jonberger

Het dates on Pride Day seem ill-advised.
Trying to make a statement of girl-on-boy affection
on a day dedicated to the furtherance
of all the other options?
Tacky.

I mean, if you’re het married,
stay married, I guess
and if you’re in some kind of long-term het relationship,
feel free to see each other
in the act of celebrating Pride,
but het Grindr,
whatever it may be called,
should just shut down
on such a day.

No blind dates
no bar come-ons
no fratboy hookups
– unless it’s with other fratboys.
That’s cool.
Otherwise, though: no.

Het sex on this day
is wrong.
We should celebrate diversity
in all its forms,
of course,
just not the vanilla kind.

I was ecstatic when I finally got your attention
because you seemed hard to please
and I like that in a woman.
When you impress someone like that
you’ve probably earned it.
And after you started to pay attention,
I hoped,
maybe I could get you
to invest in some other things

but I realized something
about the hard to please women:
if you don’t continue to please them
for whatever reason
they may depart
in the night
and never be heard from again.
I’m relieved you weren’t that sort of lass,

and yet the struggle
to maintain your interest
while batting so high above my weight class
(I’m kind of bad at the sporting metaphors)
put a serious strain on my system.
Knowing at any point,
you might be gone,

it made it something of a relief
when you finally did.
I am free from the fear
of waiting for you to find me out,
recognizing how unworthy I am.
I am at last
comfortable with my lot in life

even if it’s
absent of you.

You look at the world as it is
and you see it
in just that same way, but I
am not so lucky.
I am cursed
to see the world that is not.

I see the way things could have been
and could someday be
if we all go a different way.
I see the potential we have squandered
and continue to squander.
I see the half-full glass
and know there could have been
a gigantic telekinetic decanter
filled to the brim with eight times the liquid caramel
just ready to be poured into my willing mouth.
Half-full glass of water; who cares about that?
I see the true tragedy:
an absence of caramel.

We are not supposed to live like this.
There is a better world we are missing
a world lost to imagination.
We had chances for heaven on earth
but we greedily lost them all
to the hope of a better brand of pork rinds.

What can we do?
How can we regain the nirvana
we never got to experience?
How can I make you see
what you’re missing
– what we all are?
How can anyone fix
what they don’t understand is broken?

Shit, this version of reality
is so damned depressing.
Am I a pessimist
for seeing this sorry state
or an optimist
because I know so exactly
just what it should really be?

This is such a bad idea
patently unwise and unfounded.
It is doomed to failure
like so many ideas of mine
and any other dreamer here on this earth.
It cannot succeed
and it’s senseless to try.
It is the very idea
that exists to be proven wrong.
It is inexplicable
unbelievable
undeliverable.
Why should I bother
and why
am I so damned certain
It’ll all work out?

The Pride Parade is something,
celebrating the diversity of love
and the treasure of finding pleasure
with whatever body
in whatever body you might choose to have.
It’s great.
It’s all great, but
does strolling around the city
on legally proscribed streets
really represent
what should be honored?

The joy
the exultation
the pure vibrancy of the day
should be truly acknowledged
in its most natural way:
Public displays of affection.
Let there be sex.
Let there be fucking in the streets.
Let there be a resplendence of bodies
on top of or beside other bodies.
Let there be an orgy of organisms orgasming into each other’s organs at once.

It’s the only way
to show what this day means.
Let he’s be with he’s, with she’s, with thems, with its.
Let there be getting it on
and off
and everywhere it can be.
If love trumps hate,
then let love trump everything.
Let there be love.
Let love rule.
Let me do you
whoever you are
in honor of this day.
It’s the very least we could do
or the least you let me do.

Be proud
and be naked
with me
today.

Wow,
you look like a couple of girls
I’d hoped to love.
I couldn’t find it in me
to succeed with either of them
but with you, maybe,
it could be different.

The first one,
we sniffed and snickered around each other
wondering just what we could mean,
but when she went off with another guy,
I couldn’t find it in myself to continue.

The next wanted to move in,
at least for a weekend,
and I wasn’t ready
for such a commitment.
With you, though,
I think it would be easy.
Give me a chance.
I’m not as bad as I was back then.

I wanted to love
two women very much like you.
I can’t help but hope
that the third time
will be the charm.

She said, I know you.
I said, "I think you’ve confused me
with someone else."
But she said, You read here, right? John?
"Jon," I corrected, still thinking
she might be talking about
some other guy
but she wasn’t.
I had met her
and we had spoken before
and somehow
I could not remember her
even though she was the kind of creature
I would like to have remembered.

I’ve been meaning to come
to see you play, she said.
"Read," I replied,
"I read poetry."
I meant that, she said
and I believed her.

I didn’t know why she was talking to me
or how she had remembered me.
I didn’t know
how long I could keep up
the conversation with her.
It wasn’t to be much longer.
Goodbye, she told me.

I haven’t seen her since.

Hey, it’s been a long time; now I see what you’ve been doing:
in all your missing months, it was a baby you’d been brewing!
Oh, just look at that thing! If it’s acclaim you are pursuing,
…Sure… But your brat’s a babe I shan’t be ‘gain a’viewing.

Your baby could be better suited covered by a mask
or stared at after drowning all one’s senses in a flask
or completing any sort of an eye-blinding kind of task.
If you wonder what I’m getting at, you needn’t have to ask:

Your kid’s ugly. I thought you should know.
It appears that you think otherwise and information flow
seems to spare the parents, so I opted to go
and offer my opinion that your kid’s an ugly ho.

Good going, you spawned! Congratulations.
In all recorded history, you are the only ones
who have accomplished this activity, amazed under the sun.
You deserve a bounty for a job well done.

But that bounty ain’t the beauty of the body on that kid.
And that face so loved by relatives is better off well-hid.
I think if Heaven auctioned looks, your child got overbid,
and was left resembling dinner that had off the table slid.

Your tyke’s appearance is simply not first-rate.
I don’t mean to give offense, but this isn’t a debate.
Surely you’re subjective ’bout your spanking new room-mate
but trust: what you’ve created? Just a mother couldn’t hate.

It’s possible the problem was how your genes combined
though you may well have asked, “Is that his unibrow… or mine?”
I think how you bred together was a danger sign
for the future of the world. Pray that’s it for your blood line.

But it’s clear in terms of coupling, you’ll continue to breed
and despite the superstorm you’ve reaped, you’ll pay my words no heed
for though results were hideous, the act is fun, indeed,
so you’ll issue out a further batch of evil demon seed.

Still, that baby’s ugly. Not one word more need be said
but knowing me, you knew, no doubt, that I would go ahead
and inform you that your boy’s the worst the world has ever tread
and naught could change my mind – unless, oh! She’s a girl instead…

When they find out
who I stole this from,
they are gonna be in some kind of a snit.
They’re gonna lose their shit.
They’re going to have me shot,
is what they’ll do.

All the folks who speak so well of me today,
they’ll start talking out the other side
of their mouths, I’ll bet,
once the chickens come home to roost.
The fans are very likely
going to hit me
any minute now.

I deserve it.
I don’t know why I do
the things that I do,
just taking the best parts of others’
and making them my own.
Who does that?
Well, yes, I guess I do know who,
but why?
What is wrong with me?

I may never know
for the answer may as well be blowing…
What? Oh, fuck!
You know,
I heard that good artists borrow
but great artists steal.
Is there some way
I can take that line?

Oh well,
if I do
they will just lose their SHIT!

This is how I met you:
at a party, you
playing the slattern
with convincing conviction,
impressing with wordplay
and natural affection.
After a moment
you kissed my forehead
which may well have been sweaty
as even then
at the first
I found you irresistibly hot.

You were gone, afterwards
just as the one I had gone there to see.
She would have little to do with me
and while I was broken for a bit
because of her rejection
I found something that day
well worth living for.
I found you.

This is how you met me:
lurking, looking on.
Glancing from a distance
you hopped over to me
and asked what my deal was.
More: you patiently waited
as I faltered and flounced my way
through an explanation
of out earlier encounter,
which you had been too drunk to recall.

Why did you smile?
Why did you take an interest?
What was it
about my craven approach
that made you think
I might be worth you’re time?
What made you continue to tolerate my presence
for such a blessing of days?
I don’t know
and you might not either
but I felt lucky
that I had such times with you
including that first meeting
an event you never can remember
and one I’ll never forget.