jonberger

Chapter Fourteen will not get writ.
Whatever I do
it doesn’t get finished.
Exercises don’t complete it
nor do story prompts
nor new experiences
nor role play.
The story doesn’t want to be completed.
The chapter will simple not come out.

Luring it hasn’t worked.
Neither has trickery
or funny accents
or dancing
to get my mind off the page.
The words aren’t coming out.
Chapter Fourteen remains unborn.

Still on my list to try are drugs
and hypnosis
and ghost writing.
I don’t know which I’ll try first
but if I have to
I’ll try them all
to finally see Chapter Fourteen finished
and put this book to bed.

I’m sorry it didn’t work out
and I couldn’t drive you around today
as you asked me to yesterday
and the day before.
I’m sorry
I wasn’t convenient
for your service.

I’m sorry I had other things to do
that I was unable to jump
at your call
with the same alacrity
I had previously.
I’m sorry you had to find another way
to ferry yourself
from borough to borough.

Be assured,
the next time,
I’ll work harder to accommodate your schedule
with ten minutes notice.
I’ll do everything in my power
to serve you better
and get whatever you need done
before you ask.
I’m on it, chief!

Just be aware
that even then
I will have to spend some time
feeling guilty
over how I failed you today.
So…
so sorry.

Society moves too fast.
I am too old.
I am feeling increasingly
on the wrong side of history.

I know.
I’m ashamed of some of my positions
my need for air conditioning on a sunny day.
I know I should be biking everywhere
and opening my doors to the homeless.
I know what Jesus would do
and I cannot find it
in my soul
to do it.

I want to shut that baby up.
I want to cage all the animals
and insects
and bomb every disease
with all the drugs I can invent.
I want to get good gas mileage
exclusively so I can drive
cheaper.

I used to have causes.
Now I have convenience.
I used to care.
Now I’m unconvinced.
I used to want to fix the world.
Now I just want to fit in.

I’m in the wrong
I know it.
But
but knowing’s half the battle, right?
I’m still all right,
right?

We wait quietly
in the night
for the chance of escape.
It is coming,
we know,
but we’re not sure of its schedule
or if our exit
will be in time.

A storm’s coming
and it could be dangerous.
It could be deadly
– we’re not sure about that either.
We know it’s getting colder, though,
which keeps us awake.
That’s good.
Who knows what damage could occur
if we slept through
our ride out of this mess?
We sure don’t.

We don’t know enough
about what’s going on,
ramping anxiety right the fuck up.
It’s all going to be all right,
isn’t it?
We have no answer for that
as we sit quietly
waiting for a chance
to flee into darkness.

(Margarita and Dick)
As we drove through the countryside
I sat between you and your wife
feeling each of your touches with every curve and bump,
being the buffer between you.

When we stopped at the church
I explored alone
until you joined me
asking questions, sharing rumors,
giving me all your attention
while I could hear
– just barely –
the echoes of your wife’s stylish heels
along the stones.

As we picnicked
my boyfriend was able to join us
but he wasn’t as funny as you
nor did he pour the wine so freely.
I snorted at your stories
even spit-taking into your face
which threatened to dampen the mood.
Until you simply,
gravely wiped yourself with a napkin
and threw it back at me
driving us both to guffaws.

Your wife was silent through all this
and so was my boyfriend.
Did they believe what they were seeing?
Did they know what was to come?
Maybe they did speak up
a little.
I don’t remember.
I only had ears for you.

Yet I knew you were married
and I knew I was drunk
and young
and eventually
I knew I had to go
so I excused myself
and off to the woods I went
to make first, water
and then, peace with myself.

On my return
I saw in the branches
a cadre of eloquent dancers
in exquisite positions of autumnal grace
and lost in my solitude
I joined them
in dance.

I didn’t know that you were watching me
and she was watching you
just out of sight
until much later,
after the seasons had turned
and the Fall of our former loves
had transformed into the Spring of ours
and everything that had been potential
had grown into something else.

If she had gotten too close
too fast
I’d probably have been worried
but since the deer was easing away from me
just as I sought to stretch towards her
I felt like the dance
was taking its expected form.

It is always this way
on Fire Island.
There have been deer here forever
and with no cars
or any predators (that I know of)
the herbivorous are inappropriately unskittish
and less prone to keep their distance.
Still
they are not quite so stupid
so unafraid of us monsters
as to feed from our hands
or let us get on top of them.

This one, though,
seemed like it might.

We circled
as such
with each revolution bringing us closer together.
I was amazed
a little giddy
and less and less worried she might have been crazy
suffering some undiscovered form
of mad deer disease
since there was no froth
no fire in her eyes
just a lack of fear
of a creature like me.
This was safe.
This could happen.

Eventually, it did.
She sniffed my hand
and touched my skin
and we became
for just an instant
one.

Then our distance increased
and returned to grazing
on grass and trees around us
and eventually
having received all the attention available
I left her
and took to shelter, wondering
if there was anything left
to do on this island.

Drive just eleven miles east of Athens
and you’ll come to New York,
population fifteen.
Founded over
one hundred and fifty years ago,
the town never really got off the ground
– not with sprawling Jacksonville,
all fourteen thousand citizens,
so nearby.
Still, it does what it can.
If you ever stop by, try
their delicious New York Texas Cheesecake
though that moved ten years ago to Athens, too.

Geography gets funny in east Texas.
It was all so gosh darned big, they just plumb ran out of names.
Yeah, the towns, they sound familiar in east Texas
after they started picking places of real fame.

Right near the tip of Mexico lies Texas, New York
just abutting the southeastern end of Lake Ontario.
It’s small, but then, so is Mexico, New York,
the Mother of Towns,
where roughly fifty two hundred folk live together
in peace and harmony
– no walls required.
This is, of course, the town of Mexico,
not the village of Mexico within it.
Don’t confuse them – or the natives’ll go ape.

Western New York’s got a lot of places
and dirt roads you might tread upon while walking on bare feet. Seems someone got real bored of naming places
so some of the small towns got a repeat.

Alaska can be found in West Virginia and Wisconsin
and Indiana – which, too, can be found east in P-A.
Tennessee’s in Illinois; Oregon’s all over.
This unoriginality’s occurring every day.

Jim Thorpe was dead when he moved to Pennsylvania

and almost immediately he actually became the town.
Jim Thorpe, P-A is in Carbon County
which has less than five thousand residents – they almost lost one
when the Court’s ruled whether Thorpe should be sent back

to Sac and Fox nation, but Jim’s staying put.
The guy Chevy Chase
wasn’t named after the place Chevy Chase,
but rather, a Scots hero.
His aristocratic grandma thought it was a good idea.
Grandma’s, am I right?

Geography gets strange here in this country.
We’re so new and yet we can’t help but run out of good names.
From Washington to Lincoln to Boulevards for M L K,
it seems all of our damned names are all the same.

A salute, please,
to Eric Peterson,
Headmaster at St. George’s near Newport,
who bravely notified his students
and school’s alumni and,
well, the world
of the sexual abuse going on
during previous administrations.

At potential risk to his institution
and himself
he educated all relevant parties
of the horrendous acts
committed upon innocent victims
decades before
by students and staff
long since paid off or dead.

Peterson would not listen
to the special interests
not the boarding school’s lawyers or trustees
who wanted to hush up
these tragic events.
Peterson stormed injustice
and informed everybody
a mere twelve years after he learned of it.

He fought the fight
and saved the children
from offenses forty years old.
Hail to thee, Eric Peterson,
you done good.
May the rest of your service be as exemplary.

I can picture him still:
big, bulky, bearish
a lumberjack build easily brandishing
that mighty axe,
swinging it wildly across the stage
before expertly holding
and playing such barrish chords.

I could tell from his bellow
exactly what he looked like
with puka shells
and careless beard
and a shaggy mane framing his face.
I saw him so clearly
so perfectly
and so perfectly wrong.

That bookish professor
I eventually uncovered in interviews on the Internet
bore little resemblance
to the man
in my imagination.
His glasses and bald spot
and slight slight frame
were not in the least like that
of the warrior songster
I so magnificently envisioned.

The artist incarnate is nothing like
what I knew he would be.
How could I have been so mistaken?
What did I get so wrong?
Why did he fail
so completely
to live up
to my expectations?

I still listen to the recordings
and still, sometimes,
I think of him
as the way he was meant to be
before he disappointed me
by not even owning
the appropriate fur-lined boots.

Were there photos taken
when you would take the railroad
to the city
from the towns
to reach Washington Square Park
and listen to the folk singers
and play with the folk singers
and sing with the folk singers?

Were you shot with the folk singers?
Were you captured
on film or tape
or possibly monograph?
Is there evidence
of your claims
that you partook
of that famous scene
even before the famous scenesters?

Is there proof
anywhere
that you were a hipster
back when it was really hip?
Is there any form of evidence
that you sat in the park
guitar in hands
before Joan and Mimi
Bob and Peter
and Mary Noel
that you were proto-cool?
Please, Mom,
I’m only trying to help you
get the deserved cred
from your past.

Pix
or it didn’t happen.