jonberger

Your band sucks.
There, I’ve said it.
I’m so tired
of looking the other way
when you try to hand me flyers
so I have plausible deniability
regarding the event.
If you were sharing a bill
with the reunited Beatles
(including Sutcliffe and Best)
I’d do my best to arrive
just in time for their set
skipping all your guitar wanks,
histrionic lyrics,
and solos.
Why are there so many solos.
WHY?

I just want to make it clear
how lame your latest project is.
You were better
when you were a background player
before you felt too constrained
by the excellent editors
in your last band.
Even then
you weren’t very good
but your role was smaller
so the show was better.
Now?
Ugh.

I’m not saying you suck
since I don’t mind
getting occasional rides from you,
but let’s be honest.
I’m not seeing your band.
Not this weekend
or any other.
Not unless
you can score me three comp tickets
and maybe Pete Best’s autograph.

You remember that time
when we left the club
to get some pizza across the street
and we sat on the chilly street
as we noshed on our sizzling slices?
You told me why you chose New York
and I told you how I could never get away
and you asked about my history
and I asked about your writing style
and we laughed for a bit?

Do you remember what I said
and you replied that didn’t think I was that strange
and we hugged for 9.3 seconds
before it started to sprinkle
and we dashed back across the avenue
to the confines of the club
and somehow got separated
until we drifted back to our respective cliques?

I don’t know when your boyfriend came in
but I think it was around then
and I then you guys disappeared for a while.
Did you leave for the night?
Did you happen to hear
the things I said
after closing
when I’d gotten into the scotch?
Do I have anything to apologize for?
And
do I owe you anything for the pizza?

I blew out my back
in an epic bout
of masturbation
just before,
in an intriguing act of optimism,
I opted to carry my drywall out to the street
taking the wide sheets downstairs
in the middle of the night
despite my spinal aches.

It seemed the only time to do it
since the Accu-News Report
told me we had six days of dry weather coming.
That left enough time
for anyone who wanted my leavings
to take them off the sidewalk
bringing drywall home
for any building needs.

I wanted to donate the goods.
I wanted to do good.
I wanted to leave my apartment good and empty
but with all the snows that have come
since the sheets left my house
I see I have succeeded
in only one regard.

And now
as Accu-News continues to lie
as the drywall dissolves in my block
and my back further breaks
I see that everything has gone wrong
when all I wanted was to be righteous.
What a jerk off.

I have been considering the conundrum:
if I had the chance
knowing what was to come
would I kill Hitler?
Sure.
If I could go back in time
even
I would risk the chaos
of changing his history
and maybe my own.

With the knowledge
of what would happen
I am simply shocked
that more people
didn’t take the chance to kill Hitler
at the time.
Why did they let it go?

But then I wonder
if there is any Hitler around today
that I should be killing.
Further, I do some calculations.
If I met a Hitler on the road
I believe I should kill him
but what if it were someone else?
What if I came across Mussolini
blowhard supreme
or trickster Huey Long?
Would they deserve death at my hands
the way Hitler so clearly does?

Am I duty bound
to slay any bastard
who threatens my ideals
regardless of how far they’ve yet gone?
Am I currently responsible
for taking the lives
of all the many assholes
I see around me?

I am considering this
and continuously pray
that my ideals
will require little of me
and I needn’t go forth
and risk prison.

Tammy, when we took
the play writing class
all those years ago
and I was assigned to read
one of the characters
in the two-person script you’d brought in,
I think I may have sabotaged your work.
It was unintentional.
I was sight-reading,
and thought
at the time
that I was actually presenting the lines
the way you meant them to be presented.

When you had your wealthy ingenue
find by sheer coincidence
her long-lost lover
behind the wheel of the cab
that she’d happened to hail in midtown,
I assumed that the aforementioned taxi driver
would be fully aware
of the Harry Chapin song
from which the plot was clearly cribbed.

As I read the lines
I kept waiting for some ironic identification
of the story that was being told,
that maybe they’d realize
they were characters in a song
or perhaps a fantasy
of some retarded twelve year old.
I assumed
at least
there would be
some kind of minimal twist
and not end with a happily ever after
as the couple gets together
and restarts the love
abandoned so many years ago.

But your one-act
ended the way you know it ended
and my self-aware
sarcastic read of the taxi driver
was totally inappropriate
and made your bad play seem
to the attendant audience
all the worse.

It didn’t occur to me
that you wouldn’t know the Chapin song
or that such a cliched tale
wouldn’t have some sort of script-flip.
I made you look bad
because I couldn’t imagine
your play would be so bad.

So:
sorry.
Luckily
I don’t believe you ever took
to play writing after that.
Oh – you did?
Really?
Why?

Nothing has happened yet.
There is nothing
at the moment
to worry about.
Well
I tell a lie.
Things have been said.
Promises have been made
that are disconcerting.
Of course
before that
other promises were made
that were disconcerting
and then reneged.
Everything is in flux
and honesty
is a long-gone casualty.

When dealing with a liar
there is so little reason
to expend effort
on what he says.
He’ll just change it later.
Worry about what he does
and then
what others let him get away with.
There is so little
to worry about
yet.

Wait a week
or two
THEN worry.

Christ, listen to her:
so melodic
so intense
so witty and wordy and wonderful,
all at once.
She sounds great.

Christ, look at her:
she is smoking
she is stylish
she elicits stares, incessantly.
She’s got it going on.
It’s impossible
to turn away.

Christ,
did you get to touch her?
She feels
I mean…
words, man, words.
She’s great.
It’s electric.
It’s amazing.
It’s… words.

Christ
the things I’d do
for a taste.

I just read a “poem”
(it was in the poetry section
of a periodical
– a periodical that often includes poetry –
so they probably would prefer
I not put quotes around it.
Sorry about that)
called “This Woman’s Work”
which is a series of quotes
about Kate Bush’s seminal song
(“seminal” is a vaguely punnish word choice
if you’re familiar with the song.
If you’re not,
it’s just vaguely punnishing )
of the same name.

Each quote
had a footnote
identifying where it could be found.
Nothing in the poem
was identified as being by the writer
or identified by me as being well-written
– even the quotes
straight from the Bush’s mouth.
It didn’t seem poetic to me
but it did seem unoriginal
using both meanings.

The writer
(whom I don’t want to name, because
A) it would provide undeserved credit
B) would risk some kind of vengeance, and
C) subsequently identify me as a wuss),
she’s a woman,
but I couldn’t help but feel
that the piece in question (circa 2016)
about the piece in question (circa 1988)
should have a different title.
Her poem
should use the name of my poem,
which, you’ll note,
was written without a single footnote.
You’re welcome.

I swear,
I’m not judging
but how can you not
find something to say today?
What is keeping you
from dredging your depths
desperately enough to discover something
worth talking about?
How can you believe
you are so empty
as to be unable to express anything?
I mean, AT ALL!

What’s holding you back?
How can you not find some topic
to entertain yourself
and others, like me?
Every pretentious fucknard
in Bushwick has a novel in them.
What’s your problem?
Where is your conversation?
Where are your ideas?

Did you not get enough love
as a child?
Were you inefficiently toilet-trained?
Did you make a potty mess
at an inconvenient time in your development?
Where are your stories, man?
Why do you have nothing to say?

Not that I’m judging, though.
Not at all.

It seems I died today
or my doppelgänger did:
the famous one
the one whose results I see
when I’m Googling myself.

The painter.
The old man.
The TV star.
The intellectual
the novelist
the Francophile
who re-pronounced his name
to best pretentious effect.
The Ways of Seeing dude.
He’s dead.

I didn’t do it.
Though jealous
of his notoriety
I have an alibi for the time of his expiration
– I’ve never even been to France –
and anyway
he was ninety.
I’m innocent:
I’ve got motive, sure, but had no means
no opportunity
though I’ll now grasp the opportunity
to become the Alpha Berger
even though our first names varied
and the drummer’s older
and the composer gets more hits than me.

Now, with the great man
the critic
the writer
the brilliant communicator
and intellectual speaker,
now that he’s gone
I have chance to become
what I always wanted to be.
At last
I can transform
into Jon Berger.