jonberger

Your creaking wooden boards
make it near impossible
to get past you unheard
but after midnight
I must strain to maintain the sounds of silence.

It is so tiresome
continuing this eggshell walk
throughout the darkened hours
but I cannot bear another
middle of the black conversation
about why I can’t sleep
why I must pace
why I cannot simply lay down beside you
until exhaustion overtakes me.

I quietly wear myself out
alone in absence of light
moving in circles
throughout your home,
falling asleep somewhere random
and different each evening,
simply unable to admit
I can no longer take
your formerly adorable snores.

I thought I’d see you tonight
but it’s clear now
that all that’s left for us
is correspondence.

I hope you are well.
I’ve heard good things about you lately
but so little from you.
I wish I knew
what was going on with you
and us.

You confound me
clouding my senses
shifting defenses
leaving me tense and suspicious
of the true state of affairs.
We haven’t spoken directly in so long
though surely I’ve tried.

I hoped to get you to understand
what was going on in my heart
and dick
but I didn’t seem to communicate the way I hoped
even when we were close
and clothes were tight
and breath was short.

I hope we have another chance
to be near
and honest
and direct
and, if we’re to be honest and direct,
I’d like another chance
to make sweet sweet sex at you.
Someday soon
even if not tonight.

Wear your colors
and dance sneakers
and come armed with stories
because I want noise
all up in that place.

BYOB
and bring your favorite assortment of cream pies
because things are liable
to get messy
and you’ll want to be able to give
as good as you get.

Pour a forty out for your fallen brother
and then drink some fruity frozen drink
cuz that’d honor me totally.
Have some towels on hand
in case there are tears, sure,
but more likely there’ll be dancing
to the tracks from the fifties and eighties
and maybe the forties.
We’ll see how they turn out.

If you’re coming to my funeral
invite friends
even if they’re not mine
because it’s a numbers game
and just because I’ll only meet them post-mortem
is no reason I shouldn’t get a chance to try to score.

Come on out.
It’ll be great to meet up
and more importantly,
to be seen
one last time.

If you ask me again
I might answer different.
If you pose it different
I just might say yes.

I was in a mood
when we last discussed it
and I said some things
I might not have meant.
You know that old line:
“When I said that I was lying
I might’ve been lying.”
I’ve been singing that song
for far too long.

If I understood what you were suggesting
I certainly would have said
something else
because you’re something else
and for me to be anything less
than excited at any opportunity
you offered would be impossible.

Please:
let’s revisit this.
Ask me the question again
and be sure to know,
you already have your answer.

So, I’ve got bad news
and good.
The good?
They were wrong about the prognosis.
I’m gonna be all right
– at least for now.

Bad news: you can’t have my car
or my savings
and whatever you’ve been doing
with my dogs has gotta stop.
I didn’t want to think about it
when I was dying
but now that I’m not,
just… ew.

I know I offered you everything
at the time
but that was under differing circumstances.
Now that I’m gonna live,
I need my things to have a life.

How will I beg for my job back
if I can’t drive to work?
How can I buy pants that fit
my post-diet physique,
– after I gave up all hope of a healthy body –
if you don’t give me my money back?

I need my money back.
That carpe diem,
live every day like it’s your last,
leave a beautiful corpse ideology
is all well and good
but only if you can actually skip out
on the bill.
Seriously, give me my money back
and never talk to my dogs again.

I thought Valeria liked me
the way she touched her hair
leaning in when we talked
but she was in a foreign land
and I was only there
for a day or five
and I figured
if it was meant to be
she would come to me
where I was from
and I could offer her all the conveniences
of my safe American home.

It wasn’t to be, of course.
In our correspondence
she told me
that Valeria had her own life
in her own country
and was perfectly happy
with the suitors living within a thousand miles of her.
She had many people to see,
many things to do
disregarding our imaginary army of two.

I thought she’d fix me
but she just broke me
in another smaller way.
She’s with a new man now
and I am left alone.

Or so I assume;
I can’t write her anymore.
It’s been too long
and anyway, after all of that,
she’s probably changed her email.

You’re a lot more obvious
than you think you are.
When you think you’re sneaking around the block
everyone can see you.
When you think you’re stealing a glance
at the girl you like
she’s actually posing for you.

When you ask for her number
in case you need to review the homework,
she knows you’re borderline retarded
and have no intentions of passing the class.
Your sense of subtlety
can use some work.

The upside of all this
is that you needn’t worry so much
about sneaking and spying
and tricking the ladies.
They see through you.
You don’t have to disguise your motives.
If you see a girl you want to fuck
just go up to her and say,
“I want to fuck.”

No. Don’t go anywhere
and don’t actually do that one.
I guess I wasn’t kidding
when I called you retarded, was I?

I’m real sorry about all the yelling.
It wasn’t what I meant to do.
I am trying to both a more peaceful person
and a less delusional one.
The fact that I just spent so much time and effort
hollering at a product of my imagination
is not a good sign
and, rest assured,
something I’ll be sure to bring up with my therapist
at the next opportunity.

My therapist has really been on me
about holding my temper
and letting the little things go
– he actually said “don’t sweat the small stuff” once
but I laughed maniacally for the rest of the session
so he doesn’t use that phrase anymore.
Anyway, I shouldn’t have yelled.
I should have kept calm.

You don’t deserve my rage
and I’ll be a happier person
if I can just maintain my equanimity
in the face of whatever conflict comes my way.
I mean, if you can believe it,
I don’t even remember what I was so sore about
in that last poem.

What?
Yeah, that was it.
…sigh…
Look:
In another minute
I may have something else
to apologize for.

If you weren’t fictional
I’d be incredible angry.
I’d want to kill you
if I hadn’t just made you up.
If you were anything more
than a construct of my imagination
I’d probably be looking into ways
I could sue your family
or defame your legacy
or, if nothing else,
dump three hundred pounds of manure
on your gravesite.
Now that would be a fitting revenge!

God, I’d hate you
if you were real.
If you’d actually caused such dismay for my family
you know what I’d do?
I’d probably live and let live
since it’s not like I ever met
my great grand uncle or anything.
I probably wouldn’t even remember his name
– Hiram or something –
if he had existed
and the incident had occurred.

Hell, for all I know
there might actually be some bullshit incident
in an actual Great Grand Uncle Hiram’s history.
Maybe you did do it.
Maybe I’ve actually plugged into the zeitgeist of my family
and a biplane was inexplicably used
for fertilizer transport
but failed in its primary mission.
Maybe you killed my uncle.
Maybe I really know something
that I don’t.

Well, if so:
Fuck you, then, asshole!

At the end of the evening
I want to say something other than “goodnight.”
I want to tell you how I really feel.
I want to say something that is absolutely real.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure I even know
what that would be these days.
Shifting sands surround us
above and below
and on all sides.
I think our troubles don’t amount to bean-hills anymore
even if they ever did.

I don’t know if I have anything worth saying
let alone anything genuine.
I don’t know everything that I’m scared of
but I do know the list is growing.

Among the things, though,
I do know
is that I don’t want to just say “goodnight” to you.
Hell, I don’t want to say “goodnight” to you at all
ever.
I just want to say “good morning”
over and over
for all eternity.

Huh.
Well, I guess that got kind of real there.