Dreaming of a Storm That Never Comes
Valentine's Day, 2024
A Day on the Farm, Pt. 2
Red Kite Caught on a Power Line
Still-Life of Cassette Tape and Gym Sock
Return of It
In Which Monkey-Boy Attempts to Go Toe-To-Toe with the Master (Round 2)
Burlap, Buffalo Skull and Burial Suit
Two in the Morning
Just the Right Tones
Dreaming of a Storm That Never Comes
Through
the
window,
a storm has
blurred all the trees in-
to the wider backdrop of the
outside world beyond, with its sudden and unforeseen
torrential downpour, for what seems like days
and days and days, but is, in fact, just a dream
you have only recently emerged from, somewhere
on that roulette wheel / color spectrum of emotion,
between deep blue-black sadness and what
surely must be the frequency of purest white gold,
blinding you, momentarily,
with its bright morning rays, as you sit, yawning on the
side of the bed, trying to make
sense of it all and
wondering
what day
it
is.
A
slick
brick-lined
street, downtown,
and just enough of
a wind to make you put your head
down and your jacket collar up, as you look for the
only other place to drink in this burg, reportedly,
than the local chapter of
the VFW, and it’s a roomful of likewise
solo / nolo contendre dudes (and one sullen gal),
hunched over great big mugs of
fuzzy, yellow piss-water and their cell phones when not
shouting or groaning at the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
count ‘em, 6, big screen TVs in this tiny little
oasis in the cold Kansas night where, at least, KU is now
leading Oklahoma in the second half,
56 – 47, after being
down the whole first by 10 or more and it looks like the
special is fifty cents off all
well drinks, so, make that
a goddamn
quad shot
of
gin,
on
the
rocks, with
a little
bit of tonic and
a couple of limes and Happy
Zippity-Do-Da Valentine’s Day, everybody!
A grackle perched on a fence post
beneath an electric blue sky
where mountains and fat landmasses of cloud
do their continental drift thing.
Tiny sets of wings,
blue, yellow, orange,
like the petals of wildflowers,
flutter up from the grass.
The wind and the trees are twisting
together (like they did last summer
and who knows how many summers before).
A sparrow is sitting on the driver’s
side mirror of a beat-to-shit pick-up truck
in the middle of a clump of grass and weeds
grown conspicuously tall
on a small square of the property
where all else is kept fairly low
to the ground.
Keys still in the ignition.
Battery still good.
Radio works.
Motherfuckin’ Chuck Berry.
Red Kite Caught on a Power Line
Big
ol’
burly
bad-ass stud-
bull, hunkered down and
reposing, leisurely, beneath
a tree, right next to a barbwire fence that’s only a
few feet from a two-lane highway, where a
praying mantis is currently practicing
his serene, slow-motion Tai Chi routine, smack dab
in the middle of the road, refusing to give ground
to the fast-approaching primer-gray
Camaro with no taillights and a grill
full of fur, and blasting Zepplin’s Black Dog all
over the Missouri countryside. And there, above
it all, a red kite caught on a
power line, twists and
shimmies in
the hot
dry
wind
of
mid-
July.
Still-Life of Cassette Tape and Gym Sock
The
light
streaming
through the slats
of the window blinds
makes zebra stripes on the wall as
the setting sun slides down the inner dome of the sky,
slowly spreading out to a purple-orange
layer on the tree-lined horizon, where the
long, silver / white sliver of a jet plane’s contrail
hangs in the air just above it, pointing the way
for the first urgent flocks of south-bound birds.
And right here, at the ground zero / crosshairs /
x,y foci of this strange existential
little moment – an old cassette tape of Husker Du’s
Candy Apple Gray and a lone
gym sock found hiding
under the
couch for
who
knows
how
long.
Maybe from under my pork-pie hat
like an explosion of butterflies and confetti
or from under the shadowy eave
of a barn like a squall of Starlings
taking to the sky,
or, from the far side
of the mysterious Planet X, even
(rumored to orbit the fading campfire
of our little solar system,
like a black ghost that stays, always,
just beyond the reach of its light),
or maybe, just this instant,
fallen from the pages of a book
on arc-welding
or hopping, leapfrog-like, from a cigar box
found beneath the floorboards
of an empty apartment
in downtown Sturgeon Bay.
Most likely, though, It comes
from that flickering nexus between 1 and -1,
between blind faith and forbidden knowledge,
between the could have
and the Goddamn, I should have!
But, recent studies are showing there’s a strong chance
that It claws itself up each night from a shallow grave
that, years ago, It was forced, at gunpoint, to dig.
Though, rumors have been circulating
that It’s available, exclusively,
through a mysterious import / export company
whose ads appear only in old copies
of Club Magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland
and The Savage Sword of Conan (#s 134-151).
Maybe It’s reordering someone’s
prize baseball card or record collection
right this dark and stormy minute,
by the light of a dirty bulb
in an attic bedroom
that no one has been home to
in years.
Or maybe It’s down in the kitchen,
napping in the lonely gap between
a glass of Old Charter, 10 Year,
and a book by Erle Stanley Gardner
(or is it the immortal Zane Grey?).
It flutters, moth-like, from dark corners
with impossible geometries
and the pockets of old tuxedos
in Goodwill stores,
from the yawning mailboxes
of abandoned farm houses,
from the trunks of cars
scuttled to the bottoms
of backwoods ponds,
from the jaws of skeletons
locked in closets
for telling unbelievable truths.
It crosses mind-blowing metaphysical distances
just to blow a sad little tune
across the dusty mouths of old beer bottles
sitting on fence posts and front porch steps,
or to throw itself, selflessly,
in front of an oncoming taxi
or east-bound Greyhound bus
so that some damn fool
(maybe even you)
may live at least one more day
to write poems,
pick flowers
or play video games.
With Its last dying breath It rasps,
Choose wisely.
In Which Monkey-Boy Attempts to Go Toe-To-Toe with the Master (Round 2)
1) If you’ve died, unwittingly,
and decide you desperately
need to know the time,
ask the man with the fez
and the red velvet smoking jacket.
2) The sky-blue bicycle
(on which so much depends),
the one propped against the bus stop,
where the old woman sits
holding a clucking chicken
in a brown paper bag;
well, it finally won its freedom one day
by simply being nothing more
than a sky-blue bicycle.
3) The earth, in autumn,
most likely meditates upon
those things that only it knows
still need to be done
before it can go to sleep.
4) God doesn’t live on the moon,
but he does own a flop-house
motel there, where for $35 a night,
you get mirrors on the walls,
Kama Sutra on the TV, Gideon humming
to himself in the bottom drawer.
5) The Moon’s giant sky-nets haul in
its nightly catch of moonflowers
and starfish, phone numbers and pocket watches,
car keys, cigarette lighters and dashboard buddhas.
6) As a matter of fact,
a growing number of scientists, poets
and metaphysicians, alike,
believe our life is a frequency
somewhere between the violent polarities
of sex and death.
7) Sex will most likely always be
an admittedly phenomenal
but otherwise futile attempt
at summoning spirits.
8) Death will most likely be
an entrance to somewhere else
(hopefully not a waiting room).
9) When sliced open by the gleaming
knives of summer, the watermelon
is not murdered, but instead, finally set free
to work its magic on the world. .
10)The question should not be
the distance in meters between
the sun and its progeny of oranges,
but instead, what is the annual output
of oranges by the sun?
11) Sometimes a person’s life
seems to be nothing more
than a footrace between
the soul and the skeleton.
12) It is strange that we are not
more shell-shocked by autumn’s
awesome explosions.
13) Spring is the golden-hearted goddess
of beauty and eros that mystifies and intoxicates us
with promises we know she won’t keep.
Burlap, Buffalo Skull and Burial Suit
I suppose there could be worse things
(once you’ve finally released your death-grip
on the ghost, for good)
than being wrapped up in burlap
and buried somewhere out near the middle
of a great, big rolling nowhere,
beneath a big, blue sky piled high
with layer upon layer of clouds
(cirrus, stratocumulus, cumulonimbus),
a lone, old bossy for a caretaker, maybe,
and a buffalo skull for a headstone,
or, better yet, the seed of an oak
or acorn tree placed in the left breast
pocket of your burial suit (or whatever
you were wearing when your time came),
and you and all your troubles,
your ambitions,
your vanities
left, finally
(as it should be),
to the good graces
of the earth, sun
and rain.
Well, it’s two in the morning on a Saturday
and the Union Pacific is just now sliding in
off the long, black tail-fin of another
just-another-Friday night,
and a faint, red break-light of a star
is idling far-off on the horizon
and the wind is rolling around the streets,
kicking up newspapers and leaves,
looking for some blow and maybe a little love
(or something almost like it).
As the cars line up along the loading docks
the breaks begin to screech and hiss
and bells and lights are firing off
up and down the line,
and then the driver blows out
a high-lonesome moan.
And from chasms and caverns and
sub-basements deep beneath the state of Kansas
a prehistoric thunder roils and rumbles
and roars up, pouring out over this steep,
craggy embankment made of the broken concrete slabs
and abandoned appliances of better days.
The lone light in the depot glows
a ghostly fluorescent glow—
a pale-blue halo, hovering
like a radioactive cloud over the boxcars
as they barrel through the broken downtown heart
of this once-proud little city-state of the plains,
stirring up the deep, sedimentary layers
of its sleep, a little, maybe, with dreams
of universal, unconditional love
(or something very nearly like it).
And here we sit, across the river,
on the slope of the bank; hidden under
an over-hanging tree’s wild latticework
of layered leaves and gnarled cathedral arches;
passing a quart of Mickey’s and a
pint of brandy, back and forth,
talking trash and holding court
under the blind eye of a, somewhat bi-polar,
if not exactly, wrathful god.
And there, mingled somewhere
in our meandering little river
of cheap booze and fancy talk,
specially imported by the Union Pacific
Railroad Co. (or, merely flown in on some
impending weather-front)- the distant twang
and grit of fine red dust
from the fabled trainyards of Tulsa.
Well, the wind makes way for the rain
to get down and the news of the world
streams by like stock-market prices; secret codes
spray-painted and scrawled all along the line
for the eyes of official train-watchers only.
Good news, brothers and sisters, good news,
So get it straight and take it to the street;
A.S. LOVES S.H., M.K.+ L.B.=TLA,
SCHOOL SUCKS!” and “AC/DC RULES!!!
Thirteen dusty soda pop bottles, the “Peach Nehi” nearly
bleached and scoured away by who knows how many
years of sun, wind and rain, hanging
by their necks from the lower limbs of a cedar tree
like a pack of dirty horse thieves,
knocking together, now and then, like dull chimes, drained of
their color and vibrance a long
time ago, though still
managing,
somehow,
to
find
just
the
right tones
to sit in
with Spring’s jam session.
Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two collections 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 countless love letters (never sent). 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 work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “Bullet Holes in the Mailbox (Cigarette Burns in the Sheets) (Back of the Class Press, 2024).” He lives somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe.
