jonberger

His teachers love him.
His classmates, too.
When I pick him up
the girls all wave at him nervous,
coquette-careful.
He smiles back, nodding,
normal as any boy
and, after closing the car door,
transforms instantly into the sullen mute
I know so well.

His body contains multitudes:
the charmless churl about the house
who can’t remember to flush the toilet
as well as this debonair boy about town
whom all the school loves.
Which boy is the real one?
Does he transform at my sight?
Am I his kryptonite?

This raging tween…
he’s a conundrum
shrouded in mystery
wrapped in an enigma
simply smothered in some secret sauce
– a reference I took from
a TV show
which I won’t divulge.
He’s confusing, is what I’m saying
and maybe I should ask him directly
what’s going on
amongst his ever-changing moods,
but I cannot imagine getting any answer
other than the monosyllabic.

I’m sure I’ll better understand him
just as soon
as he grows out
of these eventual teenage years.

The fortune
in the cookie
was empty blank space
made even more poignant
with the addition
of “in bed.”

Sometimes you know your time’s up
even before anyone can tell you.
Your internal clock is just more on the ball
than anybody else’s sense of schedule.
You can feel when your welcome has worn out
when the cold is coming on
when the ice floe is about to break.
There’s a sense about these things.

Sometimes you are ahead of the curve
of reality
and your awareness precedes events.
That can be a good thing
if the stakes are low
and if they are not,
incredibly tragic.

Knowing your death date
weeks in advance
gives you time to spend frivolously,
I suppose,
but can you really accomplish
all that is left to do?
The question, then,
is: is there such a thing as too much information?
There may be
some good news for you.

In this great wide expanse of a universe
with its infinite distances
and it’s inconceivable amount of stars
and an almost uncountable number of planets
with a substantial series of potential life forms
amongst them

through all that wealth of potential,
within all those planets
(and, hell,
maybe even in the space between planets,
living in comets
or as semi-sentient stardust
or possibly meteor clusters
with communal impulses
and curious fashion sense),
there might be a creature
who appreciates my dad jokes
and isn’t just being polite.

I would like to find that creature
but I hardly know her.

Blank. Empty.
I am alone
in the darkness
with my device
at which I peer
with great intensity.

I stare at the screen
hoping to somehow will a message out of it
but nothing comes out.
Was my correspondence clever enough?
Did I ask enough questions?
Did I seem caring
considerate
interesting enough
to instill any response?

There are so many means of communication
through the screen.
At any given instant
why is she using absolutely
none of them
to reach out to me?
Why am I not worthy?
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

All I want is a word
and then another
sent from her device.
Nothing else that I can think of
would be half so nice.

Yet here I am:
me and the shadows
created by the steady beam
of the device
lighting me as I await some word
from her.

Any word.

Any.

And then
just sitting there
in the basement of my favorite haunt
is the completion of a childhood quest,
a book in a series I could not find for years
back when I was young.

What was it doing down there?
Who had abandoned this missing link,
Part Four of a seven-part cycle,
along with so many of its siblings
treasured volumes from my favorite author
of so many years ago?
Who was haunting me
and providing me these long ago prizes
in the here-and-now?

I need to streamline my life
and I already have a copy of the glorious tome
but I feel I must protect these other books
and take them to the confines of my castle
where I can hold them
along with all my other dusty gifts.

Surely I must uncover who they came from
and realize why they should be so devalued
as to be put out in the basement.
Someone shares my history
but is prepared to completely disregard it.
So many questions.
So much to read into
all regarding a book
I haven’t read in years.

A thought experiment was posed to me recently:
what if I had been named Don
instead of Jon?
I suppose any name would do
to call into question my life choices
but Donald in particular
holds a certain weight.

There are certain names in history
after certain dates
that had gained or lost
a certain sort of luster.
Were I a Donald in the eighties,
would I have then
felt closer to the president?
Would I now?

Who would Don Berger be
other than a man with a different monogram?
Would he write?
Would he be righteous?
Right-wing?
Would he wear wing-tips?
Would the same words fly off the tip of his tongue
as mine?
Would he be quite so fond of the third person as me?
I have no answers, obviously.

I think
I would be interested in seeing this Don
but from a distance
as I sort of suspect
he’d be kind of a schmuck.
It takes very little
to spoil a Berger.
I should know
and I believe
a name change
would be all it would take
to spoil an otherwise excellent recipe.

I mentioned you in poetry a couple times today.
It seems I mentioned you repeatedly recently, my old buddy, Grey.
I can’t quit you, Grey, even though you left, so long ago.
I won’t quit you, Grey, though my heart may tell me so.

I was just wearing the dragon shirt that you said didn’t fit.
It was too loose on you. On me, it looks like shit.
I can’t quit you, Grey, no matter how hard, I try.
I won’t quit you Grey, even if you belly-up and die.

Some days the skies are blue; some days there’s only rain.
Some days are for dreams of hobos and jumping downbound trains.
and for holding onto thoughts of Grey (that’s you!); I hope that you know that.
Yeah, lots of ways to think of Grey. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

We had some glory days, and then again, Revellations
and maybe it was only me, but I had a lot of puns
and I won’t quit you Grey, even though you’ve quit many a job
even one wherein you learned so much ’bout ‘burn and rob.’

I didn’t mean today to be The All-Grey Tribute Show.
But that’s the beauty of waking up; what happens next? You never know.
I can’t quit you Grey, unless it’s Saturday.
That’s the Sabbath, boy. That’s when thoughts of you just melt away…

Webster’s doesn’t define ‘Endling’
yet
but Robert Webster
– no relation –
coined it
twenty years ago
in trying to define
the last of a line.

It is strange
that we as a culture
have not yet named
this thing we are so especially good
at creating:
orphans
extinctions
obsolescence.

Destruction
is our stock in trade.
You’d think
we’d have our fifty words for snow
all wrapped up
in fifty different pretty bows.

And we do have the word
now.
I’m just surprised
we have not jumped at the chance
to own it;
to know at last
what we are,
as we head toward
our deaths as this group
or that.

It should be some sort of a relief
to at least
finally have a name for us
as we wriggle our way
to the end.

I woke up with a start
with the thought
that you’d passed on.
It was time.
You’d had a long enough life.
You deserved rest
but it left me so broken
that I hadn’t any chance to say goodbye
hadn’t any opportunity
to speak to you
in any of the many months
that preceded the end.
I wanted to make it right.

I came here to see the body
and have found it warm
and alive
and you haven’t passed at all.
You are still here
and that is
good.
You remain.
You endure
but for how long?

If this is the last time I see you
let me make it worth it.
If this is the last time we speak
let’s really say something.

Let us say things today
things that have been hanging
words that were previously
left on the table.
Let us end this day
with no remainders.

I never cared for Bowie.