Five Poems by Jason Ryberg

 

Late Afternoon in Early November

for Phil Miller

 

I

        guess

this lone

               sweat bee is

going to be my

        only drinking companion, here,

on this exceptionally warm late afternoon in

                 late November, with most of the leaves on

     the ground, already, spastic squirrels ripping

and tearing around like they’d found a bag of meth out

                in the woods behind the cooker’s

         compound, down the road,

 

and all the

        humming-

                         birds

              gone

                           for

                                  the

              season,

                     as well, it

seems. So, as I said,

          it’s just me and my new friend, here,

 

toasting to each other’s good health

                            between drinks of wine,

    

               thinking to ourselves in our own ways –

                        November!? What the hell happened to October?

 

 

Some Sort of Grand Unifying Metaphor /

Analogy / Allegory / Etc.

 

Just a single moth

circling the back porch light to-

night (who knows where all

 

her friends are?), this sad,

solitary little satellite doing its

manic orbit round

 

and round what must be

her moon-goddess of pale blue /

white light shining out

 

into this mid-to-

late-October night, where, it

seems, that fewer and

 

fewer of her kind

gather here this late into

the year for this weird

 

insect ritual,

which, I suppose, could be used,

here, as some sort of

 

grand unifying

metaphor / analogy /

allegory / etc.

 

for our own frantic,

batshit, rat-wheel existence

that never really

 

slows down, much, either,

no matter what the weather’s

like, or time of year.

Big Plans 

 

These black railroad tracks,

after the snow has melted,

sprawling in every

 

direction, where a

hobo lays his head on a

rail and listens for

 

any life that might

be in there, to tell him of

the next arrival.

 

And his partner, the

skinny scarecrow with the sleight

hitch in his giddy-

 

up, has acquired, some-

how, a fresh goose-berry pie

that was cooling on

 

a window sill, some-

where, and he’s got plans for the

next town, pal, big plans.

 

 

Exurbs of The Great American Dream

 

A

blood

red sun

has risen

this morning from a

steaming mountain of fallen leaves,

out in the back yard, and a sharp breath of November

wind is slipping in through a window, left

cracked open through the night, where-in I went to

bed a standard-issue privileged white male, but

woke up a butterfly in the inner eye

of a hurricane, only to wake again (for

real, this time, I’m sure), staring up at the network

of cracks in the ceiling, feeling, for

some reason, like a gas-bloated body rising to

the placid, glass-like surface of

a pond on a posh

country club

golf course,

some-

where

in

the

exurbs

of the Great

American Dream.

 

 

Keep Moving

 

I don’t know about

          you but I’ve found that the best

                    way to navigate



one’s path through some of

           this life’s hairier, or may-

                     be just slightly more



precarious (if

           not full-on, batshit scary)

                     scenarios is



to learn, firstly, how

           to control your mouth, meaning,

                      equally, your tongue



and your breathing, slow

           your heart rate and wipe your mind

                     down to a clean, calm,



Zen-like slate, keep an

         eye-ball on the constant look-

                   out for the nearest



exit sign and just

          keep moving, keep moving, keep

                     moving… for one would



not want to wake or

           even just faintly stir the

                     shallow, upper-most



layers of the dreams

           of the fabled giant old

                     dragon they say lies



snoozing beneath the

          mountain of gold upon which

                    even the smallest



and most unlikely

            characters such as ourselves,

                      occasionally,



by wild circumstance,

          are forced to tread, but still must

                    never, ever dare



to dare give even

           the tiniest single thought

                      or drop of sweat to.

 

 

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.