Four Poems by Devin Becker

Issue 87

Found in Willow Springs 76

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Ben Lerner

 

Ben, my high school best friend, Ben,

is nothing like you except

you look

very much like brothers.

 

You are both Midwestern too,

as I am, (as everyone is)

so I bet,

Ben,

 

you grew up with the same excitement

about the new Applebee's and other

late 20th century upheavals in

monetary and food cultures.

 

Ain't it all the same, Ben,

aren't we all

like all

like each other

 

like

one another      like

one, and the simulacrum of one,

which is two,

 

if you believe in the Other,

which you do, Ben,

you do, I know you--

or I don't, really,

 

I just read you but

I know people who

do know you like Ed

& Elizabeth and Erika.

 

They say you're smart, Ben,

and you are,

it's obvious--

your books are like A+ papers,

 

they won't give a red pen

grip--so

I have trouble

continuing

 

to address you

in your absence

(fearing you'll think this

stupid)

 

but I keep

doing it because

doing it

as both our childhoods taught us

 

is really, really important.

Supremely so.

It was almost our first lesson,

save for our first

 

first lesson, which was:

Envy all the fruits

of your neighbors,

and didn't your backyard

 

back up to a golf course

and didn't you hit the errant balls

back at the yuppies

who sliced them

 

& who were not

yuppies

you realized later

(when you learned how

 

culturally irrelevant

your hometown really was)

but just people

like you

 

who had no hunger

that wasn't fed to them

years before their weekly

45-minute waits

 

with the buzzer

that lights up red and

shakes when your table's ready--

 

We grew up with it all

coming to fruition, Ben--

they quantified and quaffable

and made it profitable,

 

their logic

becoming so

essential, so undeniable

that now

 

we hardly question

why the buzzing

makes us      (each time!)

feel as if we've won something.

 

Koan Head

 

I'm trying

what I can to learn

to unthink, Ben--

 

Not to

not think

(mind you)

rather

to understand

the reason

I say

 

I think

 

but not

I beat my heart.

 

Lerner

 

Growing up, we cut down

everyone,      Ben

we exhausted

into hilarity      the material

of our failures

 

And like any sort of

love

this marked us      inferior

to the point that

now  we only know

we're friends with someone if

each of us can say      something

so accurate about the other

it devastates, emotionally

but stays funny.

And this is

good laughter sometimes (sometimes

even restorative)                 but it catches up to you, Ben

turns inward when you're older and your

guy friends dry up

and you have                 adult friends,                 which are worse.

 

Once established, our childhood defense/social systems

need to feed on something and this is you,

Ben, becomes you,      Ben,

which prompts that famous,       poetic discovery:

I is an other

and he's a dick

and he hates you

which seems wrong in this century,         when all the other others are all

like:

Like!               I Like it!         and       Look!          I like it!

like it was never cool to dislike everything,        which we all know it was.

 

I wish

I'd more enthusiasm generally,     more joy,

and maybe that will come, Ben, and maybe

I will take it easy       and vice versa:

maybe I and I we'll both                  follow each other,

read each other's walls as we text each other.

Eat each other's feeds.

 

10:05

 

Everything's been

made fun of

already,

Ben; been

 

mad funny.

What's left

but to praise everything,

anything,

 

post it all

so it

means something;

fix it all in bits.

 

I mean

what am I even

doing here

typing

 

when I could be

pasting this

into the internet,

embedding my picture--

 

Oh but who am I

to grimace

at this newest messaging.

 

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