Poetry: Selections from Jonathan S Baker

Smash

 

John, who is all of us, is on the back deck 

laughing with his friends at off-color jokes. 

Some of the punchlines upset John just a bit, 

and it upsets him that it upsets him, 

but he quickly and silently decides not to bring it up 

because he knows it will just be a whole thing 

and the rest of today would go straight to piss. 

Even if John does manage to smooth it over, 

everyone will be waiting for the time to leave 

to complain to their wives all the way home 

about how John can’t ever just let it go 

and how everyone has gotten so damn sensitive 

and how no one today can take a simple joke. 

So instead John gets up to refill his drink 

and offers to grab a drink for the other partiers. 

Generally, he’s really having a good time 

EVEN AS MULTIPLE GENOCIDES 

HAPPEN AROUND THE WORLD 

not once have any of these atrocities come up in conversation, 

everyone is just eating burgers and talking 

about their kids and refinancing their homes 

and vacation plans and the price of groceries. 

John is both thankful for and disappointed 

in the kind of people he has grown to surround himself with, 

but in his heart he knows that they are okay.  

All of them except for Jeremy 

who he would never leave alone with a kid or a dog, 

but if he didn't invite Jeremy, Jeremy's wife wouldn’t come. 

John has kind of been looking forward 

to seeing her in a bathing suit ever since 

last summer’s BBQ when she laughed at the crack 

John had made about Jeremy 

and the song of her laugh and the bounce of her tits 

made John half erect in his damp swim trunks.  

So when John heads to grab those beers, he doesn't notice…

 

smash!

 

John walks into 

Monday’s plate glass window  

the weekend is over

back in the office 

covered in cuts

the phone is ringing 

the clock is ticking

the boss isn't happy

everything’s a bloody mess

and all of this life

is still going on.

 

 

 

The Brutal Sameness of American Culture

 

If you've seen one mall…you've seen one mall…

You've seen them all…You’ve seen them all.

 

I am disappointed in the landscape 

across thousands of miles of  highway, 

a fractal image spun out from 1950s marketing guys 

and repainted every decade til every repeated pattern matched. 

The car window is just a screen with graphics populated 

by a lazy algorithm coded efficiently and cheaply, 

simple pallet swaps over reused models. 

Brand new like new, the American homogeny 

driven by recursion ever westward. Wagons Ho! 

Middle ground mediocre manifest destiny, 

washedout technacolonization, 

faded pale faces clone stamped 

Across the Continental canvas. 

It's a melting pot of perpetual stew. 

All the chunky bits are turned mush. 

The flavors are on mute overpowered by static.

 

The hamburgers are the same. 

The pizza is the same. 

Even the Mexican and Chinese places are all the same. 

I can safely order either a chili poblano or general tso's combo 

anywhere between the Pacific and the Atlantic. 

I've eaten at a Texas Roadhouse in Texas. 

It was just like the one in Indiana. 

I'm nostalgic for radicals 

that rose out of hard times and oppression. 

I am shamefully thankful for their hard times. 

They went through hell so I don't have to, 

but they did write a lot of pretty songs, told some funny jokes. 

I'm not saying it was worth it 

but I can't imagine a world without a history of violence. 

So I will be solemn when called for and remember 

the people that stood out and took a beating for it. 

Thankfully there will always be boundaries 

to be pushed, limits to be tested, rules to be broken.

 

Utopia exists with in the space 

between freedom and the fall.

 

I'm looking forward to the changes

anything to shake this brutal sameness.

Jonathan S Baker lives in Evansville Indiana where the Christmas trees are luxurious and the shrubs are solemn. They are the author of several collections of poetry and the Pope of publishing at Pure Sleeze Press.