Job Conger

Autobiography

Agenda 49
When Someone Inspires
Bullet in the Back
Tuno' One
An Assumed Name
From a Front Window Table
Lady Destiny
Poet's Quandary
Washington Park 7 a Saturday

Another of our fine poets - Job Conger - .

Job Conger lives four blocks from the home on Whittier (as in John Greenleaf Whittier) where he spent his first 23 years. Though he attended college at MacMurray in Jacksonville and spent about six months managing a restaurant in Carbondale, Illinois, he has never strayed far from his home turf. His life as a poet began in 1958 in 5^th grade when he and his other classmates were required to memorize poems, posted weekly on the blackboard by his teacher. “I think it’s important that before I decided to write a poem, I had memorized many,” he recalls. The following year, in response to a 6^th grade writing assignment, he wrote his first poem. And the rest is history. “Poetry has always been a ‘see what I can do’ pursuit for me,” he explains. He became a member of Poets & Writers Literary Forum in 1994 and credits his association with its members as a major catalyst to his growth as a poet and as a sharer of his poems behind the microphone. Today, Conger has self published three sizable collections of his poems and is about to publish a concise biography of Springfield native son, poet Vachel (as in RACHEL) Lindsay. For more information about the man and his poems, visit http://www.aeroknow.com/poetrysong.htm

We hope you enjoy his poetry as much as we do.

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Agenda 49

He smiles the sheepish grin of a supplicant

with his hands in his pockets,

the clown without makeup

in the spotlight.

And with the camp-cool shy-guy schtick

that’s sweeping south from Minnesooooota,

he lowers his head to the microphone

and says, “Ya know...”

He’s reached that time when the bell that will toll

when his lights go out is being forged as he speaks
and he’s approaching another milestone
on his trek to the headstone.

Women have a milestone called Agenda 40

similar to the one he prepares to pass on a parallel path.

After all, who wants to deal with the travails of children

when you should be moving into a condo in Phoenix?

Today he confronts a milestone quandary

common to introspective single people -- and past age 35,

that’s about the only kind of single people you’ll find.

It’s the one he calls Agenda 49.

He hears Agenda 49 in the background music that sullenly moans”

“If you’re not settling down by the day you turn 50,

you’ll probably never again share a bed with a woman

who really thrills you.”

Even now, they’re walking away like ducks at Washington Park,

as though he’s a predator with a record you can’t play on the radio.

At best, most suggest coffee and talking classics:

not classic authors; classic clichés.

He regrets that trying to talk deeper than “lay-tray-cha” is like swatting flies:

the good ones can feel it coming, and they buzz off.
And soon, he realizes he’s not swatting at substance;

he’s only bothering the air.

Past Agenda 49 waits the enrichening process of

confiding in free-range conversation – like in Monday night sitcoms –

with friends he as to take to the vet

for their annual booster shots.

Past Agenda 49 is the sobering knowledge

that too many strangers think he’s a homosexual,

and it bothers him more than it did
when there were more unattached heterosexual fish in the sea.

Past Agenda 49 is the discovery of more time to spend

honing the cutting edge of his long-cherished desire

to become a better poet because a piece of

paper doesn’t talk back.

Past Agenda 49 is the realization that he

could have gone farther

with grim determination

than he has with a smile and an outstretched hand.

Past Agenda 49 lurks the inexorable muting

of rainbows’ colors on ever more distant horizons
as his once-vibrant joys from living
fade to unity with oblivion.

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When Someone Inspires

I will write for her enchanting form and mind

   forms and thoughts

      from my pen and heart

         lines of inspired imagery

             and lilting, lusting lyricism

Singing of dreams,

     of times in which I want to capture her

            and rush to hot times at the Hyatt Regency,

      predicting ecstasies

             of surrendering hearts

                  and good times coming our way,

                          I will flower the path to love

                                    with roses of words,

                                        and as I do,

                                              I will write

                                                    the end

before the beginning!

                                   -- February 16, 1971

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Bullet in the Back

Have you ever prayed for a bullet in the back

That will kill you as you're crying?

That will take the rain and agonizing pain

That you feel when you feel like dying?

Do you wait for the runaway truck in the street

To snuff away that last heartbeat

As you wallow in the whirlpool of defeat

And memories of days that were sunshine sweet?

Have you ever prayed for a bullet in the back

To make your life complete?

He's a man who prays for a bullet in the back

For he's lost his zeal for living,

And he's damned if he'll share the hurt that's deep within

And he's damned if he'll try forgiving

Of his parents who did the best they could

Though he thought they never understood

Of his friends for offenses, though intentions good,

And himself for not doing as he should.

He's a man who prays for a bullet in the back

As he always feared he would.

There's a problem that comes with a bullet in the back

To a person thinking through it:

How to fabricate some morbid twist of fate

That will make some bastard do it.

Not a Buddha or a Christ will take the aim

Though a devil might enjoy assuming blame,

But an East Side demon without a name

Might send you back to where you came.

There's a problem that comes with a bullet in the back

When it's more than just a game.

-- March 11, 1991

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Tuno' One

I will never understand how your friend's baby shower

Went to pieces over coconut cake.

I will never understand how my nephew got sick

After eating fried clams at the lake.

But I do understand your arm in my arm

And the future that I treasure so.

With your hand touching mine, I share something divine.

That's all I need to know.

I will never understand how man walked on the moon,

Or the orbits of Venus and Mars.

I will never understand how opposites find each other

Trading lies at midnight in smokey bars.

But I do understand your lips touching mine

Seeet as wine when the music is low.

When your smile warms my heart; tells me we'll never part,

That's all I need to know.

I will never undertand what tomorrow may bring,

Though today is a dream coming true.

I will never understand how the clouds went away

The day fate introduced me to you.

But I do understand your breast in my mouth

And the feeling of warm afterglow.

Your embrace brings the love that I can't live without.

That's all I need to know.

            -- June 6, 2000

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An Assumed Name

I am living

under

an assumed name,

the assumed name

of Job Clifton Conger, IV.

I am anonymous.

I am sonofaBITCH!

I am technicolor jacket guy.

I am anti-dark.

I am hand well-shaken.

I am living

under an assumed

name

and so

are

you.

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From a Front Window Table

Outside: a passing parade of purpose-driven strides
of strangers, navigating like fish in an aquarium of air,
people who pause to read poster announcements
and elegant menus with eyes that seldom gaze deeper than the eighteen inches from their
eyes to the papers taped inside the window.

Inside: a CD-borne blanket of New Orleans jazz
covers points made in the chit chatter at neighboring tables.
Cappuccino machine's concerto intrudes above all
and anthropomorphically shrieks of accelerated corpuscle dynamics,
the quest of quaffers of jump-start elixirs.

Outside: serious faces on Tuesday afternoon,
heads fixed firmly on short, starched, pedestals of necks,
minds riding the inertia of circumstance
to the next impact with a conscious thought, no more distant,
perhaps, than the street corner half a block north or south.

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Lady Destiny

Destiny punches no time clock
so if you think you've found yours,
be generous in giving her the hours she will ask for.

Others will not consider your allegiance
normal
and they might think you're a mutant fruit on the tree
that's best nipped in the bud.
Give the skeptics their two cents' worth,
but keep the rest for yourself
and for Lady Destiny.

Do your best to play the game
of the drones who pack the pollen home
and the mud daubers who are too often deaf
to her call.
Why?
Because the hive rewards the team player
with sustenance
to allow you to listen long
to Lady Destiny.
Do not ignore her when she calls your name.
She will be your one true love,
seeking you as you seek her throughout your years,
returning to reward your sacrifice
and to punish your indifference.

And after you do all the things you choose,
though you forget their names and faces,
to your final day, you will remember Lady Destiny,
and you will judge
the value of your life
to be only as worthwhile
as you were true
to her.

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Poet's Quandary

Sometimes I believe
I'd rather be a hero
                than a poet.
Heroes die young,
    but they do not die before thier time.
                        Poets too often live on the musings
                                                of imagined lives.

I imagine it's easier to be a hero,
    once or twice
                        than it is to be a poet
                               who must renew
                                    the cataclysm
                                            of death
                                                        and resurrection
                                regularly.

But a hero
    learns and lives
        and dies
            in only one world
                                while the poet rises
                                                and falls
                                                  in many
                                            until he or she
                                                dies in one
                                                        at one
                                                 with the hero

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Washington Park 7 a Saturday

I am a stranger to this land,
my first visit in the early morn
to soft fragrances and gentle breeze,
sunbeams sliced by lilting leaves of trees.

Here I sit with pen in hand
at a picnic table on a hill
and gaze upon a vast kinetic tableau
of streaming life on branch above and road below.

So many squirrels amble trees
as I would walk my back yard path,
They gather acorns while they may
to sustain their lives in winter's disarray.

Locust chorus chants to rising sun
as the meadow warms to meet the day.
The lifting haze ascends into the sky
as distant jabber from ducks comes wafting by.

The ducks are out of the water
near the pond, gathering as though
after a long commute, before their day
of business in the water, as though eight-year-olds at play.

An un-named parade of striding humanity
in Speedos, shorts and jeans, rides, jogs and walks
the road nearby, as courteously as they please
to many destinations and so many destinies.
To their far dreams that wait
beyond this park's inspiring grandeur
And they depart, their hearts restored by nature fine,
returning to their worlds as I must now return to mine.

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Books by Job:



Job Conger's Website