Jason Ryberg

Poetry

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Portrait of Sky, Wind, Trees and Dog

 

The sky is the color

of an old primer-gray Camaro,

with a few rusted-out spots, here and there,

where someone has done a messy job of patching them up.

 

And the wind is a sorrowful, moaning chorus of ghosts, 

who are attempting to do a post-modernist rendition

of an old Russian opera.

 

And the trees are all doing their

leaning-this-way-and-that, stretching-out-the-stiffness-

and-kinks, catching-up-on-all-the-latest-gossip-thing.

 

And a dog, with a stake and chain still attached 

and trailing from his collar, making a rather comical, 

klinkity-klanking soundtrack for his big escape scene,

trots, joyously, down the slick, leaf-plastered street, 

his former life of incarceration already mostly forgotten.

 

Wild Circumstances 

and Poor Decision Making

 

There was a time, and not that long ago,

back when I still couldn’t get enough of anything, 

when you could never have convinced me things 

could get any lonelier or more cosmically / existentially 

bleak and bottomless than a sleepless summer night 

in a small town you thought you’d left behind you 

a long time ago, but never really quite escaped from 

no matter how many miles and years you put 

between it and you. 

 

And now you’ve somehow got yourself 

knocked back into its gravitational bonds, again, 

via the classic and ever-reliable combo of 

wild circumstance and poor decision making. 

 

And there’s the lone hometown hotrod hero still out there 

after all the years, squealing away from a traffic light 

that has barely turned green, we can imagine, 

a couple of streets over, 

 

and then a truck out on the highway trumpets its response 

in solidarity, and maybe even a train, somewhere way-off, 

gives its horn a quick little Morse code tap. 

 

And then it all settles back down to nothing 

but a dog barking down the street, wondering 

what all the excitement was about 

in the first place.

 

And of course you’ve already found that 

aimlessly surfing around for something 

on the TV or the radio to save you,

 

even if but for the moment,

 

only makes it all worse, 

somehow.

 

Time Is

 

time was,

time will

most likely

forever be (if

the experts

are to be

believed),

at least until

that fateful

time when

there’s no one 

left to be 

of a mind 

to ask or 

tell anyone

else what

time it

is.

 

My Special Place

 

It's a cold, dank sad-

song-about-somethin'-that-went-

wrong-kind o' place, where 

 

phone calls from nowhere

still come in for people who don’t

live there anymore 

 

but no one ever 

comes to visit, and the sump-

pumps are always backed- 

 

up with clumps of check-

stubs and lottery tickets, 

the dregs of bad dreams 

 

and expectations

that were diminished before

they were even born.

 

And all the lights here 

are mostly burned out (or just 

flickering) except 

 

for one old greasy 

mechanic's  lamp hangin' there 

by a long yellow 

 

cord (that’s just outside 

the door) and one 60-watt 

bulb swingin' gently 

 

on the end of a 

string above the sink. And it

is a dirty and

 

indifferent light

that they cast and no one 

can say what happened.

 

Death Motif

 

I’ve often dreamed 

of Death as a bullet from 

a gun in the hand 

 

of some dumb fucko

sticking up a Quick Trip at 

1am who has 

 

decided that he, 

suddenly, just doesn’t like 

something about me;

 

Death as a pale and

rider-less horse, without a 

warning and for no 

 

reason apparent 

to me, kicking my brains deep 

into next week, or

 

as a carving knife 

plunged into my pumpkin-like 

head by a woman 

 

who has finally 

reached her point of critical 

mass with me, or a

 

twenty car pile-up 

on an iced-over highway 

late at night or an 

 

airplane suddenly 

stripping a gear or throwing 

a rod and then free-

 

falling into the 

ocean. I have envisioned 

Death as haplessly 

 

bobbing along some-

where at sea and waiting for 

one or more of its 

 

inhabitants to 

take an interest in me;

Death as the edge of 

 

a thirty-story 

building, somehow teasing me 

closer and closer 

 

to it (for just a 

little peak, no doubt in deep

collusion with my 

 

curiosity 

and (post-post-) adolescent

fascination with);

 

Death as the gaping, 

jagged maw of a Grizzly 

Bear, suddenly just

 

appearing in my 

path on a leisurely stroll 

through a landscape where, 

 

here-to-fore, no bears 

of any kind have ever 

actually been 

 

seen, Death as a slow-

motion and mutually 

assured nuclear 

 

holocaust, repeating, 

over and over again, 

on an endlessly 

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looping film, Death as 

crazed stalker or nemesis 

from my past, at long

 

last catching up to 

me as I stumble home from 

the bar, Death as an

 

otherwise highly 

curable disease or some

severe injury 

 

and me just one more

of the 1/3 of (meaning

100,000,000)

 

Americans with-

out any health insurance 

or savings, Death as 

 

a serious mis-

understanding between me 

and a SWAT team that’s

 

kicking my door in

at 4 in the morning. But, 

as a matter of 

 

fact, I have never, 

ever pictured or dreamed of 

Death as hooded grim 

 

reaper-type character 

or devilishly dapper 

dude at the wheel of 

 

a hearse, patiently

waiting for me to get my

affairs in order.

 

Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen 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 Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021). 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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