Poetry by Jason Ryberg

You Are Here: A Meditation on Phenomenology and Spiritualism 
(with a Side of Jalapeños and Mezcal)
for Michael Morales
 
 
Whereas 
                        I’m not so much
             a full-on, absolute denier, 
                            but really more of what you might call a 
                                                  methodological
                                                                                         naturalist / 
                          soft-hearted atheist /
              hard-nosed agnostic (with gnostically
                                                                       paganish proclivities 
                                             and a soft spot
              for the weird, fanciful and mysterious)
                               when it comes to matters concerning
       supernatural phenomena / spirit worlds /
                                                                higher powers / etc., etc., 
                                                 but if I were more
                      hard-wired that way (if not exactly
         a full-on true believer) 
                                                      and if my ratio
                                    of wiring to whatever quantifiable level
           of good old fashioned 
                                                      common credulity
                                 were to extend to the idea of actually
       communing with and / or summoning
                     said supernatural phenomena / 
                                                                                               spirit worlds /
                           higher powers / etc., etc., then I’d have to say
         that two men of (otherwise) 
                                                                          sound mind
                                    sitting across a table from one another
         (mano a mano, as if locked in a fierce war of wills
                  on the psychic plain),
consuming raw slices 
                                                 of jalapeños and
                                              washing them down with shots of
                         mezcal (con gusano, by the way, 
                if that makes any difference, though I don’t
                                                know why it would) would
   probably be as effective a deus ex machina
                 as any for calling down the weird lightning
 of mystic visions 
                                                      and prophetic dreams
                           and very possibly setting the cosmic        
               revolving door (that is rumored to exist),
                                    between this world and who knows
        how many others, 
                                                           to spinning like
                                                                       a roulette wheel on which 
            the little black ball of the mind 
                                                                                          (the black pearl
                                   of all potential and / or accumulated
       human knowledge and wisdom)
                 must eventually, 
                                                        inevitably come to a rest
 
                                                                         (if but for 
                                                                                                the moment).
 





What Is It, This Time?
 
 
What is it, this time?
 
It’s a set of elevator doors,
endlessly and randomly opening and closing
on all our various levels of perception / 
consciousness / awareness / etc.
 
It’s a slippery gateway drug
down a long helical flight
of ever-expanding co-dependencies.
 
It’s an attic window lit with a mysterious glow
in a house where no one has lived for years
(where many a secret passageway
is rumored to silently serpentine).
 
What is it, this time!?
 
It’s a hairpin turn in an already labyrinthine path
through the Garden of Earthly Delights.
 
It’s an epic poem
folded into a leaky haiku of a boat
then set afloat on a lazy, meandering meme-stream
that runs (mostly unnoticed) through all our lives.
 
It’s a deep, drunken mid-day nap,
ended suddenly by a dream of wind 
and thunder and a violent knocking 
at the back door (to which you stumble
clumsily and frantically 
only to find no one there).
 
What is it, this time!!?
 
It’s a midnight rendezvous
with Fate, Karma, Kismet and Assoc.
 
It’s a June Bug struggling 
on the floor of a bath tub
in an abandoned motel
by the side of a road you really, 
really don’t want to go down.
 
It’s a long, deep sigh let loose
like the last leaf of a dead tree
on to the frozen surface of a kiddie pool.
 
It’s a rotting tree limb finally cracking
and falling from the accumulated weight and misery 
of an ancient hangman’s noose in a forest 
of tall, creaking skeletons and perpetual fog 
in which too many people have been hung.
 
What is it, this time!!!?
 
It’s the lone gypsy prince of coyotes
calling up the spirits of his dead ancestors
for one last suicidal reunion tour
before the Big Bad Ragnarok*
of so many late-night campfire tales
inevitably comes rumbling, tumbling down.
 
It’s a train broke down in a tunnel
with no light at the end.
 
What is it, this time!!!!?
 
Let me tell you what it is, cha-cha,
on the house and country simple,
so listen up and get it straight.
 
It’s a priest crying with laughter
at a joke his friend the rabbi has told him
about a priest, a rabbi and a donkey
who walk into a Bar Mitzvah.
 
That’s what it is.
 
Asshole.





Sitting in the Rain, Tit-Deep
in the Gasconade River,
Passing a Pint-Bottle of Evan Williams
Back and Forth
For Jeanette Powers
 
 
The river has been stirred-up a bit
by this low-level, end-of-summer shower
and keeps attempting to sweep us
and our bottle away downstream
to wash up who-knows-where.
 
But our butts are too firmly planted
in the rocks, here, our conversation
too deeply delved into for us
to surrender so easily, now.
 
Leaves and sticks float by.
 
A lone Blue Heron skips across
the river and over the trees.
 
Dragonflies dance their crazy
electric calligraphy across
the water’s surface.
 
The bottle goes back and forth.
 
Rain continues
to fall.

​

Bio: Jason Ryberg is the author of twelve 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 collections of poems are Head Full of Boogeymen / Belly Full of Snakes (Spartan Press, 2016) and A Secret History of the Nighttime World (39 West Press, 2017). He lives part-time in Kansas City 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. 

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