The Comments: A Poem For Bono—By PJ

Bono 64, watercolor by Kelly Eddington, 2023. Based on a detail of a photo by the always incredible Pradip D. Patel.

The Comments: A Poem For Bono on His Birthday

PJ DeGenaro

THe COmments

— Are you reading The Comments?

— No.

— You are. I can tell by the way your hands lie flat and hard on your desk, by the hunch of your shoulder, by the tightness of your mouth, by the way the afternoon sun has set your hair aflame, turning you into some kind of vengeful god.

— Ah, well. Doesn’t the world always come back like a sock when you’ve already thrown out its mate?

— I know. No one knows better than me.

— Ecstasy is fleeting.

— Again. This is me you’re talking to. Close the laptop.

— Well, don’t snap me fingers off.

— Then don’t read the comments.

— I wasn’t reading the bloody—

— You were. Listen:

The Comments will always demand a statement. The Comments will demand you take a stand. The Comments will ask you to walk in where angels fear to tread, because after all, it’s not as if you haven’t done it before. No king, no president, no prime minister nor potentate could alleviate the present situation, but you, say The Comments, you are the prince of peace, you sing about it, you speak about it, you solved Northern Ireland and the Balkans with almost no help from anyone else — well, at least you raised awareness. The Comments will demand that you raise awareness, that you wear their awareness badge, their awareness ribbon, their awareness arse harness —

— I have worn a lot of those things.

— Why were you reading The Comments?

— Curiosity got the better of me.

— Curiosity killed the cat. Now:

You are not a cat, but I have seen you take the shape of one, prowling, purring, bristling. What a locked room is fame! Do you ever wish you could shift your shape, I mean really shift it, and slink off alone through the underbrush? ‘Where’s he gone,’ asks The Entourage, but you are already far away, pad-footing into the hills, creeping through the creosote, the mesquite, the greasewood, the yucca, the sagebrush. O lizards and rattlesnakes! O prickly cacti! Would you rather be a fox or a bobcat?

— Either will do. I am hunting wabbits.

— And I thought I knew you all these years, but I was wrong. For when I was a child I thought as a child, but then I put away childish things. I understand now that I had been watching you through a glass, darkly. But I know you now as I know myself: How you birth yourself through sheer force of will, piecing yourself together from scraps, hotel stationery, sticky notes, the backs of envelopes, ballpoint pens and open tabs and windows hastily closed.

— I can’t believe you didn’t laugh about the wabbits. What are you thinking of?

— The Comments. The Comments will tell you that you are finished, that nothing you’ve accomplished in this bastarding bitch century is worth shit. The Comments will say they’ve seen you cavorting on the Island of the Perverts, stuffing wads of Euros into your California King mattress. The Comments will want their money back if you’re alive at 64. The Comments will steal the voice of your dead father to tell you that you’re worthless (though it’s plain that he loved you, and this voice is not his voice; it is only the voice of The Comments). The Comments will rip away from you every life you’ve saved. The Comments will have their pound of flesh.

But:

Remember the other ones: The young babes, the old babes still trying, the pretty boys, and everyone possible in-between, the bros who tower over you, reaching out with their tree trunk arms, desperate to be held in your light. Every one of them screaming your name and hoping that this time you will surely pick their own small, ordinary human face out of the madding crowd. What more, in the name of love, do you need?

— I see what you did there.

— See, you’re even talking like them now.

— Like who?

— The Comments.

— O love. Never.