jonberger

When she stopped returning my calls,
I felt sad, definitely,
but it went beyond that.

I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do:
if I stalked her neighborhood,
her family would find out,
and that would cause a heap of problems for her
I did not want.
I was so angry and frustrated
and I needed a vent.

I’d been bicycling already,
and it was December, usually the time of year
that cold and snow would make the bike
disappear for a while.

I found that unless the snow was pounding down,
I had to be on the streets, moving from place to place.
Normally, I would bike for transportation.
At this point, I was biking to let the rage escape.

It was fury that fueled me.
Because of my broken heart, I had stopped eating,
so there were very few calories going into my body
for a series of months.
I had little sleep at that time, either.

Still, I would lightning move, sweating away,
borough to borough,
frown to frown,
poem to poem,
just spreading my monotone
all over the place.

Months went by and pounds came off.
It was only when I began to see myself reshape
that my mood began to change
but I remained on the bike plan
for the rest of the year.

It was a very healthy time for me
– physically.

I discovered that the world was available in New York
and the bike was a perfect medium through which to discover it.
Just wear filthy clothes you could sweat in,
a bag you didn’t mind getting dirty,
and start riding wherever you damn felt like.

The best idea was to have a place to go.
Set a mission.
It didn’t matter if I arrived at the destination,
but if I had a plan,drive to go somewhere,
instead of just aimlessly tooling around.

It gave the ride purpose, momentum.
It made me sweat.

So I came up with a general mission:
go to all the public libraries in Brooklyn.
I liked going to libraries,
seeing their collections,
checking out if there were any particular books they had
that I might want to borrow.
This would be fun.

I took one of the maps with the list of all the libraries,
and I started checking off the branches I’d already visited.
A handful were already taken care of.
Now I would ride to a couple that sounded familiar.
I could look at the edifice and decide
if I’d actually been there before.
If it looked like nothing I’d ever seen,
I’d go in and check it out.
If it was something that I knew,
I could just check it off.

And I started going through the list.
It got pretty wavy after a while,
sweat giving the piece of paper
some character
and discoloration.
The markings all over made it hard to be clear,
after a while,
if I got everywhere.
I think I did.
All the names looked familiar, finally,
but I’d have to go through it again
to be sure.

I’ve certainly accomplished the same in Manhattan.
Perhaps it’s time to oil up the latest bike
and see how I can do in the Bronx
– and maybe Staten Island is calling me…?

When I was a helpless teacher,
nervous and unable how to reach kids in the South Bronx,
I stopped reading hard boiled crime fiction.
Stories of decay in cities seemed to hit too close to home
and I got back to the fantasy
I loved at an earlier age.
I looked up Terry Pratchett
who wrote a follow-up to Discworld,
but it was only available in one library
in Brooklyn.
In Flatlands.

On a Saturday, I got on my bike to ride.

I was living in the Upper West Side,
so GPS tells me
that the best route would be sixteen and a half miles.
I didn’t have GPS.
I had a print map and a limited sense of direction.

I must have gotten lost a half-score times,
stopped at a bunch of parks,
rested on the side of a few roads
(which might also be known as city streets)
but eventually found myself
in this very foreign,
lightly populated part of New York called Flatlands.

It seemed like civilization just seemed to stop there.
It was eerie, and I was amazed to be in New York
and yet so far from civilization.
I decided I could bike on my off-time to see more of the world that was NYC.

I saw a lot in my travels through the boroughs
but I’m not sure if I ever reached the high
of the isolation
of Flatlands.

Oh sticky man on the wall,
How can you save them all?
Who can you save before your toast?
Are you the hero we need the most?
Maybe you need a group of friends.
Which can you pick before the end?
I hope you can choose good ones, here.
Do it quick. Don’t make it weird!

Creepy man, sticky man choosing pals:
Please don’t mess up group morale
by being mean in whom you picked.
Be sure you selected a few chicks
so we can check off Title Nine.
Wait! There’s no school. We should be fine.
Who is your group? Who is your team?
Is the Beast a part? That’s my dream…

Ice-Man, Spider-Gwen, Human Torch, Cap!
I gotta say, yo, this team slaps!
Doctor Strange, Mighty Thor, Hyperion, Hulk!
Lotta these names are pretty darn bulked.
Are you sure you need this team
to stop a criminal’s head of steam?
I think that you could go it alone
be a neighborhood spiderguy and take ‘em home.

“You have to slow down!”
Every few minutes, I’m hearing that.
It’s getting exhausting.
“80 is the new 65,” I want to explain,
but seeing that the limit is 55 here,
I don’t think that’s going to cut it.
She sucks in a sharp breath of air
for the eighteenth time this hour.
The drive is not going well.

As my mother age rises, her anxiety levels rise as well.
While this would bother me in the abstract no matter what,
it bothers me very concretely in that she is finding my driving less and less tolerable.
This is, of course, unacceptable,
as I am delightful driver.
I have not buried any bodies this month!

Mom does not appreciate this,
and backseat drives from my right.
I would just as soon give up driving and have us use public transportation,
but her anxiety makes the trains unbearable, as well.

So she needs the car, does not want to drive,
and we have no other drivers
and this is how I drive:
like a reckless madman, apparently.

I have not killed the woman once.
Not caused her a bit of damage.
The car has certainly been beaten up,
but no humans have been damaged in the process.
I don’t know where this lack of trust comes from.
I just wish she’d have a little faith in me,
is all.

Sometimes a therapist tells you what to do.
Sometimes a cop.
Sometimes, someone in a workshop
tells you to maybe go to a therapist or a cop.

“Society has rules!” he says, a note of frustration entering his voice.
“They’re really only ideas that make sense most of the time,”
I think, but sense it’s not really the time to say it.

It’s a storytelling workshop, but I don’t think the story that I suggested
is the real story here.

I had suggested that I relate the tale of “liberating” furniture
from my former establishment of higher education,
a harmless enough prank,
and then followed up with minor incidents like
reckless endangerment of an elder
and shoplifting
and breaking & entering, leading to unemployment
and inadvertent feline mutilation.

This led to the leader’s sense of frustration, and suggestion
that possibly, moral direction might be in order.

“You seem to have a curious relationship with risk,” he says,
when calmed down.
Intriguing. I’ve always thought of myself as incredibly risk averse.

I guess there are different kinds of risks
– or different things that one might perceive as risky.

Story telling, for example, seems like a risky extension
of my existing skill set.
Or a challenging one. I haven’t really tried it yet,
and I’m anxious.

The workshop hasn’t quite gotten me comfortable enough
yet.

In olden days,
when my desk top was a repurposed white door
atop a couple of bureaus we’d found,
I would discover beautiful girls and women,
take note of their names,
and write them down on my desk
for future reference.

I don’t remember ever checking them again afterward,
but it was good to know I had stored the information,
in case I ever needed it.

Thinking about it,
I recall working mostly in pencil,
so the names that were written over multiple years
would have surely faded over time.
Since I never checked up on the data
– not even to look at my atrocious handwriting –
I’d never know if I could retrieve the info later.

When we got rid of the desk a decade ago,
I don’t recall seeing any extant names on it.
Too much time had passed.

I wonder who those wonderful women
might have been?

I told my mother a secret, in confidence.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I said.
“I won’t.”

“He really likes Valerie Bertinelli,” she said.
“Mom!” I was shocked. She had sworn.
My Aunt Betty didn’t know who Valerie was,
but that didn’t matter. My secret was revealed.
She knew.

Even now, I can’t explain why the secrets of the heart
need to be held so close to the chest,
why the object can’t know that you’re interested
until the time is right.
It seems stupid, with a moment’s reflection,
but it remains true – for me, anyway.
To this day.

Aunt Betty is long dead
and I’m over Valerie Bertinelli.
I’m proud of where the years have taken her,
but I don’t agree with all the choices she made
on Hot in Cleveland, so we’re done.

Still, I cannot forgive my mother for that betrayal.
She swore,
and she broke that faith.

I didn’t come to the open mics
with poetry in hand.
I originally came to listen,
to find acts I could watch
and maybe follow to full-length shows,
like how I’d seen Gene & Mimi.
I knew they had played the Monday Night AntiHoot, so I thought I’d check it out.

It took me a year or two
to transition from loyal audience member
to tentative performer,
doing random ridiculous cover material,
from children’s read-aloud stories
to cartoon introductions
and nothing in between.
From there, I needed to figure out how to develop my own material,
so I started staring creepily at women.

That was the inspiration for my early writing,
and continues to inspire me
to this very day.
Open mics are my bread and butter,
and by this I mean
I am fatter than I want to be.
I read my own material at open mics now,
and think back on those days when I read other people’s material.
Should I return to those earlier traits?

No, I am a far better writer than anyone else.

If you had telekinesis,
I can’t tell you how moving
that could be for me.

You could carry me around the house,
if your mind were strong enough
– and I think you would be.
You’d just lift me about,
like your little rag doll.
I can’t tell you how hot that would be.

You’d just push and pull me every which way,
your tiny little plaything,
doing what you would with me,
at your disposal,
I…

I may have said enough.

You don’t have telekinesis,
do you?