Poetry: Selections from Jason Ryberg

The Once and Future Mad Philosopher King

The once and future Mad Philosopher King

is suddenly leaping from a dream of blood

 

and smoke on his gnarled and rocky throne

at the ancient heart of the black,

 

primeval forest of his mind,

shouting MY EYES! MY EYES!,

 

sending his court of woodland critters

into chaos, leaving only the wind

 

and leafless trees behind

to comfort and advise him.

 

Meanwhile, a vagabond army of the ghosts

of the vanquished creeps another inch closer.

Lunch Money vs. Knuckle Sandwich

Time is the dank, haunted swamp

upon which we’ve ill-advisedly built

our fragile and fractious little

city-state of the mind.

 

Time is the blind master swordsman

whittling you away (over time) to nothing

with a million tiny cuts.

 

Time is the huge troll that lives

under the bridge that spans

the chasm between points A and B

on the flickering integer line of our lives—

 

horses, dogs, men,

saints, outlaws and CEOs,

eagles and earthworms,

the moth circling the porch light,

the lone wolf on the hill

howling with the madness

the moon causes him with

it’s merciless and relentless stare—

 

nothing and nobody gets past

that neighborhood bully

without first giving up the lunch money,

or it’s a knuckle sandwich, for sure.

 

And not a second more of time for it.

Still-Life of ’49 Merc

There’s an old, primer-black ’49 Mercury

in the drive, squatting like a junkyard dog

 

with a big, toothy stainless steel grin that

looks like it’s absolutely dying to go for

 

a late, Saturday afternoon spin out on the

old two-lane highways just outside of town,

 

with the windows down and some A.M.

oldies station turned up good and loud and

 

everybody singing along to POPPA-OOH-

MOW-MOW or WHOMP-BOP-A-LOO-BOP!,

 

then maybe pick up a case of beer and some

baby-q on the way back in and then proceed to

 

do away with every last bit of it all out in the

backyard, amongst the fireflies, satellites and stars.

Fumbling for My Shoes

It all started out

damn-near like a blues song,

 

with a railroad rumble of thunder

and a crime scene photographer’s

flash-bulb POP of lightning,

 

waking me from a warm deep dream

of a woman in my bed and a

fat roll in the cookie jar up on

the top shelf.

 

But it was just me,

scrambling, madly,

from the twisted sheets,

 

wondering who, what, where,

why, when and how,

 

fumbling for my shoes

in the cold and lonely half-dark,  

 

late for work

again.

Front Row / Center Court

It wasn’t just the fact that the poor schlub

had been in love with this woman for

something like six years or so (though

 

you’d never have got it out of him

at Guantanamo, even, ‘cuz he just wasn’t

the type to throw that word around too loosely)

 

and him always right there, it seemed, strapped

into the passenger seat (or front row / center court,

at least) for the near-constant, up-close-and-personal

 

POV as she meandered her way, willy-nilly, through

who knows how many progressively worse affairs

with exponentially worse dudes, but also that he’d

 

never been overly popular with women, in general,

anyway, which as you could imagine, only complicated

and compounded circumstances gradually,

 

over what must have seemed like millennia

into more of a coal-like substance if not

exactly a diamond.

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 billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.