jonberger

SIMPLY HEADS

In the dream
I was climbing to heaven
not flying
nor rising
but something more prosaic
and quicker.

While everyone around me was
slowly
willfully levitating their way
to the next level
I simply took the next step
on the stairs.

I got to the top faster than most
then rested prone in my lawn chair
waiting to greet my peers
in paradise.
When they arrived,
first simply heads
then torsos
then complete souls,
they had little time for me,
so excited were they,
ebullient over their effort
to reach such great heights.

There was drinking and dancing
and prancing and jumping
in the jungle
– did I mention it was a jungle?
Turns out the afterlife is a jungle –
a genuinely joyous rapture
in the final state.

I didn’t feel it
the way they all did.
Something about my strategy separated me
from the army of ecstasy.
I watched as everyone enjoyed
while I lay back,
restless in the evening’s afterlife.

I woke up sweaty
nauseous
anxious over what I done
Maybe I shouldn’t have
put that chili on my eggs.

BECOME THEIR FATE

When you run out of ideas
when you shut down
when you realize you’re not original
not saying anything
a thousand others haven’t beaten you to – and better
will you please shut up?
Will you cease
your desperate attempts
to be something special
when you obviously
patently
are something less than that?

I hope so
but doubt it
because artists require those fallow periods
those empty months
those pale hours of doubt
to become their fate.

It is almost required
for the artist
and that’s what you’ve always been.
I just hope
that after the darkness
and after the doubt
and after the acceptance
that it is your eternal lot
to create
that you finally are capable
of creating something good.

SOLUBLE

Something’s in the water.
Nothing’s in the budget.
Feet flying,
doves crying,
princes of mini-cities dying,
it’s all falling apart.

Something has to be done
but I have a plan.
We shall overcome these end times
if you only listen to me.

Studies show
that ninety percent of the world’s problems
are caused by me
not having enough sex
(Look it up)
which makes it clear
what we need to do:
initiate Operation Berger Toss.

Find a place
and a partner
to do with me
what must be done.
Tensions across regions
will be alleviated,
crises will be averted,
fantasies perverted,
cliched phrases reworded.

It won’t take much;
just a little bit of touch
will resolve what’s wrong
with the world.
Trust me:
I know what must be done
to achieve
the vaginal solution.

“NO”

When you asked
to borrow my computer,
even though I hadn’t used it in months,
I said “No,”
because I couldn’t admit
that I wouldn’t be writing
anything with it.

I refused to accept
that my writer’s block
had grown into a house
and then a housing complex
with government subsidies
and, instead of telling you,
“Sure,”
I told myself,
“Get off your ass and DO something.”

Unfortunately,
my ass is really comfortable
and hard to get off of
and I didn’t get much done
in the intervening eight months.
I’m sorry I didn’t lend you
the laptop, but
I’m glad
you were able to finish your novel anyway.

SICK WITH

Remember
what you said you’d accomplish
by thirty?
I don’t.
I can’t recall all I expected
to have done by now.

I never thought it would be so hard
or I’d get this soft.
I am slow.
I am stunted.
Every day
I am less free
to be whom I was always meant to be.

I had such potential
but now I feel sick with syphilis
and suffer like Sisyphus:
pushing my bigass balls
up a hill until
they get away from me
and I race after them
never catching up.

It’s such that
I’ll never achieve
my majority of intended expectations.
When did this happen?
What transformed me?
How did I alter
from that which could be
into this?

DESTINED FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

…and then the band just exploded.
Just, like, out of nowhere
they were gone
replaced by scorch marks and soot and bone
and horrified wails by an audience
that clamored for more
but were destined for disappointment.

They were that hot,
that propulsive
that mighty,
the band,
and only the fevered few got to see it
before they burnt out
– or burnt up.

Me?
I wasn’t one of the special people
at that special show
of that superspecial group.
In fact,
I never even heard of them.

LITH

Did you see that?
The way he…
Fuck. Did you SEE?
Oh, damn. He didn’t.
Jeez…
I’m trying to get over it,
but I’m angry, man.
I’m about ready to piss somebody off
or piss on someone.
Either way,
I’m gonna act like a dick.

And what the hell is up with Staten Island?
They ever gonna secede
or what?
If they do,
I want that guy with them
and not us.

And what about the Lithuanians?
Yeah, shit’s getting random
up here.
I don’t see why the fuck it shouldn’t,
do you?
‘Swhat I thought.
We gotta do something about them, right?
RIGHT?
Ah, screw all y’all.
You’re on my list now.
Like that guy…

HER LITTLE QUEENDOM

We are having this conversation,
she said,
and, when we are done, we will have reached a conclusion.
We can talk through the snowfall,
she said,
and, by the time it melts,
we shall act on our decision.

She is a willful woman
and an honest woman
and, in her little queendom,
her word is law.
When she says action shall be taken
from a decision to be made,
it is true.
Sadly true.

So when the snow stops falling
and the mounds begin to shrink
all will be resolved
just as she has proclaimed.
Which makes it sweet,
somewhat, to recall
how she’d so recently moved
to the Arctic.