jonberger

After all this time
and it’s ensuing silence
I feel that our every anniversary
is a test of my resolve
a chance for me to see for myself
if I still care,
or really, how much.

Each year
on this day that we first came together
I think about you
and I think about reaching out
and I think about the likelihood
of you taking my call
or responding to my letter
or answering the bell
(assuming you still live
where you once did).
Each year
I think about you
and if I’m weak
I try to get in touch.

You never respond.
Maybe you can’t.
Maybe you’re gone.
Maybe you don’t even recall our dates
and our history
and this anniversary is mine alone to bear.
Maybe you have better things
to think about.
I wish I knew
what you think about me.

Every anniversary is a test for me
and every anniversary
you win me over again.

You’re right.
I was wrong.
I was rude.
I was self-righteous.
I was cruel.
I was uncaring about what you wanted
and expressed evil intentions
far too frequently
for anyone’s comfort.

I was a dick
early and often.
All the things
all the examples
all the times
you told me that I was disrespectful,
you were dead on
and I was dead wrong.
You were right.

I’m sorry for how I behaved
and the myriad ways I was.
I have done you great disservice
and I owe you all the apologies.
I owe you a thousand years of better treatment
but instead
I will give you a single instant.

I’m leaving you.
You’ve been right about how I’ve been
and as soon as I’m gone
it will get better immediately.
I treat you disrespectfully
because it seems
I don’t respect you
and after all this time
it may be I don’t know how.
You shouldn’t be with someone so awful
so let me remove this cancer
and get out of your way.

I’m sorry
that it’s taken so long
to come to this critical conclusion.
You deserve better
– you always did.
I feel lousy
that I couldn’t be kind enough
to have provided it
until seeing this final solution.

The lady on stage sings "the dancers just won’t hide"
as we sit attentively
grooving to her fatass beats
dancing joyously in our fatass seats.

She wears tattoos with cryptic designs
that we can study more
as she jumps off her perch
into the crowd
before us
enjoining us to enjoy.

We comply quietly
shyly moving before her
beneath her
but refusing to get up onto our feets.
We continue dancing solely in our seats.

The singer works it
hard
and some join her in some spastic steps
sweating Stoli
or whatever else was drunk tonight.

The crowd gets into the spirit
with many more swallowing defeat
getting up, getting down
doing the singer’s bidding.
Meanwhile: we stay in seats.

Eventually, we’re alone off the floor.
Everyone but us is moving, grooving
approving of their own excited actions.
We watch.
It’s wonderful.
We view the whole scene, beside ourselves,
beside each other.

It’s an amazing night
with ample opportunity to exercise the right
to rock.
Still, we remain rooted.
We recline and
only at the end
after everyone has left
do we stand
abandoning our chairs
and limp
roaming all the way home.

I’ve been looking over
all our correspondence
from before you stopped talking to me
trying to find the reason
for what happened.

I think I know what it is.
In the last things we said to each other
I wrote “I hat you,”
because I thought
A) you covered me,
B) were fashionable,
and C) usually over my head.

“Hat.”
Not any other word.
Just in case that was the thing
that turned you against me,
you stupid whore

I’m sorry;
before we go any further:
I have a confession.
When you went to the bathroom
the bartender asked if I wanted a refill
and then he said, "Anything else
for you and your girlfriend?"
I got us another round
but you knew that part.

What you didn’t know was
I didn’t correct him.
I didn’t explain to the bartender
how we were just good friends
that we weren’t going out
and never had.

I let him believe
– by omission.
Only by omission –
that we were a couple
we were involved
we were in love.
For all I know
after he took our emptied pints
he believed that
when we leave here
I’ll take you home
and walk you upstairs
and kiss you before you open the door
and then sweetly lovefuck you
with all the passion
my pitiful body can provide.

I left him with an incorrect impression
and he thinks
probably
that there is something between us
(and that something is a rubber).
I couldn’t help myself.
I didn’t provide truth.
I led him astray.
I can’t even explain why.

It’s just…
bartenders are usually so intuitive.
Maybe he sees something
that we don’t.

I don’t mean to alarm you,
but the last poem you wrote
was a comedian’s punchline
and the one before that
was once a detergent ad.
That piece from last week
clearly came from Dylan
– though you might have heard it
by way of Adam Green.

I’m not accusing you
or any sort of theft
but it does seem
that a great many of your ideas
are also the ideas
of a great many others.
Your originality sense
might be picking up
a whole lot of extra signals.

No need for alarm,
of course.
There’s a format of credit
you can use with words.
Just say "After so-and-so."
Like, in your piece
"Beers of a Clown,"
just say "Beers of a Clown, After Smokey"
and you’re all good.

If you write "Rock Me, Tyler Perry,"
you can call it "Rock Me, Tyler Perry, after Falco."
If you write anything that you stole from me
– which is really quite a lot –
just say "After Jon Berger."

"I’m the Greatest, After Jon Berger."
"Jesus Was, After Jon Berger."
"The Ballad of Martin Scorcese,
After Jon Berger."
It’s not so hard, is it?
Go ahead:
Try.

Days after that gorgeous September Tuesday
when the towers fell
and the world changed
I got off my bike on 14th Street.
Outside the Salvation Army
a veritable army was unloading trucks.
“Goods for the First Responders,”
I heard, and offered my services.

No one said “No,”
though no one said “Yes.”
The mob was enthusiastic,
growing, mindless,
moving water bottles
and towels
and clothes
and toys
from place to place
corner to wall.
I joined the fray.

We did what we could,
we of the amorphous sprawl,
with little direction
from the Salvation’s staff.
We transported things
with no comprehension of what we were doing
or who we were helping.
We just hoped we were helping.

When I think back
on my do-goodery
I am proud
and embarrassed.
I don’t know who got the toys
or what good they were intended to do.
We all wanted to get involved
and the Army
allowed us opportunity to enact
our benevolence
on that street corner.

It’s doubtful
anyone downtown
appreciated our efforts
or were even acquainted with them.
But we felt
at that moment
that we were part of the process,
part of the solution.

I could never understand
why you called them cowards.
Of all the words to be chosen
with the entirety of all of our bastard tongue
and every inch of anger
we had at our disposal
why question their bravery?

They were thieves
and criminals
and crazy zealots.
Dub them dummies
or maintain they manipulated by mullahs
or accuse them of delusions of divinity
– all more accurate
than accusing them
of fraidy-cat fearfulness.

They were defiant.
They were daring.
They didn’t know they would succeed
or whether that would be worse
than the alternative.
They jumped into danger
for their ideals.
Awful ideals, sure,
but there you go.

I don’t salute them,
but I acknowledge their drive,
their strength,
and their bravery,
because I know what these words mean
and I want them used correctly.

I wanted to say something profound
about 9/11
on 9/11
but I didn’t have any ideas.
I was nowhere near the towers
when they fell.
I knew of no one
who would likely have been there.
I was home
alone
asleep
when the planes came
and the smoke billowed
and the people jumped
and the world changed.

I tried to become involved
(after waking up).
Previously housebound,
I jumped on my bike
and rode off to give blood
but they needed no one that day.
I saw the ash-covered victims
trekking north,
zombies on their way
to parts unknown.

I saw police and firefighters
even though
I was half a borough away.
I never got close to the carnage.
I lived nowhere near the attack.
I sat near a hospital for a while
in case there was anything I could do
but nothing came to mind.

I was present for the calamity
but mostly absent from it.
I felt awful
but removed.
I was a New Yorker
but not involved
in any significant way
on that day that everyone remembers
and so many experienced
far more profoundly than I.

It is so very difficult
to listen to your interviews
these days.
Knowing who you were
what you believed
when you were young and naive
and had every reason
to be humble,
and then hearing the silly things you say
now,
it makes me sad.
It makes me angry.
It makes me frustrated
to think about who you were
when I knew you.

So many of your quotes
sound almost like they were from
the one you once were,
for sure,
but they smack of arrogance
of cruelty
and the way you talk
about our old places,
it’s like you weren’t there at all.

When I listen to you
these days
I wince.
I cringe.
I ache a bit.
It’s just
such an abundance of shit
I hear from you
every time you’re interviewed
talking about your past
your inspiration
your process
and knowing exactly
what you used to be.