jonberger

Look at it now:
there’s no pattern in the pieces
just a shambles,
a trail of trash
left there
where you had your accident.

No
of course you didn’t mean to
you ever do.
And of course you’ll try to fix it
but nothing broken
is ever the same afterwards.
Things may mend
certainly.
Some of the wounds you inflict
heal almost as soon
as you strike
but there is always some sort of scar,
a memory of the attack.

And this thing,
this shattered structure,
this will never be anything ever after
but a memory.
You have seen to that
and I will not soon
see fit to forget it.

They told me you were paranoid;
I swore it wasn’t true
but they showed me reams of data.
There was nothing I could do.

They’ve been on your tail for hours
after days and weeks and years.
They’ve denied all good intentions.
They confirmed your every fear.

The conspiracy is real, they said.
Your enemies are in queue
each waiting their turn to strike.
They’ve got it in for you.

It’s rough, I know, what with their plans,
that soon they’ll have you dead,
but if you could, before that day,
don’t let them know I said?

As we pulled out of the gas station
she asked me why I had yelled.
In an effort
to be occasionally honest with the girl,
I said I wasn’t sure.

“First he put up his hand
then told me to back in at an angle
– which I’ve never heard anyone ask before.
Then he told me to fix it,
and I shouldn’t have yelled at him.”
I looked in the mirror
to the back back seat,
making an instant of eye contact.
“The yelling was wrong.
But I didn’t know what he wanted from me
and I think the accent confused me.”

“Was it Spanish?”
“I don’t think so.
I have no clue what he wanted me to do.
I still think he was an idiot
but I didn’t react the way
a mature responsible person does
and I should have apologized to him.”
“Did you?” she asked.

In an effort to be honest
I told her something like the truth
and reminded her to buckle up
for her own safety
or else.

The paper pieces
interspersed in the pages
of the poetry book
– some spine-shattered, cover-falling Ferlinghetti –
offer little insight
or understanding of the poems therein.

They barely even inform anything interesting
about the author of the notes.
Random names,
some dates and numbers,
and occasional scribblings
populate currently unsticky Post-Its.
A coffee-stained bookmark
marks off page 33 silently
and a torn TCBY coupon
– void if mutilated –
is over on page 88.
No worries about the coupon;
it expired in ’96
and TCBY closed in ’03.

There is little help provided to decode
this ancient text
with its yellowed pages
and weathered smell.
It will take great effort and perseverance
to come to some semblance of an interpretation of this classic New Directions tome. Only reading will help us now
so I better get to it.

We hid the treasure
– the most wondrous prizes
we could imagine at the time –
on the beach
– the most wondrous place we knew –
which maybe wasn’t the best plan
with the surf constantly coming in,
wiping away any marker we might put up.
Idiocy was high
for we were young
and living in an age of idiots
but we didn’t know it
because of the aforementioned youth
– and the idiocy (duh).

The prizes were Cracker Jack variety
so maybe their loss
is no great loss,
or maybe the next kids
who found the treasure, years later,
saw it with the same pirate-patched eyes
with which it was buried away
that special (short bus special) summer day.

Possibly
the treasure is still out there
waiting to be uncovered,
sans marker, map
or memory.
Tell you what:
you get a shovel
and I’ll get a pail…

She sat next to me
while I gulped down egg drop soup
at the take out place.
She asked if she could pay me cash
so that I could order an Uber for her.
I smelled a scam
but answered honestly:
I don’t have Uber.

Oh. Thanks, she said,
and I returned to my soup.
I side-eyed her.
She was pale
dressed in fashionable black,
very pretty,
with sharp red lipstick
that demanded attention
even as I faced away from it
and her.

I interrupted her studying her phone.
Why not take a taxi? I asked,
More expensive?
Yeah, she said.
I didn’t know that I trusted her
with access to my data
but I was willing to help the pretty girl.

Look, you don’t know me,
I said, but I can drive you.
Are you going to Brooklyn?
She asked.
No,
but I can.
Thanks anyway, she said.

And there we were.
She had a curious request
– one I couldn’t trust.
I had a curious solution
– one she daren’t trust.
Two strangers could have helped each others out
at the local take out shop
but wouldn’t take the chance
refusing each to take a leap of faith.

All right, I shrugged
and went back to my soup.

Missed opportunity:
You were the smokey-eyed Latina
in jeans and a tweed trench,
glasses provocatively placed on forehead
with a circular diamond on her left index finger.
I was the fucking idiot
on the fucking 6 train
who kept, like, looking at you
every fucking chance
his fucking drooling-ass eyes fucking got.

We made eye contact
a fuckton on our downtown ride
until you got off on twenty third
in an exit as graceful and gorgeous
as any I imagined
in the thousand scenarios I painted
in the infinite realities I described for myself
where I wasn’t the fucking blithering idiot
who could not
get the fucking nerve up
to fucking say hello to you.

You were looking back at me.
Maybe because I was sweating
because you were so fucking hot.
or maybe because I was inexplicably intriguing
to you, too.
I could have said something.
I should have said something.
Fucking idiot…

Is there a universe, somewhere,
in all the realities
where you’d give me another chance
to lose your favor?
It would mean all the worlds to me.
If so
you can expect me
on the 6 train
every fucking day
for the rest of my fucking life.

He wears a mask
on the back of his hat
so empty eyes
cover his retreat
wherever he goes
even when he sits
on the crowded 2
heading towards Harlem.

The mask stares out the blurry window
looking at the downbound trains
heading where the mask
and its man had just been.

The man is oblivious
to his mask’s antics
or the hat that bonds them
just as he barely pays attention
to the electrons that delivers him
to 110th street
where he gets up
facing the open doors.

He does not get off yet
but looks out
while his mask
opposing him
watches across the aisle
to where the doors open
at 116th
which is where the man
the mask
and the hat between them
all abandon the car that carried them
to their destination.

The dancers on the train
want my attention.
I want them
to not hit me in my head.
I live in New York
so that I can be immersed in the arts
but I’d rather it be by choice
when I walk it.
I didn’t take public transportation todayi
to be assaulted by alternative religions
or off-key voices
or free verse poems.
That’s what open mics are for.

I came here to get from Point A
to Point B
and maybe to leer at some ladies
along the way.
I do not wish to be have to absorb
this unwanted material
from these obnoxious dancers
who want me to clap
at the end of their act?
Ugh.

They will get nothing from me.
No attention.
Not even an eye roll.
Just a poem
(and thus
a nod in history).

Take a bite.
It’s good for you.
It tastes good.
Trust me
please.

We’ve been walking around now
for what feels like weeks
looking for the right food.
You seem a little cranky.
God knows I’m fucking cranky.
We need a break
since we haven’t been able to find
the right kind of meal to agree upon
yet
and I know this bar is dark chocolate
and you only like milk chocolate
but I’ll bet
since you haven’t eaten in, like,
twenty two hours
that difference won’t seem so pronounced.

Just take a taste.
I am literally begging.
Figuratively.
I am figuratively begging.

After you have this
we’ll have the strength
to make it to the next block
where we just might
find a place where we can stop
and sit
and find the food
that will work for both of us.
Just… just a bite.

Come on.

These are not tears
dripping down my sweaty face.
I’m just so tired
and I need you to have something so
would you just
just eat it.
Eat it.
Eat –

You know
you could have told me earlier
that you were allergic.