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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

New Poems: Jason Ryberg




Loaded Dice and Poisoned Candy

 

 

Hardly even know it’s there

most of the time...

 

after all, we can be a (somewhat)

fundamentally oblivious species:

 

whether posited, serenely, in proper lotus position

in the middle of some shimmeringly pristine

mountaintop scenario or deeply steeped

in some sweaty, chaotic configuration of love,

 

or (just as likely), broke down 

on the side of the highway, 

I-35 let’s say, just south of Topeka, Kansas

(with five pallets of National Enquirers,

bearing the tear-streaked face of Miley Cyrus,

that has GOT to get through):

 

a weathered cargo ship

run aground under a brutal, relentless sun,

one-o-one in the shade 

and a beer can rolling along all of a sudden 

like a tumbleweed in an old cowboy movie, 

(and now a dog barking off in the distance, 

as if on cue).

 

So, we are allowed, now and then,

an absolution, of sorts, 

from our inherent obligation

to fundamental attentiveness

to most of the obvious          

and at least some of the finer points

of the subtext, metatext and copious footnotes

to the post, post-modernist novel of Life.

 

But, still it hovers and circles,

always lurking just out of the corner of the eye,

waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike,

dolling out fate and fortune, 

good, bad and indifferent, alike,

 

the free-floating nucleus 

of the all-encompassing,

all-permeating physics of context,

the fluid matrical mechanica

of how things really are,

the constantly shifting locus

of the very shit that happens to us,

again and again and again 

in sloppy viscous loops...

 

The moment ultimately coming to a point, 

like the point of a big red arrow

on the Metaphysical Highway 

Rest Stop Map Of Life, 

 

like the finger of God pointing, 

just a little too accusingly, 

at you (and you and you) 

as if to say 

 

YOU ARE HERE

(and here you are)!

 

Hell, 

everything else

is extenuating circumstances

and low-grade

accommodation,

 

loaded dice and poisoned candy.

 

 

 

One More Cup of Coffee

-with apologies to Bob Dylan

 

 

The day starts with a bang

as the bed-side radio alarm

blows a hole in the fragile,

little submersible of your sleep

with one more report (in a seemingly endless

series of reports) about a seemingly endless

supply of bombs, of which at least one more

has gone off  in a mosque or market place

or public square somewhere in a faraway land

where the very cradle of civilization

is said to have once been, and continues

to be rocked, endlessly, it would seem,

by hot desert winds made all the hotter and meaner

(if not full-on Old Testament-ly wrathful-like)

by all those bombs and various other ordinances

constantly going off (as well as the general,

over-all exhaust and roar of the Great American

War Machine doing its business as usual,

invasion and occupation of a foreign,

sovereign state thing).

 

And back here on the home front,

we’ve rolled up our sleeves and hiked up

our britches as we all pitch in to do our part

for the post-war, Mission Accomplished

phase of the operation by continuing

to borrow and spend, consume and purge

at a here-to-for unheard of and unprecedented rate,

which is maybe why even some of those

state sanctioned think tanks are starting to say

that there’s probably going to be a few less

haves for the next couple of years

and a few more have nots.

But hey, let’s not over-extend our speculations

and estimations of possible outcomes

‘cause back here on the home front,

maybe even a little farther inland, still,

at the over-worked, poorly maintained heart

of The Heartland, the back-rent is lagging

farther and farther back and the front-rent

is a gleam on the horizon.

 

And you’re into a couple people

for a couple hundred bucks 

and maybe there’s been a medical bill or two 

as well as a few other unforeseen 

financial / psychological burdens.

And it surely can’t help that you’re living 

in a city sorely lacking in love (for a fella 

that’s just a little down on his luck, anyway).

 

And sometimes it seems if it weren’t for bad luck

there wouldn’t be much luck to speak of

‘cause there’s just no decent jobs out there 

these days that don’t require some kind of pedigree 

or credit check or Big Brotherly certification.

 

And, no matter what those government stooges say

or how much money the top whatever percent 

is making, the goddamn economy has gone to hell.

 

And the weather outside is, well… frightful —

cold, wet and grey, the clouds hanging

all ominous and low, throwing down

a mean, stinging sleet that the guy on the radio

says is building up to a nice, solid sheet

of tail-bone-cracking ice on the sidewalks and streets.

 

 

 

So, you loiter in the shower just a little while longer,

hoping the water and steam might possibly

warm your soul a few more degrees

closer to the idea of going out into it all.

 

You gobble up a handful of vitamins

and maybe half a bagel or piece of toast,

throw back a shot glass of apple cider vineager and honey,

and maybe you pour a little brandy in your next

cup of coffee and roll your first cigarette of the day

while you listen to a song about some other guy

having one more cup of coffee (and, you can probably bet,

another cigarette, too) before he, like you,

must eventually, inevitably go

out and down into the valley

of the world below.

 

 


The Time, Being (or, Run, Forest, Run!)

 

Better get busy livin,’ or get busy dyin.’
God damn right.
-Irish Red

 

The hill has been taken

for the time being,

the flag reclaimed

and the first-born bastard child

of every household has finally returned

from his or her aimless wanderings

and night errantries abroad

(demanding parental validation

and their compounded allowance).

 

And the priests and politicians

and insurance salesman

are quietly slipping out of town,

and the future wives of upper-middle America

are planning weddings to men they haven’t even met.

 

And the guards of the gated kingdoms

have nodded off at their posts again,

allowing Night and its gypsy gothic entourage

to slip right in.

 

And the whole slapstick, tear-jerking

tragic-comedy of it all will one day be recorded

on the walls of the deepest caves

for our great, great grandchildren

to one day find and wildly misconstrue.

 

And all the while, Life and Death

continue their heated Mexican stand-off

in the middle of the restaurant

while the rest of us look anxiously on,

staring into our Denver omelettes and Belgian waffles

and veggie-tofu scramblers, hoping, praying, pleading,

wishing we were having our breakfast anytime

any other time than this.

 

But really, now is probably the time

to learn to play the piano,

time to lose those troublesome twenty pounds,

time to drain the bad blood

from the abscess of the family,

to go back to veterinary school,

to come out of the closet,

to finally ask that waitress out,

to write The Great American

post-post-modern crime / noir / sci-fi novel,

time to do that thing (whatever it is)...

 

You know, that thing you go on and on about, 

ad nauseumly, every time you hit your requisite

number of drinks?

 

Seriously,

better get to it,

better get steppin,’

better come on with the come on,

‘cause the time, being

what it is

(was,

will be),

 

won’t just 

wait around for you

 

indefinitely.

 

 


Story Problem

 

 

It’s that time of night again when

all the little segmented and many-legged

critters of the mind’s darker side come creeping

out of their slimy little hidey-holes

and the city seems to sporadically come alive

with sirens from time to time (and then

die back down again like nothing ever happened).

 

And the moon is seated up there

in its royal couch of clouds, 

shining like someone’s back porch light

out into the summer nighttime, backyard 

jungle-world of childhood (even though it’s really 

October 2008 as I’m writing this, way down here 

at the court-side seats of the big Here and Now).

 

But, that fondly (and often rather fuzzily)

remembered time of our lives, for many of us, anyway,

has long since sailed on, out into that great, grey fog bank 

of eternity (and, it’s easy to think, sometimes,

the best things in this life with it (meaning, I suppose,

those moments and events and things that people

so often write children’s books and memoirs and even

the odd weepy or wistful poem about)).

 

Yes, it’s that time of night, perfect also, for otherwise 

less-than-fond memories of the past (be it whatever 

randomly assigned childhood or adolescent scenario 

or your early to mid to late twenties or just last week, even, 

for that matter) as well as those Standard Issue Fears 

of the Future, that plague so many of us, 

to make an unannounced appearance

(or at least their presence felt),

 

not unlike mice in the walls, maybe,

or the manic skitter and scurry of squirrels

in the attic or a dog out there, somewhere in it all,

that you’d swear was barking at the wind.

 

And the mighty I-35 continues its non-stop

guttural grumble and growl.

And the trees are scratching and tapping

at the house like maybe they were feeling

for a way in, or something.

And tonight, it all seems to have come down

to this seemingly simple story problem:

 

1 last beer in the fridge,

1 inch of bourbon in the bottle,

13 (or so) minutes until the liquor store closes,

roughly 5 minutes to get there (if you go right now),

an unknown quantity (x) of the usual frisky demons

to keep you entertained for an unknown quantity (y)

of sleepless hours before you.

 

And of course, now, you have to factor in

how you’ve recently been trying to cut back on it all

(the booze, the coffee, the fried food,

the staying up too late every goddamn night

to carve this self-indulgent crap into the sacred wood 

of the uncarved block),

get back in some semblance of shape     

and back into the game 

before it really is too late for you

 

(and, like the man said,

aint nothin’ worse

than too late).

 

So, 

 

what do you do?

 

 


“SMOOOOOOTH”  

 

 

There’s a humming-bird, trapped in an empty Carlos Rossi jug 

with a thin layer of what must be vinegar, by now, at the bottom,

and a coating of dust all over it, from mouth to butt, with three 

large X-X-Xs traced there-in, sometime ago, it would appear, 

as if it were an old-timey cartoon jug of hooch from which some 

hoary, old hillbilly pappy patriarch type in threadbare bib overalls 

might take a generous nip from time to time, whereupon his ears 

would instantly become two steam whistles, his face a straining 

empurpled tomato, eyes bulging with veins and tears and maybe 

even a small mushroom cloud appearing out of nowhere, right 

above his head, a depressurized deflating hissing sound and then 

“SMOOOOOOOTH,” leaving him, you’d think, with just the kind 

of clarity we could use, here and now, to help us figure out how 

to get a humming-bird out of a fucking jug.

 

 

 

 


Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry,

six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders,

notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be 

(loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry 

letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. 

He is currently an artist-in-residence at both 

The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s 

and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor 

and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection

of poems is Fence Post Blues(River Dog Press, 2023). 

He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster

named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe 

and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the

Gasconade River, where there are also many strange 

and wonderful woodland critters. 

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