jonberger

I don’t believe I have ever seen a tree dance,
either awake or asleep.
The title does look impressive, though, donnit?
I apologize by misleading with the name.
Let’s see if we can earn it, now:

The dreams of the trees, dancing and free
are continually circling leaves
where the branches think thoughts
and harsh nightmares get caught
so no flora ends up too bereaved.

These dreams are quite pretty as, outside the city,
some gritty little bonsai may grow.
Just what they may do
is likely dream, too.
Alas, we fauna won’t know.

And that’s what we’ve got.
Hope the dreams have earned the name.
Posterity will have to inform us,
I guess.

“Dance to the music!” He shouts, feeling pretty sly.
I try to stay stone-faced, but it’s impossible with the groove
even if his voice is less than perfect.
“Ride, Sally, Ride, now!” He continues.
The beat goes on.
We watch him lip-sync along,
doing what he does,
and we can’t help but get into the spirit.
Soon we’re all dancing,
even me.

“It’s a party,” I eventually admit.
“Don’t I know it,” Philip wipes the sweat from his brow,
and enters into his next series of moves.
Hopefully, he won’t sing again.

“Oh, shit!” he calls out, megaphone style,
“It’s ‘What I Like About You.’
Who’s with me?”
Dear God.
Here we go again.

Collaborating would improve me, I know,
by increasing my experience,
the range of ideas,
and the breadth of what I can do.

Collaborating would also leave me dependent on others,
and that’s not something
I’m in favor of.

Accepting weakness when I can avoid it
is almost always the preferred plan,
even if it proves limiting.
It ends up leaving me in control,
independent, able to do what I want whenever I wish.

I really appreciate that opportunity.
It says something about my smallness,
the pettiness within,
but I’ve kept me alive so far.

Of course, a wise collaborator might ask
whether it’s allowed me to thrive.
But I don’t have any collaborators,
do I?

Wyatt at the bar is saying “Not all men,” without those exact words.
“You should write about it,” Bernice responds,
“After all, women have a right to complain about the experiences they’ve had,
and you’ve got a right to to describe how it doesn’t apply to you.”
I want to tell him not to do it,
that it’ll appear defensive,
that it’ll stoke the fires,
that it’s better to be a silent supporter and,
if anything, ask how you can help.

“Show how you’re not all men,” I think,
though I’m really doing nothing of the kind.

“Not a bad idea,” Wyatt says, “Maybe I will.”
I shake my head and swallow my drink.
This is gonna end exactly how it’s gonna end.

I shared my pen with everyone
so now it’s got the town’s cooties on it,
which is, I guess, a good way to meet everyone.
Only now I’m out with the bug
and everyone’s afraid to come near me.
So you win some, lose some.

At least I got my pen back!
I like that pen…

When the last of the monsters has been eradicated,
we will be better off than we are now.
We will be able to take on
the social issues plaguing us
and ensure that our children have the mare’s milk they need.

When we’ve gotten a handle on the monster problem,
we can tackle border control
and crime
and the threats to democracy
and humanity
and the Kinks.

Once the monsters are out of the way,
we can look into equality, fraternity, and whatever else might be left over.
We’ll definitely put it on the list.

Let’s just get to the killing, now, shall we?

Just after I’d gone up
and crapped out all my nonsense
this older woman occupied the stage
and mentioned the anniversary of her son’s demise.
Way to kill my post-performance buzz, lady.

“I just don’t understand,” she read,
“You were taken away to go separate ways.”
The silent audience I had was visibly moved.
“I will see you soon, my dear,” she concluded her piece, “My son died today.”

I didn’t see anyone standing,
but they wanted to.

After reading, the former mother still had things to get off her chest.
“Sometimes there’s a reason. You meet someone in a store and you don’t know why,”
She looked out at the small crowd.
“And there’s something important about them.
“Just one little person might make a difference for you.
Or you might be the difference for.”

She scanned the room.
“God has a plan.”

Was God’s plan to step on my act?
‘Cuz that’s what happened, lady.
After we were all done, she came up to me to congratulate me
on what I’d said when onstage.
In the heat of the moment, I could not recognize her.

Just imagine:
If we think as one
feel as one
share one mind and soul
think of what we could all accomplish.

If the central telepathy
that that science fiction proposes exists
we wouldn’t screw each other over
– or, if we did, we’d know how it would hurt our peers.
All of them.
We could feel the thoughts,
the judgements
of the others
and know how what we did
impacted those around them.

Only sociopaths could cope with that
and we’d know who the sociopaths were
and probably have a better way to stabilize them.
I like this ability we’re imagining here!

I say that it’s high time it get developed, people!
Who can turn this around by next quarter?
I look forward to proposals

In a land that I shall not call podunk
where a very many will stay home drunk,
some rocker in a shop
called for suicide by cop,
and now is very much a post-punk.

See, he died quite a lot how he lived:
throwing out more fucks than was gived.
The police weren’t thrilled
so they had him twice killed;
the second since he was “resistive.”

When I had my existential crisis
and couldn’t remember how to do my job
(basically, I didn’t get enough sleep
and forgot a bunch of computer key combinations,
then freaked out), I tried to close my eyes and meditate.

Then I started to think about the universe
and the real freakout happened.

I wondered where I was,
if I’d ever in fact been attached to reality,
and whether the things I’d spent my time doing
were not only significant, but part of the existence
that others recognized as occurring.

For moments,
I wasn’t sure if I was cognizant of a shared world with others,
or if I had only been spinning in my own personal cosmos.
It was soul-shakingly scary

but it was only for a few minutes,
and when I woke up from seemed to be the catnap,
I felt a whole bunch better.

The existential crisis – the worst of it – had passed
and I tried to get back to work.
I still couldn’t perform worth shit,
but I was in control enough to realize I couldn’t do my job,
and that was better than I’d been all day,
so that was an improvement.

I took the rest of the day off
and began to reassert reality
one wink at a time.

Forty winks later, I was feeling all right.