jonberger

When you want to fuck,
you find the soul’s groove.
When you wanna dance
you find the beat.
When you want the rock,
though,
you go to the source.
You find the exceptional.
You play the extraordinary.
When you want the rock,
you rock and roar.

Find the epitome
of explosive entertainment.
Exploit the bombast,
the volume
the theater
the danger
the dirty ass rock and soul
that you need
every time.
When you need to rock,
you rock and roar.

Find the harmonies.
Appreciate the riffs.
Bob to the rhythm
and explore
– explore the rock
and the roar.

Experience the glory
of youth
and adventure
and volume
and depth.
Rock and roar
all at once
while you can.

Talk to me
tell me what goes on.
Explain to me
the important things
or the small things
or anything at all.

Let me know what you want.
Provide me the insights
that will bring us closer
make us stronger
fill ourselves more completely.

Speak to me
whether in tongues I understand
or any others that you know.
Give me something
so that we connect.

Talk to me
– or try to.

I’ll do everything I can
to understand.

Alone in the park
as I feed the pigeons

I wonder
what has brought me here.

Am I such an old
lonely man

who has no one to talk to
that I spend hours

on benches
with nothing but birds

for cursed company?

I throw another morsel

for these creatures to chew.

What gods did I anger
to end up like this?
How has fate tortured me

left me so solitary
so separate
from the rest of humanity

that this is the best way

to while away hours?

Is this a karma thing?

Was I pigeon previously

to put me here,
now,

doing this dumb

DUMB thing?

Pigeons suck.

I don’t know what brought me here.
I don’t know what forces me to stay.
I don’t know how I came to this
but I know

that something will come from this
as I feed the birds
chicken.

There’s something in the air.
Something in the water.
Something in the smile
of all the girls a’gaggling
looking at me
like they just quit vegantarianism
and I’m just the right cut of meat.

I gotta te you,
it’s been a long
dry winter
with nothing available
to quench my particular hungers
but now,
it seems as if everyone’s wet.

Look at her
with the skirt
and the hair
and the thighbones.
She is something.
She is something else
and she is next to me
and she is not appearing repulsed.
Not even a little!

How did this happen?
What turned the switch?
It’s like…
It’s like all the anger I’ve been tamping down
for generations
Had been released,
removed,
resolved to become something else
and now…

It’s like I took off my hate-colored glasses
and everything’s coming up bitches.

Maybe that’s the wrong way to describe it.
Or not
Because the girls are not going away.
They are swarming
and it is
good.

(after Oli)

My Internist tells me I’ve got nine pints of blood in my body.

My psychiatrist says I’m under duress.

Between the two of these physicians,

I am a bloody mess.

That Charlie Chaplin sure fucked a lot of young girls.

He got married, like, nineteen times,
and always to women who were decades junior

– and sometimes sophomore*.

He liked to tell people what to do
which is why he
is the only artist to control every aspect
of a major motion picture

including make-up and key grip.

He liked to tell people what to do
which is why he had to stop the man who stole his mustache.

The Great Dictator was produced,

to get the ‘stache back

from Hynkel.

He liked to tell people what to do

so he made his own studio
united in keeping all others
from bossing around
the Little Tramp.

He liked to tell people what to do

and became the King of New York

even when he wasn’t allowed
to visit.

He liked to tell people what to do,

Chaplin did,

so he decided to marry every teenager he could
since everyone knows how amenable they can be.

* Artistic License was applied in this work

liberally.

You broke me, Alice.

When you left,

when you departed this world we once knew so well,

when you said,

"That pack of cigarettes is NOT going to buy itself,"
and you walked out the door

left slightly ajar

– you had no right to do that!
Bugs could get in.
Why did you do that?
Why –

when you escaped our happy home,

never to return,

you blasted the better part of me.

I missed you
and raised armies to find you:

armies of alcohol,

armies of arguments,
armies of anachronistic assholery,

all to no avail.

I remembered you,

and imagined you back in my world
where things were right
before you left

and I thought someday
imagination might be fulfilled.

I mourned you
and continue to

to this very day,

you wonderful will-o-the-wisp. .

When you escaped my view,

when I looked out the window
and could no longer see you,
when the glass shattered, Alice,
I was shattered, too.

On accidentally opening the bathroom door
and seeing Richard ringer en flagrante (sic?)
before closing the door
and running far fsr away:

I am sorry.
That was an accident.
That was unintentional.
That was not the door I was looking for.
I didn’t mean to do it.
I didn’t mean to see you.
I am sorry.

– not that I saw anything, really.
Not that there was anything to see.
I couldn’t see anything.
Nothing was visible.
It was too small.
– not that it was small
– not that I could see….
I’m sorry!

Look
can we just forget about this?
Can we not discuss these events
which I’d rather pretend never occurred
and pretend that they, in fact, never occurred?
What events?
That I just saw you
in the bathroom
with your little joke dick out.

Oh, you’d already begun?
I’m sorry I’m sorry
I’m so so SORRY!

I met a man named Schenectady Pete
he did some things that aren’t sweet
so sour, in fact, was that little Peter
that when unmet his mom, I beat her.
and If I’ could go back in time,
His mom would…
I can’t finish this rhyme.

She has the look
of a faded still
in perfect pose
and aged past perfection.
There is something classic
and not of this age
about her.

She sounds sharp
quick
warm
some sort of a screwball comedienne
who keeps up with the boys
and surpasses them
in ninety minutes flat.

She is some sort of an oddity shop
where every surface hides treasure
and every cabinet holds multitudes more.
She smells like an antique store
and I’m looking for something new.