I Swear to God
sometimes it seems like
the goddamn cynics and nihilists
and various other strains of nattering
nay-sayers of hopeless negativism are right,
that nothing really matters
in the grand scale of things,
that there’s no real meaning to anything,
as in nothing you do can really mean
or change or add up to something greater
than just a lumpy sum of parts.
Or, at least that’s the line of (quasi) reasoning
I use, occasionally, to justify and / or excuse
those days that come along every now and then,
when you wake up around ten or eleven
and maybe it’s grey and raining
and thundering out there, or,
better yet, one of those quaint,
postcard perfect / phone-book-cover-photo-
of-a-perfect-spring-day-kind-of-days;
either way, probably best to spend
the better part of it in bed (just to be safe),
the shades pulled down most of the way,
some solo Monk or Red Garland on the radio,
a box fan blowing out a rough accompaniment
from the corner and nothing to do
but drink beer and write poems (maybe even
one about drinking beer and writing poems)
in bed all day.
____________
Blind Dog Barking at a Train
There’s a blind dog barkin’ at a train,
a bloodhound with the broke-dick blues,
a scarecrow standin’ at a crossroads,
a radio cryin’ in a one-hour room,
a radio cryin’ in a one-hour room.
There’s a moth circling the porch light,
there’s a jackalope on the hill,
there’s a sad boy prayin’ for his luck to change
but he knows it never will, Lord,
he knows it never will.
There’s a ghost out wanderin’ the back roads
and two mules kickin’ where there should be one,
there’s a stud-bull rubbin’ up against the barb-wire
and a mean boy lookin’ for his gun, Lord,
a mean boy lookin’ for his gun.
There’s a preacher shittin’ in the backwoods,
there’s a senator pissin’ in the wind,
there’s a poet in the graveyard
whistlin’ Dixie in the dark
and something creepin’ up behind him,
something creepin’ up behind him.
There’s roosters crossed with hoot-owls
crossed with crickets crossed with stars,
and blind bats flappin’ in the attic
and black cats scratchin’ in the barn,
wayward sons gone for months now
and mamas done worryin’ where they are.
There’s a statue of a little kid
pointing where the money’s hid.
There’s bones in the trunk of a car,
bones in the trunk of a car.
There’s a blind dog barkin’ at a train,
there’s a drunk man laughin’
at a silver dollar moon,
there’s a convict crawlin’ through a cornfield,
there’s a record skippin’ in a lonely room,
a record skippin’ in a lonely room.
Saints, outlaws and street cleaners,
eagles, earthworms and butterflies
big shots, bagmen and nobodies,
you better know it happens to everybody:
No matter how I struggle and strive,
I’ll never get outta this world alive,
I’ll never get outta this world alive,
I’ll never get outta this world alive ….
____________
Grandeur
The sky was the whole panoramic spectrum assortment
of Crayola reds, oranges, yellows and purples— a
piñata ripped wide-open like a giant ten-point
buck by the side of the road, soaked with
gasoline and lit with a blue tip match,
and we nothing more than madly
scrambling ants beneath its
hot and bloody grandeur.
Or at least that’s the
way it seemed to
me that
day.
____________
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 The Great American Pyramid Scheme
(co-authored with W.E. Leathem, Tim Tarkelly and
Mack Thorn, OAC Books, 2022). He lives part-time
in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red
and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere
in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also
many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
deuce coupe 