jonberger

I’m returning the library book
the one I got to impress you
about the gays in the Germany.
You know the one.
I never got to read the whole thing,
but I’ve kept it
to the limit.
It can’t be renewed anymore:
ninety nine times seems to be the max.

It’s not like there’s a chance
I could impress you anyhow
at this point.
It’s obvious by now:
you’re not that easy

and I couldn’t get into it,
that book you loved so.
It was beyond me
what you saw in those stories
so today
I have to go out
in the rain
to take back this text
that did me no good
in getting your attention
or anything else.

I’ll miss the space
it took up on my table
and recognize its absence
by the dust outline left behind.

Maybe
if I talk to the librarian
about the book
I’ll be able to convince her
to let it stay with me
for just a little bit longer.

Somehow, all at once,
I forgot how to tie my tie.
I don’t wear them at work
and no one was there
in the car to help me.
I looked up
into the mirror
struggling to recall
this obvious function.

I had learned too long ago
at the hands of my father
who stood behind me
before a full length mirror,
me his mannequin dummy,
he practicing on my nervous form,
figuring out the intuitive nature
of what he’d no doubt learned
from his father
a generation prior.

When he’d understood what to do,
he tied and retied
that social noose around my neck,
explaining the process
until I began my own attempts
and finally discovered
the wonders of this manly skill.

But as I said
that history reached too far back
and I had
along the way
lost the ability.
I left the car
and looked at my grown reflection
in the window reflection,
trying again
to no avail.

Without my father
to show me the way
where would I be?
How would I recover the talent
to tie my tie?

It was not my father’s voice
that whispered in the wind
saying "Google"
nor was it my grandfather
that pointed out the YouTube tutorial
but somehow
I was guided
to the knowledge
that got me dressed and ready
to enter that funeral home,
all knotted up
and ready to go.

I am broken.
I am beaten.
I am imbecilic
and embarrassed
and embalmed
in that I am petrified
by all that has occurred
and all what might.

I was abused
and burnt
and buttressed by bottom-feeder logic
but now I have
come out the other side,
I hope.

I am hurting still
continuing through some emotional hell
but some day, hope shall come
from some heaven-sent source
and then
or sometime soon after
I shall be healed.

I’m told you’re suffering
that you’re doing rather poorly
that these are not easy days for you.
I feel for you
and wish I could be there
to help you through these trying times
but it’s quite clear
that one of the reasons
you are so alone now
is that you actively drove people away.

I would be with you
offering what comfort
you could accept
if you’d let me.

Please let me know
if you are ready to accept anything
I have to deliver.

Let me simplify the issue:
if you suspect I’m writing
about you, I am.
If you think that this is a snide reference
that might allude to you
then bingo!
You got it.

It ain’t brain surgeoning;
if you have any reason
to believe you were in the sights
of my snipe,
then accept the constructive critique
for what it is
and work with all your limited abilities
to rectify the situation.

If there’s the slightest possibility
you have given rise to my ire,
consider that fact
the opportunity for you
to change.

You can become better
than you were
before you offended me.
It’s time
for you to seek substantial revisal
and get off my shit list.

Honestly
I never thought I was good enough for you:
not smart enough
nor pretty enough
nor with the constitution to handle those marathon fuckfests you seem so capable of.

I wasn’t up to it
– I knew that at the start.
I was incapable of earning your attention
of becoming the one
you richly deserved.

I didn’t think I could do it
or convince you of it.
I just thought you were too drunk
to figure it out
for yourself.

So
how’s sobriety treating you?

Really? Is this conversation absolutely necessary?
Can’t we just agree on the concept
of irreconcilable differences
and leave it at that?
I don’t mind getting down and dirty about this
but were I you
I’d advise against it.

Of course, it should be clear,
I am not you
and little like you
so if you insist we go down
this long dusty road?
I’ll just let it be.

Things always get weird with us
and that’s probably because
you always end up
doing something weird.
I’m not saying you’re a freak
because I’m hoping
you’re perceptive enough
to pick up
on the obvious implications.
If you can’t see it, though,
then that’s another sign
of what’s gone horribly wrong between us
– when there was an “us” to speak of
at all.

Am I being harsh?
You might think so
but your opinion is worthless to me.
I don’t want to be rude,
but if you’re asking for honesty,
it shall be provided
full stop:
Your thoughts are not respected.
Your experience counts for nothing.
I don’t much have any interest
in what you have to say

but over and over again
you insist on saying words to me,
words about the weather,
thoughts on your preferred entertainment,
your feelings on the political climate
of your home town.
I don’t care about politics
where I currently am,
why in Satan’s name
would I give a shit about
where you come from?

I’m sorry if sometimes I’m mean
but you seem to elicit it.
Like an Alien burst
you bring the asshole out of me.
If there was a way
I could be kinder to you
but still get you to see
what should have been fucking obvious all along
I would have chosen to do so
but nothing else has worked
so here it is:
the truth.

Can we PLEASE
be done now?

I went to see
that band you mentioned
the other day.
They were not very good.
They were, in fact,
really quite
not very good.
If I were to list
the top ten bands
I have seen in the last week
they would not make the list.

If I were to form a list
of the top 100 bands
I’d seen this month
they would not be on that list,
either.

The list they would be on
would be the top ten bands
that made me want to barf my pants
as an excuse to leave the room
and not have to come back.
I suspect I was not alone in that assessment
from the look of their fan base
– and the state of their pants.

I am not saying
that you are wrong
about the quality
of that band you mentioned
or that your taste is bad,
but only because
my mother once told me
to not insult people
who might be able
to write you a college recommendation
and I never got to graduate.

However
I will say this:
the next band
you choose to recommend to me
is unlikely to see me
at any of their future shows.

Is there a pill
that targets negative thoughts
and isolates them
and erases them
from the skull?
Like a focused lobotomy
or a more specific variant of Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind?
Is there a way
that movie science
could be applied to my life?

I need to be heroic
so heroic that I don’t even think of it
as heroism
but just as a different way
to cross the street.
I want to be effortlessly brave
and handsome
or at least believe that I’m handsome.
I want to trick myself
into optimism.

Does modern technology
offer any insight into this issue:
with pinpoint lasers
or genetic engineering
or micro-specific alternate reality shifts?

There’s got to be something that helps.
Just give me the pill
that provides happiness
– and make it retroactive
for the last thirty years.

You’re old
and weathered
and weakening
as you work bones into nubs
and get numb.
You’re aging
and getting worse.

Now we are forty
and more
and each day ends like the last
with a crawl to the couch
and a search for comfort
in the consumption of commodities.

Eat pie.
Drink wine.
Become one
with the things you’ve bought
and brought home
instead of having experiences
or friends
or anything that could make
this long life
any easier to survive.

You’re getting older
and closer to dying.
Soon enough you’ll be gone.
Take solace in that
and drink more.