jonberger

Then there was the day
when the pockets got ripped open
because the metal coins were pulled from it
and just, like, torn from each person’s clothes,
then rolled away into those trucks,
which just rolled away to those central repositories.

It was like the biggest redistribution of small-denomination wealth
the US had seen in quite some time.
It was time for a change
and the government saw to it quickly and efficiently
with no muss, no fuss
and no benefit to the people.

The change was gone,
taken from us
and all that was left was paper currency.
Dollar bills reigned supreme
with a single being the smallest amount anything cost.
That was a day, let me tell you.
Coming soon.

I walked up the mountain – well really a hill
and asked the philosopher, “Please tell me: will
I ever be happy? And how can it be?”
After contemplating, she said to me,

“Lower your standards. It’s easy to do.
Just don’t be so picky, and let more things through.
This is the best way to remain happy.
Keep yourself open to opportunity.”

I stared at my guru aghast and agog.
“You think expectations have left me so clogged
that now I no longer know left from my right?
You know, it’s convincing, that right you just might.

“If I lower my standards as a general rule,
not be so high-minded I might find something cool.
If I open my eyes to what is around
I might be surprised by all that can be found.”

It looks like Baltimore’s gotten a facelift
since they lost a major part of their infrastructure
with a broken Francis Scott Key Bridge.
A container vessel smashed into the site
and it crumpled like forty five year old engineering
that could have been made better.

It’s gonna be harder to get in and out of Baltimore,
sure, but it’s gonna be forty five minutes longer,
probably, to travel DC to NYC
for maybe the next two years.
If everything gets done in a timely matter.

If this wasn’t a planned attack
it should have been.
It was really well executed,
and leaves Northeast commerce pretty vulnerable.
Like Key Bridge, next to tunnel waters, it’s been laid down.

I guess I can’t be too upset.
The scam’s run about ten years now.
If it’s out of steam now, it’s still had a good run.
The apartment my Dad lived in before he moved
– before he died – had parking attached to it.
He hadn’t lived there
for eleven years by now
and I just got something plastered on the car
telling me I don’t belong.

The warning says I’ll be towed at my own expense
if I continue doing it.
It’s gonna be hard to remove the sticker on the window.

Eleven years of free and easy parking
in my Dad’s old neighborhood.
I do not know what I’m going to do without it.
I need a new scheme now – and quick.

The impossible came for a visit the other day.
It was only for an hour. I knew it couldn’t stay.
I flipped the coin a bunch of times: seventeen tails
and gold flowed from the tap streaming into pails.

The weirdest shit was happening but only for the hour.
It’s like the day had been charged with wicked weird power
that allowed the strangest things to happen just by chance,
generating such unlikely circumstance!

The brevity of magic made powerful and deep
and got me wishing strangeness could’ve lasted, would just keep
on going for another day or, best, another year.
But if the odds stayed wrong that would ruin all the seers.

How robust could predictions be if no one could foretell?
That the impossible occurred for but an hour’s just as well.
If it lasted longer, though exciting it might be,
the world would be in rough shape, I can tell you that for free.

Yes, I did it.
I committed the crime
did the time
stopped the mime from his fucking acts of terror
before a helpless community.
I got the improv troupe to quit it, too.

Is it too much to call me a hero
the people’s prince
a vanguard of the hopes and wishes of a generation?
Hardly, but
I am far too modest
to suggest such a thing.

You can call me what you want.
Personally, I lean toward “Glorious One,”
but “Mister Berger” will do
in a pinch.
I’m not the sort of guy
to make a big deal
about what he’s called.
You can call me “Late For Dinner,”
so long as you put “Master” at the start of it.

How’d it go?
How did it go?
How was the show?
Here’s the flow of the blow-by-blow:

I conquered.
I commanded.
I created commitment in the congregation
where before there was disquiet.

I presented my pieces in a particular placement
and they ploughed the crowd
– who were wowed, and vowed to loudly allow
a proud unbowed boy (who is me)
back at the earliest opportunity.

I did good.
I did great.
I did gargantuan numbers,
selling as many as three CDs
and two chapbooks.
I got five people signed up on my mailing list
and let them all know about my socials.

I think they liked me.

When you invent your vocabulary
make sure you know how to pronounce them.
This is very important:
if you don’t know how to pronounce your created words, who does?

This was driven home recently
when the very title of a poem
was an invented word
but the pronunciation had not been appropriately developed
so trying to enunciate the name of the piece
became an exercise in futility.

Practice and forethought can resolve this issue in advance.
Simply pre-plan and think through
what your word should be
how it should be said
and whether people will immediately understand the meaning of it.
If they won’t, then your invented word
is probably not a good one
in the first place.

That was the case with the example
that incidentialized this poem, originally.

Liam said he liked the update
on the old piece
but I think he preferred the original.
It was what he was familiar with
and what he said he’d been riffing on
with his wife for the last few years.

It is what it is.
You can’t please all the people
all the time.
I updated the old piece
because I always had a nagging feeling
that the pieces of the poem never connected
but something in the way Liam described it
made me think
that was exactly what Liam liked about the original:
its flexibility.

Since the pieces didn’t connect perfectly
it could work itself into
any number of combinations
or I could see that possibility.

So I could see the possibility
that he liked the new version fine.
I just think he liked the original better.

The adventurers gave up the search eventually
after scouring the contiguous forty eight states.
They had looked everywhere,
uncovered rocks, beaten jewel thieves,
argued with conmen, fought with pirates,
whatever was necessary to find the
great Diamond of America,
but they ended up with no leads
and most importantly, no diamond!

Dejected, they all went their separate ways
leaving the rest of the Americas
undespoiled, which was really
just as well.