jonberger

I may be wrong, but though they’re long
the days I live, I’m living wrong
since any way I spend my days
they aren’t how I hope to play
or laugh or love or lurch or lust
in fact I’d say this year’s a bust
for since the start I’ve had no part
of partaking in that work of art.
A creature fine, close to divine,
as godlike as some ancient wine
or maybe mead or ale or beer?
I don’t know what Norse drink, I fear.

But I’d wish to know now, that’s for sure.
The things I hope to learn for her
are manifold. Her locks of gold
make me want to hear tales told
about her people and then show
her all the things that I now know.
Oh this lady, hearty hale!
Allow me, to you, now regale:
That Viking chick! It makes me sick
how much I want to stick my wick
into her flame. That frigging dame
is so damned hot I’m nigh insane.

The way she moves, that pirate bitch
makes my upper nethers itch
and how she scowls just like the Norns
instills a wish to twist my horns.
Her legs so strong, her shoulders wide.
What she could do to me inside
her ship is inestimable.
Were we in Spain, and she a bull
and I the fittest toreador,
she’d tear me into into pieces more
than I could ever wish to count.
That mare’s one ride I’d pay to mount!

Gods bless that giant Viking girl
whose thighs could shuck an oyster’s pearl
straight to a string upon her neck
– another body part she’d brek
should I speak but once out of line
for she is righteously divine.
Like a hero she’d behave
though I would serve her as slave.
I hope someday she finds in meeth
a sword to slap within her sheath.
And thus to Valhalla I sing
praise for this hot Valkyr/Viking.

You missed your deadline but that’s OK.
You know sometimes life gets in the way.
Seeking joy ought be the One
after which all else can come.

Just because today you slacked
doesn’t mean your virtue lacked
or fiber, skill, or zeal or worth.
You took a break to breathe on earth.

Forgive yourself the crime this time
and ensure tomorrow you’ll align
with your goals so that you’ll be
ending your day more happily.

We keep saying the same things
circling the same conversations
repeating the same points ad infinitum
or ad nauseam.
It’s like the last lines of Seinfeld
which were also the first.

I’m so sick of it
the same old shit
talking loud, saying nothing new.
Maybe there’s occasionally some iteration
of some kind of innovation but
usually, no change ever comes.

The light’s gone out.
If I’m ever to learn anything,
I’m in the dark as to how.
I wish it were as simple
as choosing the road not taken
but everyone always misunderstands that poem
anyhow.

We need to get out of the groove.
We need to break the cycle.
We need to change lanes.
We need to maybe –
what? Last week?
Really?
GODDAMMIT!

There are some days
where despite myself
I just don’t want to dance.
I don’t have it in me
to put on the shiny shoes
and the tightened shirt
and move my ass on the lacquered floor
until my sweat and my blood are mingled
all beneath everyone’s feet.

It is simply not my wish
every night
to take on the responsibilities of Bacchus
or Terpsichore
or whoever the fuck –
look, there’ll be no dancing this night.
Not for me.

I’m down for a movie.
Or a song.
Or even a conversation,
but my toes are not ready for any more action.
It’s time for a break.

Just the other day my girlfriend
from Canada said something
incredibly insightful. She said,
“You know I don’t exist.
I know that I don’t exist.
Do you really think
that your audience
isn’t going to intuit that I don’t exist
when you try to describe me?”

I smiled. She was always
so beautiful
when challenging me.
“I suspect you question
my abilities as a writer
to a fault, my dear.

“It is my very art form
to convince others to suspend disbelief
and accept even the most outlandish
of suppositions.”
“Like my existence?”
Her laugh was like music
like diamonds poured into fine crystal
like ice cream of the peanut butteriest flavor.
She was cool like ice cream, too,
my Canadian lover was.

“Indeed. I will make the people
think of hope and passion
and community. They will want you to be real
and see you as I do
just as they accept my advice
as an expert on nunsex and modern technology
and the works of Harmon G. Diddlysworth.”
“Whom you also made up.”
“That was my point.
For an imaginary construct, honey,
you really could listen better.”

“And if you’re not up to the task?”
she asked, a well-sculpted eyebrow tastefully raised in doubt. “Then, like Tinkerbell before an unenthused crowd,
you may just fade away.”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t think I like that at all.
And what are you looking at?”
“Who indeed,” I replied, winking at none
in particular.
“No, really,” reiterated my very real Canadian girlfriend
from Canada, “what’s going on?
“Jon? Jon?
God, you are so annoying sometimes…”

Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster.
Momma birthed a terror,
and then raised that horror into me…

There was darkness on the edge of town the day that I was born
like a fire wrecking everything but nothing getting warm.
They say the city never knew what hit it on that night.
Best believe I wouldn’t get through that first day without a fight.
I tell you
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster.
Momma birthed a terror
and then raised that horror into me…

Everybody understood to give this boy wide berth
cuz nothing could withstand my gaze that crawls upon the earth
though some fools sometimes bothered me with tears upon my wrists
when they found they’d gotten too much of their blood upon my fists.
You get it?
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster.
Momma birthed a terror
and then raised that little horror into me…

Age o’ five, were three alive that thought of me a threat:
The Pope, the President and Prince arranged a coup d’etet.
The President since left his post, the Pope is gone, now, too.
Just ask me what I did to Prince, I’ll do it next to you.
Because, see,
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster…
Momma made a monster.
Momma birthed a terror
and then built that Frankenstein right into me…

(bridge)
Momma tried to raise me right there for a couple three o’ weeks.
Kept on making those corrections on the wrong ways that I’d speaks
and I tried to just respect her and all the rules she told
but I couldn’t help the way she made me: strong and bad and bold…

It’s been that way for all those years; I’ve grown up big and mean.
I’m not to blame; I’m drawn this way. I’m made from evil genes.
It’s much too late to change my ways. On this I’ve staked my lot unless
you smile at me again. Then I’ll give being good a shot
even though
Momma made a monster…
Momma built a monster…
Momma trained a monster…
Momma carved a monster…
Momma hatched a monster.
Momma birthed a terror
and then moulded that horror into me…

“Let there be light,”
someone once said somewhere,
I think, but
it sure wasn’t here.
Shit is bright in this club.
Flashing. I can see the pores
in all the post-pubescence
that surrounds.

And that’s fine by me.
I want to see what I’m getting into.
In the wake of your perfect storming out
I am looking for the best girl
who will do me wrong.

This has been the quest
every single night
since you been gone
and there have been many wrongs
for this Mister Right Now.
Times have indeed been had.
The girl right after you
was gorgeous and generous
and very creative with her suggestions
but she couldn’t be found
after I lost her number.

The one after that,
the Spanish revolutionary,
the member of the Initiative for the Development of Soria,
could not stop talking about her march of IDES
so I finally told her
we’d meet again at Zuccotti Park.
She probably never went.
Why would she?

Will l do any better tonight?
Perhaps I may find someone
to help me abate the hate.
The first gaggle I approach scowls as one
at my line
“Hope you brought the bread
cuz I’m ready to jam”
It goes nowhere fast.
“What I did was undeserved,”
I apologize,
“because I was earlier over-served. ”

I break from that pack
to find a defenseless solitary doe
who reacts well
when I put her drink
on my tab.
She’s new to town,
pining for a boy at home.
I’m bored of the game
and say something wrong
to quickly move on.

They don’t all succumb to my charms
of course
but it matters little.
Every rejection brings me closer to you
every slight they provide
reminds me
at least for an instant
I can feel something besides self-loathing.

This one.
Her sexy half shirt says
Just Do It
but I implicitly understand how
it does not mean right now
and anyhow I swore
to not blindly follow slogans
on T-shirts months ago
after you.

When I sidle up,
I calculate that I have
well over a decade on her
in addition to an absence of fear.
“We can all agree on one thing,”
I say, “topknots look awful on everyone.
It makes any person look worse
than he otherwise would.
Or she.
Or it.
Definitely it.”

Of course she has her hair in a bun.
I expect her drink or a first
in my eye
but instead get a smile
and then a number
and then some tongue
and a little handwork later in the Ladies’.

The night is bright and full of promise
for those strong and vibrant enough to take it.
The night is dark and full of horrors
for the rest of us.
Happy anniversary to you.

This story is rife with death:
a dead man sings about a killer
with his dead band.
A dead store built by a dead man
sells a dying product line,
the first step in an entire industry’s
extended gasping collapse…
Everywhere: death.

In the time before iPods
before MP3s
before CDs had yet shattered the LP’s hegemony,
I used my birthday money
at Tower Records
to complete my Beatles’ collection.
The Blue Album had just recently changed my life
and I wondered what would happen
when I took the shrink wrap
off my newly-bought copy of the White Album.

I was familiar with some of the songs
on side one
but not “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,”
a weird Lennon cut
on this weird album
where each and every Beatle
goes every which way
all on their own.

I listened.
I liked.
I had no idea what to expect
so when John sang
“so Captain Marvel shot him
right between the eyes. Zap!
All the children sing,”
I thought it strange
that it followed with
“Zap! All the children sing.”
followed with
“Zap! All the children sing”
followed with “Zap!
All the children sing.”
followed with “Zap!
All the children…”
I wondered what sort of psychedelic shit
the Beatles were up to.

It took a few more revolutions
around the disk to realize
my just-purchased classic
was actually skipping
and this was not the Beatles’ intent.
I cursed the sixties
and their experimentation
for making me doubt myself
and my ears.

It was the eighties.
I knew how to fix a skip on a record.
I listened to the track all the way through
but never forgot the way it first sounded
to my new ears
all those years ago.
Now, the earth has circled the sun
a few dozen more times
and most of the elements have changed.
John Lennon? Murdered.
The Beatles? Aced before him.
Records live a zombie life today
and Tower Records died
after the CDs that killed them.
Hell, even the MP3s
that did the CD in
are on their last legs.
Everything dies, baby,
that’s a fact.

But music lives
and we do
and some circle games
just go on and on.

The last time I went to that Diner
it was gone.
Just a hole in the ground,
craterous.

There was a fire there
or something.
I couldn’t be sure;
there was nothing left
to pin a note of explanation on.

They used to have such excellent pies.
I was particularly partial
to the peanut butter crumble pie
which had a milk chocolate bottom.
I don’t suppose any of it
made it through the fire
or the lightning strike
or the demolition or whatever.

I don’t believe
I will ever have a chance
to have that delicious
pie in my mouth again
unless the Renaissance Diner
experiences a resurrection.
I don’t have any faith
in that sort of occurrence.

It was a full moon
that day I discovered the destruction
but I don’t see at all
how that might be relevant.

You walk carefully
but with purpose
taking the same sort of steps
that you have hundreds of times before.
It’s an old game,
traveling in this labyrinth
this particular circle of hell.

You enter the kaleidoscopic hall
with the epileptic lights
and the freakshow costumes
on the barebacked ladies.
you are wearing your Sunday Best
here on Friday Night.
You are ready to get over last weekend’s heartbreak.
You are, once again,
starting over.

The last one made you think
you’d escaped this eternal loop,
didn’t she,
with her wise eyes
and eternal kindness.
She expected something of you
and you tried to provide.

Trying
is pretty much the stupidest thing
you ever attempted to do.

So now you’re back
from outer space
seeking inner piece
and hoping to avoid the sight
of your own blackened soul
for at least a night.

You take aim
at some gorgeous thing or another
and say, “We’ve barely met
but I feel I know you.”

It works
or doesn’t.
Who knows?