,
I have been reticent with active advicebecause truly
it is the world
that should teach you
the most important things upon your path
but I fear that there is one vital lesson
you have not yet learned
from Hard Knocks U
or whatever the ephemeral educational executive is called these days.

You have taken in much
both from me
and from soaking in all the abuse
the universe has to offer
and you have nipped back
producing biting commentary
and socially relevant work.
I am proud of you
on all scores
but of late I have been watching
and it has appeared
that you have seemed
somehow
happy.

Listen now
and listen well.
If you must choose between life and art
choose art.
If joy or creativity are splayed before you
pick the one that is far rarer
and harder to find.
When you have a chance
to wrestle the muse
do so
and make her your bitch.

I once had a chance to be happy.
I was given an opportunity
to smile at another
and believe in laughter
or love
or Celine Dion or something.
I had the chance
and I shat in its neck
and photographed it
so that I could present it
on exhibit.

Take this lesson.
Learn it well.
Know what is your master
and whose work you are doing.

If you have a chance to live a regular life
forsake it while you can
and take the artist’s way
and go and make something again
and cry again
and again.

When they find my rotting corpse
and my broken soul
limps off to the afterlife,
the next folk may well ask me
about my regrets
and what I wish I could change
about my time
on the mortal plane.

At the moment
when I think back on these days
I mostly go back
to a day back in the early aughts
where there was sun
and sky and fun
and I opted to take a nap.
If I could go back
and revisit my life
and edit the errors
I would make that nap longer.

The rest of that day was no good
nor the week.
That year, really
could be marked in the loss column.
Let me sleep through that year
I’d have been better off.
I regret 2002
encapsulated in that sunny Saturday.

That,
or all those raccoons’ tongues.

The skirt you didn’t wear
The oath I didn’t make
The sex act you never asked for
The sex act I never completed
The trip we never took
The dinners we never made
The friends we never hated
The dances we never learned.

The houses we never built
The dogs we never buried
The books we never read
The dates we never broke
The plates we never broke
The promises we never broke
The home we never shattered.

That road we never walked.
The path we never took.
The life we never led.
The bridge I never crossed.
The one I never met.

Whatever lessons you’re supposed to get
our of the story
of the flying father and son
let me ask:
why is the pater
the supposed superior scientist?

Daddy Daedalus deemed
it dangerous to dare to dive
directly at the sun
warning his own son Icarus
to avoid all attempts
at any aerial adventure.

But it was their first flight.
They had just escaped excitedly
from suffering at the hands
of various cretins
with the new technology
that they had just fashioned
and Daedalus just knew
without a doubt
that his waxy wings
could not stand the heat of Helios?
What research went into that conclusion?
How did he know?
Daedalus was scared.
Nothing but.

Icarus the wise
had done the only reasonable thing
to test his father’s hypothesis
and put the flying machine
through its paces
under difficult conditions
to see how it could stand the strain.
Brave Icarus suffered greatly
due to his dedication
to the true scientific method.

I say hurrah to Daedalus
a smart craftsman
and a good worker
and even a grand positer of fine theories
but we can only speak
of their validity today
thanks to the excellent work of his son
noble Icarus
and the work he did
with those wings back then
in the days before Kitty Hawk.

Some poets never need to get heard.
Some playwrights never need to be read.
Some hashtags never need to win at tic tac toe.
Some boyfriends never need to find love.

The world is full of also-rans
and never-was’es
and things lower on the imagined food chain than that.
The Empire of What If
is larger than any other unspoken khanate
and filled with more potential
and potential wasted.

Read this with a saddened sigh
if you must
or find some relief
that you are not alone
in your failures,
whether realized
or not.

Not everyone can succeed.
Many situations are zero sum.
Some contests have to be won
and losers? There have to be some.
At least one.
Not none.
…
I’m done.

Lovely little day. Sun shining bright.
Children all a’racing just as fast as they might.
Nannies out smoking; daddies out, too.
Doggies chasing squirrels and then doing the doo.
Families are grilling; sizzling the meats.
Veggies roasting too: smells like burning feets.
Creepy old guy, leaning on a bench.
Holding some loose screws. Twisting on a wrench.

Creepy old guy just sitting out there.
Creepy old guy twirling his hair.
His left hand circling, constantly fluttering,
creepy old guy always muttering.

He keeps to himself, that creepy old guy
but the kids tend to notice and they start to give the eye.
While keeping certain distance, the children play around,
happy to enjoy the live new toy that they’ve found.
The old dude takes no notice, still muttering to the air
as the juveniles are closing in the circle as they dare
to throw things at the wayward oldster who starts taking note and then shouts at all the whippersnappers. That’s all she wrote!

Creepy old guy, screaming at young girls
and boys too, he’s non-binary in epithets he hurls.
The mothers and the fathers and the nannies run to see
the old guy in the park acting crazily creepy!

A circle stays around him: force field periphery.
No one wants to get close enough to see
the whites of his eyes since with reciprocity
he’d be close enough to strike and then make things messy.
So the families pull their children away
and the creepy old guy lives to grunt another day
and the kids learn a lesson on that sunny fun Sunday:
but I didn’t go home with them, so that lesson? I can’t say.

And that creepy old dude just stayed in the park
doing all the stuff that creepy guys do after dark.
He’s got a story, maybe. He’s somebody’s son.
Possibly a reason for the creepy things he’s done.
Maybe he’s not creepy. Maybe he’s just rude.
Possibly he’s drunk. Wait! was he nude?

Creepy old guy. Really weird to see him.
Maybe he’ll get mummified and put in a museum.
Creepy old guy. I’m not sure where this should end.
If you know a creepy guy, would you call him your friend?

This body is not bendable.
I must stretch a great deal
before even the least strenuous of activities.
I choke and grunt when standing
or sitting down
or staying still too long.
I can fight for no one’s honor
least of all my own.

My soul has been blackened and crackled.
It is hardened and hardly healthy,
if it can even be found at all.

My heart has been bent and broken,
beaten and bought by bitches and bros
at so many booked events
it cannot be believed
– by me, at any rate.
I breathe heavily after a flight of stairs
or a look at a young girl.
My chest cannae stand another strain.

There is weakness all about me
if e’er there was any strength
of which to speak.
I’ve been crushed and crumbled
by strife and circumstance,
and like my buddy McCartney,
I’m not half the man I used to be.
Plus: I’m down. I’m out.
I’m in trouble, but
if you say there’s a chance
I might find just a little resilience
left in me yet.

Your old neighborhood doesn’t miss you.
It doesn’t recognize your absence.
There is no hole
no crater in the space you once held.
No memorials
in your empty apartment
no plaques to commemorate the time you spent
in those old environs.
The old days are forgotten.
You have been forgotten
and the world has done nothing
to hold you dear.

Individual elements may still hold regard.
A singular Tom, Dick or Harry
may still know your name
but the streets have no memories of your steps.
Your money is good here in the old hood.

The old neighborhood cares nothing for you
has forgotten you
has left you for dead
just as you abandoned it
for warmer climes
when you white flew to a far better place.