| Jonathan Berger's Poetry: Poem of the Day |
| SWEATSHIRT The sweatshirt is too warm – except for the days it's too cold. It's such a big, woolly behemoth of a shirt, it can't be worn with any jackets or coats, so it has to serve as all the protection I need from the big bad world, and that occasion occurs about as often as a full moon. But you'll see me standing alone, with my sweatshirt, far more often than that. The sweatshirt is ratty, dirty, smelly. It's like it attracts filth, which isn't so hard to accept, considering. There's a big blotch on the front, which precedes my time with the it, back to some prior period with its previous possessor. No matter how often I wash it, there's a scent of the shirt that I can't seem to displace. Now, of course, I no longer try. Still, at a distance, you can find me in my sweatshirt, alone, looking lost. The sweatshirt is too big for me. Too big for anyone. The guy who had the item before me swam in it almost as much as I do. And I think that's its purpose. The text on the front faded and blue from it's original bold overbearing black, it reads YOUR ARMS TOO SHORT TO BOX WITH GOD, which makes it some kind of religious tract, I guess… Still, in front of churches, temples, where God may have been or escaped, or anywhere else, I'll wear the sweatshirt. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, I'll have it on. So long as it's all I have to remember you by, that is… |