jonberger

Our Super-Secret Club had a Super-Secret Treasure.
We needed to establish a Super-Secret place to hide it.
I thought I had an idea.
I brought Eric into the kitchen and brought him under the table
beneath the window.

“What’s going on?”
I showed him the metal door.
“We can keep things in here!” I said, “It’s our Super-Secret Hiding Place!”
“What is it?” Eric asked.

It was a metal hole that stretched past the brick wall in the building.
“My parents say it was here to keep potatoes and onions and stuff
in olden days. We don’t use it now.”
“It doesn’t smell like potatoes.” Eric said.
“The building’s like a hundred years old!” I answered.
He wasn’t as enthusiastic as he should’ve been.

The hidey hole served our purposes perfectly, though.

Our Super-Secret Treasure stayed in the Super-Secret Hiding Place
until renovations five years ago when we discovered
the package of Mike & Ike.

Behind the building downstairs, outside
next to the laundry room,
they put up a hoop on the tree
and we’d play a bit of basketball, me and my friends.
We’d shoot, play Horse, two on two, whatever.

Because there was a building on one side
and a wall tight on the other,
we could sometimes bank shots.
I had a home court advantage,
since I played there often,
but because I was uncoordinated,
I still wasn’t very good.

Playing with Barry, a head taller than me,
I tried to bank a shot on the building side
and broke Ernie’s window.
Ernie was the building’s super
and would sometime’s watch us play.
If he was home at the time,
he’d be out any minute to beat hell out of us
for breaking his window.

It seemed we had a minute
before we were gonna get smoked.
Barry lived in the building too,
so we went upstairs looking for the super,
to inform him of what went down.

We found him on the fifth floor
and he took the accident pretty calmly,
said we didn’t have to pay for anything.
Relief!

I don’t know about Barry,
I didn’t play down there for a long time afterwards
and I aimed straight for the hoop after that.

August makes me sad and glad
that I’ve enjoyed the break I’ve had
but I’ll be back to school all clad
in uniform just makes me mad.

It’s much like January First,
a Holiday that’s great, but worst
since the Second is well-versed
as a school-day soundly cursed!

If only that it could be known
that every single occasion
where Holidays are to be thrown,
there in a 35-day zone.

“Anyone can be an optimist!”
she says with joy in her eyes
and willingness in her heart,
an undying proselyte excited to take me with her
on the road to positivity.

I hear her words and see the spin.
“Anyone can be an optimist,” she’ll soon be wondering,
“why can’t you? What’s so wrong with you?”
I’ve wondered that all along.

“Yes, indeed.” I said, “Optimism ahoy.”
“I knew you’d get into the spirit of it!”
She took my hand and held it close.
“Absolutely,” I frowned slightly. “Only moreso.”

The universe sends her messages:
there is a sun to tell you I give you light and love.
I provide warmth and nutrients and life.
You will survive because of me.

The sun also says too much of me will kill you.
Use caution in my presence. Beware.

The universe shows you the night time,
where you see the moon, which explains
I add gravity to your life, so the waves pull in
and out. I may make you a little crazy on occasion.
Sorry about that. Avoid lycanthropes.
Don’t turn into one.

There are thunder and lightning who talk about
their chases in the rain and the distances between them.

There are horses that let you know to be careful where you step.

There is so much more to hear and to learn from the universe
and her proxies
when you open your ears and eyes and take notice.

Go ahead. Give it a shot.

The quickmud in Pelham Bay Park wasn’t that high
but it sucked up my shoes pretty quickly
and they didn’t get out of there alive.
I had to leave the park in my socks
and I swore to the shoes,
“I’ll come back for you, Sambas!”

I think they knew I was lying,
for they said nothing in response.

I never saw them again
and the next pair I bought never said a word to me
about their predecessors
or anything else,
for that matter.

It’s just as well.
I don’t know
if I was in a good place
to handle my grief
at the time
but now
the shoe’s on the other foot.

I came from a different world.
I belonged to a different place
where as a young boy
I walked along the beach
on a late summer season, alone
the sun beating on my sandy back
as I imagined the adventures of Luke Skywalker,
Space Ranger, where he flew the skies,
fighting space pirates and all the criminals he would find
as he fought the Star Wars along with his pals Chewbacca
and Darth Vader and Princess Leia and the Micronauts.

I remember that day like it was forty five years ago,
hazily, but I recall the beach,
and the direction, and the air,
and I knew all about Luke,
without having seen a minute of the franchise.

It was a different world then
and I loved it
and I do not know my way back.

The day words ate Manhattan was a Thursday
when time was on their side
and curtains were blue
and nobody was looking for a cheese grater
in that shape.

The day words ate Manhattan
was appropriately gray
because words weren’t doing anything
just being used randomly
out of the mouths of babes, bacteria, bears and bachelors
and could be spent easily
at any five and dime anywhere in the five boroughs
– and in Hoboken, to boot.

The day the words ate Manhattan
wasn’t unlike any other
since words swallow everything in their path all the time,
Thursdays included.
Words are voracious.
Words are omnivorous.
Words never sleep and words are always on the prowl for a good meal.

The day the words at Manhattan is this minute.
Not today.
This min

Woke up with headache bright as sin.
Can’t remember half the trouble that I’d gotten in.
Knew I drank about a third my weight;
had a thirst for something that I couldn’t satiate!

I forgot the name I took last night.
Living life too speedily has got me in a plight!
Now what to do?
Need to simply face a question bare as “Who are you?”

I see it’s time to claim an identity.
Finally come to the center of me!
Ask the question “Who am I?” and answer honestly.
Perhaps this way I’ll find serenity.

Am I a Bobby or an Ace?
Perchance a Peter who has left the human race?
Maybe I could go by Herman, Ralph, or Chase.
Or am I really for-offbase?

Should I try Raphael or Ron?
Possibly Patrick or Paul or Wally-John?
Could I pull off a name that sounds like a come-on?
Something like Fox or maybe Sean?

Claim an identity for me.
A name that makes me a living entity.
Asks the question “Who am I?” and answers honestly.
Perhaps this way I’ll find serenity.

I am a young boy, hormonal, but still innocent,
and my family has taken on an older exchange student.
She is new to the town, and I have to show her around.
I am the voice of experience in this world
but she does not know that I am shy
and unpopular
and not much of anything.
In her eyes, I can become who I want to be.

She is gorgeous beyond belief
and we have much to learn from one another.
I protect her from the dangers of my world
and she teaches me about a sexual world I have never known.
It is nice,
a semester I will never forget.

My fantasy is pedestrian
and I am ashamed.