jonberger

I am tired.
I am drunk.
I am darkened
by the weather
and my mood
and the very state of things.
I am dirty, scuffed,
beaten down
by too many days and nights
experiencing my destiny.

I am achey.
I am wobbly.
I am grasping napkins from bars
lipstick laden numbers
telling me just where to go
and with whom.
I am making bad decisions.
I am living wrong.

I am bleeding.
I am drunk.
I am hurting
and hurtling towards something
I can’t see
at a rapid clip.
I am broken.
I am debased.
I am outside your door,
waiting for you to answer my call
and I’m hoping
you’re too smart to do so
for your own sake.

I have found that it is easier
to get what you want
by denying what you want
to confuse your enemies.
Enough time has been spent
upon this evil globe
to recognize that
when they know what you want,
they shall do everything in mind
to defy you.

This practice of deception
has not been always successful
but, I’ve found,
if I claim hate,
you will struggle and strive
to be redeemed in my eyes.

I explain how I’m happy
when I’m enraged,
so no one suspects my incoming wrath.
I tell people I’ll be late,
and they’re glad when I’m early
– which they once saw as ‘on time,’
before I began.

This system works
more than it fails.
My plan gets me what I want
when I want it
through a steady diet of deceit.

And I see
from your wicked gaze
that you do not believe.
Then go
go away
and never sleep with me again.

It is funny that you’ve come to me now
years later,
lives later,
when the wheel has so completely turned
and the cycle repeated itself,
and you want information
that could have been provided
so long ago.

Yet
if it’s what you want
I’ll do what I can to provide
some sense of review
of where we went so miserably
tragically wrong.

Our relationship
– if relationship it could be called –
was brutal and short
though the eternity it felt like
was one of those long eternities
a surprise twofer sort of deal
that extends expansive
to a further torturous degree.

Ours was less a love of the ages
and more sexploitation B-movie.
It was a war film
and a horror story
and an action flick.
It was tension and release.
Insult and defense,
day after day
after irredeemable hour.
We were ugly together.
We were toxic.

And I miss it
of course
for everything else has been tame in comparison
but they’ve also been short and ugly
for I learned lessons from us
lessons I internalized
and can never seem to forget.
I try to learn from where we went wrong
but I seem doomed to only repeat us
with actor after actor
taking your role.

Which doesn’t mean
now that you’re again available
that I want to see you again.
I couldn’t bear that
and don’t think you’d want that either
unless – you…
you don’t?
Right, of course not.
Never…
Anyway, we were bad.

And I don’t know if you can transform this history
into a worthwhile education.
I know I haven’t.
I just know what I miss you
and I never want to see you again
until you next need me.

Alice sits in the motel room
with the radio on.
Her bottle sweats
is almost done.
The AC’s out, as are the tenants:
those with day jobs
and those still driving the state
racing to a destination
they will realize is one bridge too far
and slow, stop
for rest and respite
until the morning.

The morn is far off,
as is the night
and evening is still some hours away
as Alice stands, paces
scuffed heels causing static
kinetic energy generating electric
across this well-worn, sun slatted floor.

As she pulls on her slippery beer
she ponders:
If she leaves,
no one would know she’d been.
If her visitor ever came,
he’d never know when she left.
She could live with that.
She’s waited for him enough times
for little enough reward.
She could leave at any time.

She could leave at any time
but cannot think
where else she’d rather be.
So Alice sits again,
dress riding higher,
listens to the radio
and waits in the motel room
alone.

Things were better
when things were better
but these days
with tightened belts
and thinner rations
it is harder and harder
to take it easy
especially for one like me.

I am the poor
I am the disenfranchised.
I am the hungry.
I had hubris,
but can no longer afford it.
I am the ninety nine cents.

I had hope until recently,
expectations of resuscitation
or revelation
or realization
that this was how it had to be.
I had dreams
until I found then too costly.

I am the ilk
I am the unhealthy
I am the uninsured.
I am the insecure.
I am the left hand
an easy mark.
I am the ninety nine cents.

It didn’t used to be this way
or any one way.
There used to be options.
There used to be solutions
that seemed so much less final.
There used to be more.
Now, there is me
and you
and them.

And I am the ninety nine cents
and they are the enemy
and you?
I don’t know what you are.
Do you?

OK, you’ve done all right.
You’ve successfully lulled me
well into security
and beyond.
I believed you were irrelevant
and that I was victorious.
I was wrong.
You tricked me
and I was wrong.

You are proving to be far more dangerous than I had previously presumed. Very clever,
leaving me unsuspecting
of your eminent threat.
Very clever, Daniel Laitman,
very clever.

Well and still
I shall come upon you
with the strength of a dozen Mongols.
I shall attack
when least expected
and you’re most vulnerable,
Danny boy.
You will be the victim
and I the master
and I won’t ever have to return your MetroCard.

I am looking for something
to fill the hole
that was left
so recently
so permanently
upon her departure.
I am looking
for something to live for.

I am searching
for the first time in a long time
for something to occupy me
someone to devote myself to
some way to go about my days
so that they’re worth enduring.
I am searching
for meaning.

I am hoping
to find purpose.
I am questing for a missing piece.
I am hunting for a solution
to eradicate this emptiness.

You can fix this.
You can complete me.
You can offer that which is needed
and I think you will
whether you know it or not
wish it or not
like it or not.

I
am in the market
for an enemy
an opponent
an adversary.
I am looking
for someone to shove.
You will be my target
until you’re ended
and I must again
begin my quest.

I said, “Forty five?”
and he smiled. “Forty five.”
“You can write forty five songs…”
I said
“…in a day.”
He nodded, as if in assent.
“And you do this regularly?”
I asked,
for clarity.
He beamed
and said nothing more.
“I don’t think so,” I replied
and he looked at me
smugly,
secure.

“OK,” I said,
“So, these songs you write…
If they’re at minimum length
of, say,
two minutes a piece,
then you’ve spent ninety minutes playing them
the very first time you’ve come up with them.
Any revisions?
At all?
For any of them?
Let’s double the time.”

“And,” I continued,
“how do you make sure they’re actually written?
I’m assuming you don’t write them out.
Do you record them?
Do you record them
that first time?
Do you even have time to listen to your product?”

“Hell,” I asked,
“Does anyone ever listen?
And what about quality control?”
I wondered, “Do you have any?”

“It boils down to this:”
I said,
“How do you define song?
How do you define write?
How do you define forty five?
And how do you define you?””
I looked at him,
begging, with my eyes,
that he try to defy my impervious logic.

“I define songs,”
he explained,
“as the thoughts in my head,
which, are lyrical in nature
and never exceed the identified forty five.
I generate them,
I experience them,
and then,
I let them go.”
He gave me a meaningful glance
and said,
“I am writing one now.”

“You are not using the same language I am,”
I said.
He didn’t response
which, I suppose,
proved my point.

I have spent some fair amount of time
striving to drive you
from my mind.
I looked for where you hid
in the recesses of my memory
and did what I could
to expel you.

In some ways
I’ve done just fine.
I cleared out the space
you occupied on my walks down Riverside.
I no longer think of you
in relation to fondue
or melon.

I no longer want to remember
you see
all those days
that seemed so glorious.
Considering them now
is a painful exercise
I wish to exorcise from my life.

Of course
I am not in all ways successful.
In the increasing darkness
that surrounds you
in my head
I still can always see
Shining, beacon-bright
that Day-Glo makeup
and the random shapes you painted
upon yourself.

It burns into my head
these recollections of how
you dressed your face
to please no one but yourself
– and how pleasing it was
to all.

I wonder if you still wear your war paint
in peacetime
conquering all before you.
I’ll bet you do
though I can’t get proof
since I’ve forgotten your phone number.

Do I have anything new?
Do
I have…
any new poems
to read to you
tonight?

What the FUCK?!
What’s wrong with the old stuff?
What is going on in your life
that you can’t bear a moment’s repetition
or an evening of redundancy?

What must I do to satisfy you?
How much content
need I produce
to get you off my back
off my ass
out of my life?
Fuck…

Do I have anything new…
New?
For you?
Yeah, I might be able to throw something together…