jonberger

Mrs. Johnson, in her nineties,
no longer has to worry
about the color line
or the gender line
or the widow line.
Everyone’s a widow at her age
– except for the widowers –
and a ninety eight year old
is so unlikely to be seen
as a sensual object
that her sex
and her sexual orientation
are all but irrelevant.

She used to be black
and that used to be a problem
but now
with her skin so weathered,
wrinkled and worn,
no one thinks of her that way.
No one can see her race
as she’s paled past it.

Now, Mrs. Johnson,
in her nineties,
simply sits
and entertains
and survives.
Once a servant,
now she is served.
Once a nurse,
now she is nursed.

She has passed all lines
worth considering
except for the centennial
which is coming up
…slow.

That sure is
a whole lot of tits in that piece
and I think I see two multi-gendered groins
to boot.
Is that what the artist was going for,
do you think?
A cornucopia of sexual organs?

Are breasts really sexual organs anyhow?
If their primary purpose is not for procreation
what should they be called?
Is the mouth a sexual organ?
Is the ear?

I think that might be a mouth
looming over
the fourth breast from the left.
Huh: Fascinating.

That painting is pretty powerful
and plenty pornographic
don’t you think?
What do YOU see?
A couple of puffy clouds?
Dude, seek help.

Sometimes the worst of circumstances
yield strangely positive results
like when you realize your job is so shitty
it doesn’t matter what you do
and you start looking for ways
to get fired
and suddenly going in
becomes lot of fun again
– like back when you first started there,
when you were excited
just to wake up?

Or how you’re in prison
and a thousand years just gets tacked unto your sentence
but the health care’s rotten
so you might as well agree
to Ridiculously Dirty Pete’s escape plan
since what have you got to lose anymore anyway?

Basically, any situation where you’re down so low
and everything around is such crap-dirt
that any change at all
could almost certainly
be seen as an improvement.

So check it: today
with all the cataclysms
and the death of compassion
and the earth itself crying out
about the chaos,
I have no reason to leave the house. There is no one left
to care for anymore
so I can
at last
see the end
in peace.

Worse things, huh?

In my defense I didn’t know.
In my defense I assumed I knew better than the professionals than those with experience
than those that had been provided super secret information
that I had not been privy to.
I figured I knew best,
in my defense.

To be honest,
I’m used to being surrounded by Yes Men.
To be honest,
I’d been used to being told I was right
over and over again.
To be honest,
my prior experience in the field
did not put a premium on honesty
and it had never served me particularly well,
so I dropped it from my bag of tricks.
Doing so
has usually gotten me pretty far,
to be honest.

Who could have expected it would be so difficult?
Who could have imagined it was so complex?
Who could have thought that others
who are paid for their experience
in any number of areas that I’ve not previously dabbled
might have expertise in those areas of experience
that would conflict with my own expertise?
Who would predict
they might advise me
contrary to my own earlier assumptions?

Nobody asks these questions
and I don’t know why.
Why has no one come to me
with these sort of questions
before now?
I’ll tell you something:
it’s lonely at the top.

(After Harmontown)
Danny’s gramma is pretty cool.
Danny’s gramma killed a guy
but it was a while ago;
he’d probably be dead by now anyway.
Danny’s gramma had her throat cut
but still fought the guy off.
After, she called 911,
got impatient
and trudged over to the hospital
in the snow
to get her throat checked out.

When she didn’t like the doctor’s sutures
Danny’s gramma grabbed them out of his hands,
took the thread
and finished it up herself
stomping out of the hospital
to chagrined looks from all the staff
to head back home
– this time without her shoes.

That’s a different time
from when she killed the guy.

Danny’s gramma did all that
while she was already Danny’s gramma.
When she was in her 80s
and up.

Danny’s gramma is pretty chill
pretty hardass
and makes really great banana nut cookies.

All right; you might not realize all of it
so I’m gonna break it down for you:
if you sleep with other people
in our home
you are considering breaking up.

If you take footage of other people
naked in our bed,
and try to hide the shots from me
exceedingly poorly,
you are choosing to threaten the relationship.

If you opt not to go
to your many lovers’ places
even if their parents might not approve,
then you are totally ready
to sabotage our lives together.

I can see not wanting to be with me anymore.
I have given you a thousand reasons to find another
and probably provide more
most every day.
But that’s not what you say.

You claim to want to be with me
to desire to stay together
so why are you acting
so fucking stupid?
You should be smarter than this.
You are looking for some sort of escape.
You are clearly
desperately
seeking a break from all you’ve known

What you’ve done
is unforgivable
yet somehow I get it.
I kind of understand, even.
You must have really wanted out

so now you are.

If you could read my mind
you’d uncover
a history of wounds and slights
dating back to the first.
Then again
you can easily see my sensibilities
by peeping my ride.

Each dent in my car
is a bruise upon my soul,
an itch in my heart.
I am left with broken parts of myself
visible somehow
only on Dorian Gray’s wheels.
They provide a secret glossary
of my pain and incidents,
where I’ve been
what I’ve done.

The car is worn and beaten
and in awful shape
and tells you more
than anything I might say about me
and if you ever get a chance
to get under the hood
don’t
but if you do anyway
I’m very sorry
and I swear it came that way.

Shit, it used to be easier,
didn’t it, Bucky?
You used to be able
to get down in the dirt
and get it done
in no time flat
but now, it seems,
it’s all so much harder.

When did it change, Bucky?
When did you become
what you are now
from what you used to be?
How did the concentration slip
the bones creak
the aches increase
and drive just disappear?
When did you magically transform
from the young vibrant man
of yesterweek into
this?

Perhaps there’s wisdom
in what you’ve become.
Perhaps you have new strengths
or an end to old weaknesses.
Denny O’Neil once
removed all the Kryptonite on the earth
so Supes could fly undiminished.
Maybe that’s what has happened here
except you still seem weak.
You sound limited
in an increased series of ways
like an important part of you
has been cut away.

I wish I could fix this for you, man,
but I’m just a writer.
What could I do
to make your lot easier?

You say “love conquers everything,” but I still have my doubts
considering all the bodies you had buried coming out.
Still from all the words I gather from your most self-righteous plea
I hear you guys were destined; you were always meant to be.

I’m sure that you once loved me, just as you maintain your claim,
and that the pain I feel’s collateral, and never was your aim
which you wish makes me feel better, or someday you hope it will
but to see you lip to lip, hip on hip just makes me ill.

You look so good together, may you live without much care
and may, too, you two look to a world you cannot ever share
for the future is unknowable, nor can you see the facts
that the life you have before you has been built on your past acts.

But the heart wants what the heart wants, one with fame had once had said
so perhaps the two of you will stay together ’til you’re dead.
In any case I can’t begrudge you for this change of life
so goodbye my former love interest; enjoy your new-won wife.

Cool it.
It’s all right.
You don’t have to rush.
There is no need for speed.
You can take this
at whatever pace you need.

We have no deadline
nor any requirements
as to when to arrive.
We can enjoy this voyage
in quiet reflection
You can breathe.
You can go slow.

The difference between arriving fast
or arriving slow is five minutes.
It’s minimal.
Will reservations be canceled?
Will any orders be overdue?
If we take our time
what will we lose?

Just
take the day.
Accept the pace the world will allow.
Take in the universe around you
and try to love it.
Again: breathe.

We’ve struggled enough.
There is nothing to rush for.
We will arrive eventually.
And then you can rest.