jonberger

(After Brittany)
Christ, you smell.
So do I.
I’m smelling you
and, far as I can tell,
you’ve been a week away from a bath
and a few minutes short of a bathroom
really really recently.

I wish you’d get clean.
I wish I could offer you my bathroom
from which you could possibly get clean
but I live nowhere near the F line
and anyway
I can’t imagine how hard it would be
to clean the bathroom afterwards.
Plus: I don’t know you.
You could very well be the bum to rape and kill me tonight
which is not how I hoped the evening would go.

Not that I hoped
that my evening would include
the opportunity to be so olfactoriaely invaded
in this evocative way, either.
Geez,
you really do stink.
Next stop is mine
– wherever it is.

Our friends on Facebook
have reminded me
that our friendship started
five years ago today
and we should celebrate the anniversary
of our relationship
with all due enthusiasm.

I haven’t the heart to tell Facebook
that we’ve known each other
for thrice that time
and just got around to the social media announcement
when we’d bothered to find each other.

It makes sense
that Facebook
would only care about Facebook
and our friends on Facebook
bound by the same structure
would think so very much
of its own chronology
but
I am not ready
to celebrate this particular non-existent anniversary
any more than I am my sign
in the new astrology.

Their dates do not matter.
Only ours do
and when we celebrate a friendiversary
we will need no algorithm to tell us how.

There is underwear I love
and underwear I hate
and you
ratty lime green pair of boxers
you are in the latter category.

I don’t even wear boxers.
There’s not enough support
to them
but you,
with your long-gone elastic
expanded out of proportion
on your ages-old waistband,
you just inch down my legs
until I’m carrying a load in my pants.
A load of you
you rotten ratty drawers.
Just get out of my drawer!

The holes in your crotch
– or on my crotch –
doesn’t matter too much
but it means you don’t even look good
if I take you off
and the multiple stains
on your hi-yellowish green
just refused to be removed.

Why are you still around, shorts?
What has kept me from abandoning you
as you abandoned good sense and fashion
so many years past?
It’s not like I’m cheap.
Well
I’m not that cheap.
It can’t be
because of the action we got
with Sarah
could it?
That was decades ago!

It doesn’t matter.
I don’t care anymore.
I can’t bear you anywhere near me.
I am tossing you
I swear
right after the next washing.

You corrected my sentence
(because it needed correcting)
and I kept thinking about it
for most of the evening.
I couldn’t focus on the show
or the commentary
or the subsequent drinks
and my dancing was perfunctory
at best.

I kept going over it
in my head
considering the words I’d used
and the words you suggested
because, of course,
they were better.
You had automagically improved my joke
and it had seemed so effortless.
I didn’t thank you
at the time.

So thank you
for showing me just how to make my work better
at just the moment I needed it.
Thank you
for giving me the means
to become better.
Thank you
so very
very much
but do it again
at your mortal peril.

I owe you a letter.
At this point
I probably owe you a dozen letters
but it is hard
to come up with the right words to say.
We used to be so close,
so close that
letters would be pointless between us.
We knew the content that would have filled reams
had we bothered to script it out.

You know this as well as I do.
Why would I bother
telling you what is plain on your face
when you’ve got already got a mirror?
And why should I trouble you
with my day-to-day,
my trivial,
my indifferent information,
even if you feign interest?
What could I possibly tell you
in a letter
that is worth saying when,
at this point,
we are simply not that close?

What is there to do
but pick up the pen
and strive to get words to you
somehow
even though
there is little to say
and too long since I’ve said it?

I owe you a dozen letters
and I swear
I’ll get one to you
eventually.

Land can make the man.
As I grew up
my father would always go out
on quests for property to buy
but never found something
to make him a landsman
and find his soul complete.

When my parents first wed
they were offered
as a gift
a home of their own
in some East River complex
but decided
on a bitchin’ honeymoon instead.
They ended up in Spain and Portugal
but with no real estate to see them through.
Is that why
my father would search the lands
for years after
looking for some way to begin his empire of earth?

Probably not.
He’d always been a restless soul
and he and mother
ended up settling
on the Upper West Side
for their six decades of domesticity
not owning aught
until their last few years.

And I think sometimes
of what might have been.
What if I came from somewhere else?
What if I belonged to elsewhere?
They could have lived in the East Village.
I could have been brought up
in the place
I still spend most hours.
I could have been a native
of my soul’s home
but my parents squandered such dreams
for a few weeks in Iberia.

Yes, I think sometimes
of what might have been
and who I might have been
under those different circumstances.
I ponder the future
and the past often
in my current slumhole
a borough away
in the Bronx.

So
I hear you’ve got a husband now.
A man you love
who loves you
and is patient enough
for your flights of fantasy
and fantastic capacity
for controlled substances.
I hear that you’re happy
which makes me happy
in a way.

I wish it could’ve worked out
for us, of course.
I’d have liked to have been the man
who could ride your waves of jubilation
and depression
crashing into each other
and anyone else
seeking to swim in your sea.
I wish I could still dip into you.

But I’m glad to see
how it worked out for you
two.
Someone deserves the life
we were unable to share.
I hope it continues on the same joyous path
the next time we run into each other.
It really is funny
to be seeing you
after all this time.

You didn’t want me.
You never said that;
you didn’t have to.
Your actions spoke
powerfully enough.
I guess I left you little choice
so you grew to know me
to love me
even though it wasn’t what you really wanted.
The path you’d hoped for
surely would have involved me
not at all.

I didn’t mind.
It didn’t bother me
to know I was unwanted.
I looked for ways
to find satisfaction
despite that
and I found satisfaction
occasionally.

It would have been nice
had you wanted me
I suppose
and it would have been good
had I told you directly.

Daphne, when my mother
gave you my number
she did so without permission.
I always tell her
that if anyone asks for any of my information
she should politely decline
and take that person’s info
so that I can decide
if I ever want to respond.

I prefer to keep under a tight lid
on who can reach out to me
while I maintain
as wide a database of contacts
as I can collect.
I prefer to have the control
over who knows anything about me.

Does this make me controlling?
Perhaps.
Possibly, I should be more lenient
in who has access to me
and at what hours
but I am very much concerned
with the quality of people
who can communicate me
at will.
I wish to limit the list
so only those very select few
the most beautiful and intelligent
have my number
or email
or Twitter handle.

I’ve talked to my mother about this
on numerous occasions
and am just a bit peeved
about how she handled this.
I really have to talk to her
to instill in her
the proper tone of distance
when people reach out to her
to get to me.
It’s pretty offensive, really,
how she’d disregard my explicit requests
and just provide my private information
to just any old person who asks.

In any case, Daphne,
I’m sure you understand
how I can’t just maintain communication with you
when you’ve gotten access to me
through such suspicious means.
I would consider it a personal favor
if you could get rid of my number
and my mother’s, as well.
It will save me the effort
of having scrap all my records
and start again.

Thank you
for being so understanding.

I never told you
it was me,
did I?
The unicorn vase
in the living room
which you received
as an engagement present
so long ago?
It wasn’t stolen
by some crypto-klepto-chum,
an addicted ally, in need of additional Adderall
or – ah, alliteration escapes me.
I broke it
– the vase –
years back.

You were in the bathroom
I think
and I was looking over this gift
from a generation past
wondering about the person you were
when receiving it.
I wondered if you were a person
I would want to know.

I was putting it back
among the plants on your windowsill
when it simply
of its own accord
just dropped
upon the ground.
The vase became
seven shards of vase, which
in a race against time
I was able to collect
between your flush
and return to the living room
where I sat
suddenly sweating
just a bit
with fragments behind me
on the couch.

In the weeks that followed
I worked to repair the parts
of unicorn heads
now severed upon seven separate
pieces.
I failed
again and again
with glue and paste and tape and
on one optimistic day
some Vaseline and spit.
Nothing worked
and the pieces
refused to be fixed.
Maybe they knew
they symbolized an engagement of obsolescence
and had little purpose left
in this strange new world.

Maybe I’m just that good
at breaking shit.
Either way
I kept the components of your former vase
and you didn’t seem to notice its absence
for months.

When you started to wonder
who took the unicorn vase
I always figured I could get it back to you
but eventually
I just stopped trying.

It’s stayed with me
this historic cracking
of your historic present.
I felt like something had been left unsaid
and wanted to offer you some clarity
as to what happened
to your memorable gift.
I’m not dying or anything
I just thought it was time
to kill off
this guilt I’ve held
for so damn long.