Self-Portrait At 28 by David Berman

  I know it's a bad title
  but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
  on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
  when the entire hill is approaching
  the ideal of Virginia
  brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
  and I think "at least I have not woken up
  with a bloody knife in my hand"
  by then having absently wandered
  one hundred yards from the house
  while still seated in this chair
  with my eyes closed.

  It is a certain hill
  the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"
  and if the apocalypse turns out
  to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
  if our five billion minds collapse at once
  well I'd call that a surprise ending
  and this hill would still be beautiful
  a place I wouldn't mind dying
  alone or with you.

  I am trying to get at something
  and I want to talk very plainly to you
  so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
  You see there is a window by my desk
  I stare out when I am stuck
  though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
  and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

  My childhood hasn't made good material either
  mostly being a mulch of white minutes
  with a few stand out moments,
  popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer
  a certain amount of pride at school
  everytime they called it "our sun"
  and playing football when the only play
  was "go out long" are what stand out now.

  If squeezed for more information
  I can remember old clock radios
  with flipping metal numbers
  and an entree called Surf and Turf.

  As a way of getting in touch with my origins
  every night I set the alarm clock
  for the time I was born so that waking up
  becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do
  is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like
  when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn
  the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.

  II two

  I can't remember being born
  and no one else can remember it either
  even the doctor who I met years later
  at a cocktail party.
  It's one of the little disappointments
  that makes you think about getting away
  going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
  and taking a room on the square
  with a landlady whose hands are scored
  by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
  that you are from Alaska, and listen
  to what they have to say about Alaska
  until you have learned much more about Alaska
  than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

  Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
  in a strange city and think
  "I am about to learn what it's like to live here."
  Oftentimes there is a news item
  about the complaints of homeowners
  who live beside the airport
  and I realize that I read an article
  on this subject nearly once a year
  and always receive the same image.

  I am in bed late at night
  in my house near the airport
  listening to the jets fly overhead
  a strange wife sleeping beside me.
  In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation
  of various cold medicine commercial sets
  (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).

  I know these recurring news articles are clues,
  flaws in the design though I haven't figured out
  how to string them together yet,
  but I've begun to notice that the same people
  are dying over and over again,
  for instance Minnie Pearl
  who died this year
  for the fourth time in four years.

  III three

  Today is the first day of Lent
  and once again I'm not really sure what it is.
  How many more years will I let pass
  before I take the trouble to ask someone?

  It reminds of this morning
  when you were getting ready for work.
  I was sitting by the space heater
  numbly watching you dress
  and when you asked why I never wear a robe
  I had so many good reasons
  I didn't know where to begin.

  If you were cool in high school
  you didn't ask too many questions.
  You could tell who'd been to last night's
  big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
  You didn't have to ask
  and that's what cool was:
  the ability to deduct
  to know without asking.
  And the pressure to simulate coolness
  means not asking when you don't know,
  which is why kids grow ever more stupid.

  A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
  to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
  of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying
  for a letter from the class stoner
  ten years on but...

  Do you remember the way the girls
  would call out "love you!"
  conveniently leaving out the "I"
  as if they didn't want to commit
  to their own declarations.

  I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept
  and hope you won't get uncomfortable
  if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

  IV four

  There are things I've given up on
  like recording funny answering machine messages.
  It's part of growing older
  and the human race as a group
  has matured along the same lines.
  It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
  If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
  I hope you won't be insulted
  if I say you're trying too hard.
  Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
  seem slow-witted and obvious now.

  It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
  Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
  It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
  though try explaining that to a kid.

  I'm not saying it should be this way.

  All this new technology
  will eventually give us new feelings
  that will never completely displace the old ones
  leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
  and split in two.

  We will travel to Mars
  even as folks on Earth
  are still ripping open potato chip
  bags with their teeth.

  Why? I don't have the time or intelligence
  to make all the connections
  like my friend Gordon
  (this is a true story)
  who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
  and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
  until I brought it up.
  He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
  By then it was too late.
  He had moved to Coral Gables.

  V five

  The hill out my window is still looking beautiful
  suffused in a kind of gold national park light
  and it seems to say,
  I'm sorry the world could not possibly
  use another poem about Orpheus
  but I'm available if you're not working
  on a self-portrait or anything.

  I'm watching my dog have nightmares,
  twitching and whining on the office floor
  and I try to imagine what beast
  has cornered him in the meadow
  where his dreams are set.

  I'm just letting the day be what it is:
  a place for a large number of things
  to gather and interact --
  not even a place but an occasion
  a reality for real things.

  Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
  or religious with this piece:
  "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic
  or religious," but these are valid topics
  and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor
  possibly dreaming of me
  that part of me that would beat a dog
  for no good reason
  no reason that a dog could see.

  I am trying to get at something so simple
  that I have to talk plainly
  so the words don't disfigure it
  and if it turns out that what I say is untrue
  then at least let it be harmless
  like a leaky boat in the reeds
  that is bothering no one.

  VI six

  I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories,
  many of them having blended with sentimental
  telephone and margarine commercials
  plainly ruined by Madison Avenue
  though no one seems to call the advertising world
  "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved?
  Let's get an update on this.

  But first I have some business to take care of.

  I walked out to the hill behind our house
  which looks positively Alaskan today
  and it would be easier to explain this
  if I had a picture to show you
  but I was with our young dog
  and he was running through the tall grass
  like running through the tall grass
  is all of life together
  until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
  and that thing fills all the space in his head.

  You see,
  his mind can only hold one thought at a time
  and when he finally hears me call his name
  he looks up and cocks his head
  and for a single moment
  my voice is everything:

  Self-portrait at 28.

  Anonymous submission.