jonberger

If you get to the point quickly
we won’t have to bat the subject around
forever.

If I reiterate,
I may have to re-hit-with hate
and nobody wants that to happen, right?

Right?

The latest Billy Collins collection of poems

that I have access to
is great (BC works tend to be)
but all the work is incredibly short.

I’ve got nothing against that.

I’m happy to read one and be done
and moving on
as fast as the next man
but is there a reason he’s so curt?

Has he run out of things to say?
Maybe he’s worried he doesn’t have long to go.
Dude’ll be eighty three any day now,
perhaps he wants to make sure he gets it all out
fast!
Possibly he has a form of dementia
where he lost all adverbs.

I don’t really care.
I still like the guy.

I’ll stick with him
even if he stays brief.

There’s a test I run every now and again
when I’m in my bed
alone, in the dark.

I whisper, quietly, "I can hear you,"
to see if anyone is ever there
listening.

No one has responded to me
yet.

On the ten-year anniversary of an EP I never uncovered,
to hear you again

is a fine thing.

I didn’t know you were back in the game
but to see that you never stopped,
oh, that is so good to know.

I would welcome you back
except you never left.
I was simply unaware.
I am quite happy
to have you around again.

The imperfect circle
etched on her wrist
does not represent her
as well as she thinks.

I arrived late
to the place I always go to on Monday nights.
I felt guilty
because they kind of expect me.
I’m something of a big deal around the place.
I only got there an hour late
and I didn’t miss anything important
but people might have been worried.

I could have warned someone.
I didn’t think I’d be so late, is the thing.

I’ll try not to let it happen again
but I know it’s gonna happen in two weeks time.
I guess I better give better warning
or maybe become less of a big deal.

That guy?
With the Leap Day birthday?
He’s twenty six as of the end of last month
but he looks a lot older
since his birthday
doesn’t come around too often.

Maybe we should have gotten him a bigger present;
I doubt he’ll make it
to the big three oh.

What I said about you, Spanakopita Pete,
back when you weren’t listening
because you were not in the state,
was not cool.
I was wrong to speak that way
in your very distant absence
and I apologize.

I should have spoken quietly
or not at all, Spanakopita Pete,
and keeping my own counsel
would have been the wisest course of action.
If you don’t have anything nice to say,
don’t say something
that can possibly get back to the individual,
that’s what I always say.

I failed to follow that simple rule, SP,
and if it were to ever get back to you
that I called you Moussaka Paul,
I would be mortified.
Simply mortified.

So say it isn’t so, SD:
tell me you haven’t heard anything,
please.

Take a look at me now:
You think I’m impressive? Ha!
I used to be so much stronger than this.
At an earlier time I was at full power
and some thing like the noise
you hear tonight could not keep me down,
not for a moment.

I’d be out on the bar
in the crowd
rubbing on drunkards
dancing with gangs
to gain the necessary attention
to win the focus
and turn the scene around.

I would not lose a room.
I did not lose the room.

I was a more powerful performer then.
Younger, more flexible
greater.

I’m not the man I used to be.
I let some of me go
but maybe, despite it all,
he’s coming back.

You stand twirling dizzily
enjoying the pulsing night
reveling in everything
treasuring this transitional world you have before you.

You know the dance can’t continue indefinitely.
You only have so much breath in you
and your energy gave out
before you even got onto the floor.
Still you’ll give it your all
whatever that may be these days.

The night holds no mysteries
but is has joys left to unfold
and you are still here
to take them in
if you can breathe long enough to do so.