jonberger

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.

If I were to meet any of the alternate reality me’s
I’d probably fall into hate pretty quickly.
Sarcastic, entitled, and curt?
I doubt very much that we’d get along.

Of course, it’s possible
that an alternate me might have changed
in dramatic and important ways.
What if I was nurtured less
and had to work more growing up
so as not to be the brat I was and am?
Would I like me more if faced with that prospect?
Perhaps.

Or if someone ever taught me
that it’s better to be silent and thought a fool
than to speak and remove all doubt.
Then, all the allegedly “ironic” words I utter
that don’t mean shit
would probably not annoy me so much
when I would hear them for the first time.
God, why must I pester myself so?
Why can’t I just shut up?

Yeah, it’s conceivable
that a change in the possibilities in the multiverse
might update my personality a mite
and leave me better off
so if a tear in the fabric of reality were to occur
and we should meet each other,
that different me could be more palatable than I suspect.

I sure hope so,
‘cause regular me’s a dick.

Then there’s the alternate reality
where your superpower is
that you’re made of tapioca pudding
and that anyone who wants
can stick a spoon in you
whenever they want and just get to know you
on a pretty intimate level.

As superpowers go,
it’s really something to sneeze at,
but it’s better than your ex in that world,
the Mean Green Bean.