jonberger

The graffiti on the bathroom wall read
“Please fuck me…”
and followed with “2017,”
so you knew it was current.
You knew it was real.

But I didn’t know
if I could really follow through.
How can you fuck a message?
How do you hold it
cuddle it
or debase it with humiliating acts
if that’s your thing?
How does one ascertain
what the graffiti prefers
in the way of sexual activity?
What’s a blowjob for a note?
Saying it orally?

Even if the message
was somebody’s truth
I had no way to enact that truth.
It was just too much to figure out
even if I could get my hands
on the two dimensional letters
in the first place.
I finished pissing
and got the fuck out of there.

Please delete all the messages
I left yesterday
while your phone was off
but before you explained that fact to me.
I was in free fall,
wondering why I hadn’t heard from you
desperately waiting for your return call
– for any kind of return.

Please ignore the middle few
when I went from bewildered to angry
to fucking furious
that you could ghost me
so easily
so quickly
and with such little cause.

Please don’t bother
listening to my many guesses
as to what I did to piss you off.
You don’t need to know
what I think I did
since you weren’t pissed in the first place
right?

Please, if you can,
find it in your heart
to not look down on me
for the pathetic way I addressed you
at the end
with those final few calls
when I begged you
to come back into my life
any way you were willing to.
If you can still see me
as a masculine man
after the snot-dripping
tear-choked tone
of that last message,
I would very much appreciate it.

And please, accept this access
into my family plan
where I have unlimited hours
and you will never again have to worry
about turning off the phone
in the name of conserving minutes.

Thanks.

Situationally,
I have my reasons
for not dogging your doorstep
these last few weeks.
I have been quite busy
what with the voyage to Vermont
and the days of vertigo
and a very special Different Strokes episode
finally available on laserdisc.
There have been many activities
keeping me from you.

But that hasn’t been
the whole of it.

In truth,
I’ve been trying to cleanse myself,
to purge the venom
that has kept coursing through
for the balance of the month.
I am trying to find my way
without you.

It hasn’t been easy.
The path is not quite visible
even with the time and effort
invested in the search.
I have been lost
as much as not
in your absence,
but slowly
it has grown easier.

I am mapping my trip,
finding inlets allowing access
to that which I wish.

I am finding my way
to liberty
to another country
to a life free of toxicity.
I am close
to ending my addiction
to your existence
and thought I should come by again
to see you
and let you know
how I’m over you.

Why are you so cold
so hard?
Why are you so different
than the way we were
just a few hours ago?
If I am hugging you
to say goodbye
why must the moment be so difficult?

If this will be the last instant we share
if there is nothing more for us
if this is our swan song
then let it end
on a sweet note.

Hug me well
as we say goodbye
tonight
for what if
it is truly the last words we speak
that the other might ever hear?

Wandering these streets
my feet the only map,
my eyes and skull seem trapped
in some battle for my soul.

Thoughts fly like missiles
whistling past my brain
as I struggle to attain
some semblance of control.

I have no destination
but impatiently I ramble.
I scramble not to amble
down these avenues I know.

Though there’s nowhere that I’m heading,
I dread voyage’s completion
and this nothing quest’s suppletion
to where I hadn’t planned to go.

Soon my aimlessness must end
as friendless I shall finish.
If the journey has diminished
me, there’s no way I could tell.

But I walked alone to start,
smartly wandering these streets,
just myself and my two feet
on this winding path through hell.

The new place
where I get dollar pizza
(just a couple blocks
from my old dollar pizza place)
is pretty much the same.
You don’t go in
for a dollar pizza slice
if you’re seeking
one of those life-changing
mouth-watering
taste sensations that men write poems about.

The dollar slice at the new place
is primarily identical
to what I’m used to
with the exception
of a particular condiment:
the new place lacks hot sauce.

I hadn’t really thought
about hot sauce on pizza
until I frequented dollar pizza places.
Now
it is hard to live without.
So far, I’ve found a way.
I’ve been all right with the latest slices
at the latest place
but I could use the liquid kick
that Sriracha provides
just a few blocks away.

Maybe I can request they add this
to the flavors available.
Maybe I can carry
some of the hot stuff with me.
Maybe I should go back to the old place.
Maybe I should just shut up
and eat me my damned pizza.

Your writing could use some work.
I can only understand
about half of the characters you compose
and the others can easily be confused
with one another.
It’s careless, really.
A lack of effort.
I’m sure practice and experience
will make your writing clearer
easier to comprehend
but as it stands
Your writing seems really immature
like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Again,
you can fix this.
You can improve,
make your movements more discernible
and everything will become
much easier to take in.
You have the ability
to work it
til your fingers bleed
and you get the right rhythm
and your handwriting becomes something
we are all capable of reading
and enjoying.

Get to work.

We sat in the park
by the garden
and my special friend nodded
towards a tittering millennial,
previously unnoticed.
“He’s here to photograph a surprise.”
I saw the boy
and asked why she’d said that.

She just shrugged
but the kid
started gesturing to nearby girls
who also had their cameras out
but all kept discrete distance from one another,
some invisible barrier separating them
and the garden.
I began to suspect
that my friend was on to something.

Within a few minutes
a couple slowly ambled into the garden
and by then
any fool could feel the elements
all creeping into one another.
The man led the woman
among the flowers
then bent down
and proffered a box.
The woman gasped,
nodded
and their friends popped from hiding
clicking happily away
and then clapped heartily.

“How did you know?”
I asked. She replied,
“You just have to see.”

The garden closed soon after
due to lack of funds.
My special friend probably knows why
but I haven’t seen her
to ask.
She saw something in me
I think
that i could not
and now goes other places
with other people
that I know nothing about.

I want your money
but I’m too sly to just tell you so
so I’ve got a sneaky plan
to coerce you
into offering it to me.
You’re never gonna know
about the hit.

I’ll start with a cough
ever so slight,
ever so frequent,
to encourage you to ask me
just what is wrong.
I’ll deny it all, of course,
but soon enough,
you’ll squeeze out of me
the degree of my predicament.

Naturally enough,
you’ll want to help,
but I won’t hear of it.
I am far too proud
to even consider
accepting your charity
especially when I’m sure
I’ll be getting my refund so soon.

But you’ll insist on providing assistance,
simply demanding that I accept your cash,
requiring that I pocket all that you have
with offers of more as necessary.
You will feel great about your largesse, proud of your Christian nature, especially knowing I’ll be able to repay
in just a few days.
The warm feeling of success
will be reward enough
for your generosity.

This is what we call win-win.
This is what I shall do
to get what I want. This
is far better than ever having to ask.

All right, so this one
is a piece of crap.
It’s ill-planned
and worked on far too hurriedly,
because I wanted to get it done immediately
making quality fly out the window
for some self-imposed deadline
that nobody else cares about
– you know,
as it is with all good art.

This was a rush job
with a weak central concept
and an imbecilic rhyme scheme
while I was learning the language
and high off of bad steak.
It’s a waste of time,
really, and should be
wiped away
rather than shat out
the way too many products get made.

It’s lazy
and lame
and frankly, I’m ashamed
of the very minimal effort
that’s gone into it.
I’m sorry.
Don’t read this.
Don’t listen.