DARK KNIGHT-ERRANT

Whereas I can understand why coveting what
other people have is generally considered to be
a bad thing (or at least not good in the way, say Socrates
would have conceived of it along with his notions of

the Just and the Beautiful; the “what”, in this case,
being a real beauty I’ve had my eye and mind on
for some time now and the “other” being, not exactly,
a good friend of mine but an otherwise “OK guy” who,

just for the record, always seems to net a little more
than his fair share of both the Good and the Beautiful
if not exactly justly, so) and why loving thy neighbor
is usually agreed upon by priests, philosophers, politicians

and other members-in-good-standing of Chambers
of Commerce everywhere as being a good thing
(even though my attempts at loving them both
in my own separate and compartmentalized way

have been met with a degree of complication, if not
resistance, respectively, and, you know, the more
I think about things, this guy probably qualifies
as more of a “friendly acquaintance” than a “friend,” really),

the more I think about how much I’ve really wanted to
fuck this girl (as well as do other nice things for her
like bake bread for her and lift heavy things for her
and massage her feet and shoulders and be there for her

when she needs someone to hold her and say “there, there,
little soldier, everything’s gonna be OK” and still do,
now more than ever, despite the fact she’s “taken”
as they say), but I just can’t help wanting some vague

misfortune to befall this dude and just sort of
knock him out of the way; nothing by my own hand,
of course, and nothing too terribly bad; maybe something
along the lines of a minor industrial accident or alien abduction or

perfectly mundane and random example of someone
simply slipping on a well placed banana peel of the perverse

and tumbling right the fuck out of the scene, leaving me
absolutely golden and resplendent in a somehow wholly new

and different light in her eyes, right? YER GODDAMN
RIGHT I’M RIGHT!!! Somehow more intriguingly mysterious,
more smolderingly, viscerally virile, more ruggedly,
ribaldly, irresistably charismatic (if not exactly as monied

and handsome as my former nemesis-by-proxy) in a way
she somehow hadn’t noticed before this momentous occasion.
But, if you’ve managed to labor this far into the poem
and you’ve got even a basic aptitude for three dimensional

thinking, then you probably already know the score:
she’s every girl I’ve ever needed but couldn’t have and he’s
every one of those guys that swoops in superhero style
and scoops them up right before the pool of my idiot

slack jaw drool and my bugged-out, disbelieving eyes.
And me? I guess I’m the kid what likes to crack wise a bit,
sitting nose-first in the corner of the classroom,
wearing a pointy hat, or maybe I’m the guy that kid

inevitably grows up to be if he doesn’t get wise, fast,
you know; that ragged, little monkey man (with the haggard
little monkey dance), the one you see every now and then,
standing at that dangerous and dreary three-way intersection

of Rejection, Self Loathing and Unresolved Lust (some long,
dark knight’s errant quest for the Good, the Beautiful and the Just,
very possibly the reason he’s even in this mess),
a cardboard sign in his hands that reads

“PLEASE HELP. GOD BLESS.”

-Jason Ryberg, 2010