jonberger

I write a lot
but they’re really all the same poem:
same themes,
same subject matter,
same ideas, circled through,
iteration after iteration,
over and over.
I hide it,
I switch it up,
but everything I write
is basically trying to tell you
that I am lonely
and maybe some of the reasons why.

My therapist
does not directly address my poetry
because he has a job
and I can’t afford to pay him
to read my reams of writings
but the themes come up
in our conversations
and it seems to come down to this:
my isolation stems from deep-seated dysmorphophobia
regarding the unnatural size
of my enormous cock.

I am uncomfortable
with how gigantic and beautiful it is.
I am suspicious
that I am beloved merely because of my midsection.
I fear that my art is appreciated
because of the whispers
of how well and frequently
I have been known to satisfy women
and any other gender that might be interested.
It is this discomfort,
the shame,
that is the cause
of all my issues.
My large and astounding penis
is what drives me
and my writing
and makes me what I am today.

At last it has been told.
Of course, no scholar of Jon Berger
should be expected to trust secondary sources.
If required,
primary research materiel is available
upon review of request.
You’re welcome.

Dottie is crazy.
Was.
Dottie was crazy.
Her paranoia
and confusion over the most basic things
made conversations most exhausting.
She didn’t want the neighbors to know
she was in the hospital
because they might talk about it
and… care about her?

Dottie survived her husband
and all three of her sons
the youngest of whom died
at forty.
She had grandchildren
but they never visited.

Dottie was a pack rat.
Dottie was a hoarder.
Dottie didn’t invite her relatives over
or friends.
I lived beneath her
for fifteen years
and only saw her apartment last year
when I brought her home from the hospital.

Dottie was the queen of the block
which is industrial
and has but a handful of occupants.
She asked after everyone
and knew most people’s stories
most of which she told wrong.
She didn’t want people to talk about her
but she talked about everybody else.

Dottie got my name wrong
for several years.
I put my name up
in front of my door
in front of my mail box
and she saw it on my mail
which she sorted through
on a daily basis
but for a while
she called me Josh
which somehow transformed to Jos’,
which I don’t even think is a name.
I can’t comprehend the mental gymnastics
she completed to lose my name
and then eventually find it again.

I didn’t understand her
much at all.
After all,
Dottie was crazy.
Is crazy.
Is.

Her daughter-in-law
living in Long Island
had asked me to look in on her
but I was at work
so I begged off.
“Don’t worry,” I said,
“I’ve been checking on her a lot lately.
We spoke just two days ago.
I’m sure she’s fine.”

She did not trust the words of a stranger
so drove into the city
to check on her ailing elder, and
seeing what she saw,
called an ambulance
which brought her to the hospital
where they sought to heal her
for weeks
until finally
her heart stopped.

There is a slim possibility
that had I prophesied differently
some doctors could have gotten a quicker look
at the old lady
and made a different diagnosis
with better results.

I am glad that Dottie got treatment
even if it didn’t save her.
I am sorry that I did nothing to save her.
I could have done better by her.
I’m pretty bummed, actually, but
I guess
it could’ve been worse.

Her car stopped turning over
the week before she did.
While in the hospital
she had asked me
to take care of it
moving the SUV
from one side of the street
to the other
just as the parking rules required.

Then the car wouldn’t start,
and the ritual ceased
and now she will not be driving again
and it makes me wonder:
what’s the point
in railing against a bored god
striving to struggle,
rising day after day
only to fall
only to fail
again and again
and again and again?
It’s all just a big thing.

The car’s been dead over a week
and she’s been dead for less than one.
Neither one has gotten a ticket yet.
There is no lesson here.
There is no lesson anywhere.

The landlord had been trying to get Dottie out
since last year.
She’d gotten paperwork warning
she needed to vacate
be New Year’s Eve.
She was eighty years old
with no nearby family to take her in
but the landlord thought
he could get more money
for the South Bronx industrial slum
third floor walk-up apartment.

“I don’t know why he’s doing this to me!”
Dottie would say,
at her most self-pitying.
“He wants us all out,”
I suggested,
“so he can renovate the building
and make a mint.”
“But what about us?”
She said, “Fuck him.”
“Fuck him,” I agreed
and still do.

The stress of the eviction
made her final months no easier.
She was searching for nursing homes
or subsidized housing
or hospices
while convalescing those last few days.
She didn’t know that they were her last days
but she was pretty sure
she wouldn’t be walking up those stairs again
to her home of the last thirty years.

Fuck him.
He didn’t kill her
but he fucking helped
and probably knew it.
Fuck him again.

I was relieved
to discover that,
between my last visit
and your last breath,
only about fourteen hours passed.

I had worried
for a while
about the fact
that you had been alone
before you left,
that your final days
were isolated
and you spent your last thoughts
scared, helpless, lonely.

You didn’t have time for all that,
you were gone so quick.
Maybe it was peaceful.
Maybe someday
I’ll hear the story from you.
Maybe I’ll like that, although
you kinda always talked too much.

Maybe it’ll be better
to just enjoy the silence.

Yeah, but, OK…
listen, hear me out.
What if,
what if she’s not dead?
What if it’s a mistake
and they gave me bad information
and she didn’t pass away
and they just moved her to another place?

No, really.
It’s not that hard to believe.
If you only get information
from a single source
then isn’t it possible
that the single source
got it wrong?
Wouldn’t that be, like,
the very epitome of fake news?

Look, an intelligent individual
does not discount a theory
until it has been fully explored
and dutifully considered.
It would be completely irresponsible
to ignore the possibility
that maybe she was moved
and the staff was mistaken
and she’s doing all right
somewhere
wondering why no one is visiting her.

It’s possible, isn’t it?
Couldn’t it be?
Maybe?

I.
He told her
to clutch the balloon tightly
since her allowance
only allowed her
the purchase of the one.
She nodded her head vigorously
so he turned his own head
and immediately spun around again
to her cry
and the sight
of the red balloon slowly floating
up.

II.
His mouth a slit,
he held in all his “I told you so’s
and bent down,
hoping to still find
some teachable moment.
“We’re indoors, see?”
He pointed to the ceiling,
high as it was,
and offered hope.
“Maybe there’s a way
we can reach the ribbon
and get your heart back.”
The balloon was in the shape of a heart.
Did I forget to mention that?
“We needn’t give up hope,”
he told her,
“until we’ve exhausted every possibility.
Let’s look for a ladder.”

III.
There was no ladder.
There was no hook.
There was no maintenance man in the gym
available to help retrieve
the runaway balloon,
caught up top.
No fire fighter
nor Spider-Person came to the rescue
to save their day
with certain special equipment or abilities.
Eventually,
after exhausting every eventuality,
he bent down again,
and admitted defeat
– with a caveat.
“The balloon will sink
on its own,” he said,
“and maybe we can come back
and retrieve it then.”

IV.
They left.
Still searching for
that teachable moment,
he grasped for straw.
“Sometimes,” he said,
“when you make a mistake
– however small –
and you lose your heart
by accident,
you can only hope for things
to get better with time.
“And even then,” he added,
“don’t be surprised
if your heart returns to you
deflated.”

V.
She cried for many hours
into the night.
He was not a good father.

Eastman Johnson’s 1873 oil painting,
Not at Home,
depicts a shaded sumptuous interior
of a luxurious 19th Century home
but as the plaque points out,
climbing up the stairs
stage right on the paperboard
is a period woman
who seems, clearly,
at home.

Not to worry,
the plaque clarifies,
for "Not at Home"
is a historic term
for "Closed"
"Do Not Enter"
"Nothing to See Here."

The plaque
very informatively
explains that the woman depicted
is Mrs. Johnson herself
and she’s heading up
to the family’s private apartments.

Stage left of the painting
practically in darkness
shows a small baby carriage.
Perhaps Mrs. Johnson
is about to put her infant to bed.

It is something we could,
perhaps,
ask Mr. Eastman himself,
were he not either
a) working on the hushed painting in question;
b) already upstairs entertaining his wife in that 19th century way;
c) unwilling to discuss his work, insisting that it speak for itself;
d) dead for well over a hundred years.

The Statue of Liberty stands
in a parking lot
in Brooklyn.
Or, a Statue of Liberty stands
in a parking lot in Brooklyn.
It’s not like the that French gift
was stolen then shanghaied
to this inland location.
No,
It’s a facsimile.

I see it from above
here in the stairwell of this house
of a thousand surprises.
There’s so much to see here
even things that can be witnessed elsewhere
like this Liberty landmark,
better viewed on the way to Staten Island.

I saw another Statue of Liberty
with a girl once
in Lincoln Center,
or I tried to.
I forget.
Some days
the difference between reality and imagination
seems hard to see.

Thankfully there are institutions
that will tell us
what is true
and what is false.
So, Brooklyn Museum,
for the record,
that Statue of Liberty,
did I see her on 64th with Jenny
and why
did she stop calling me?