Good Fun
Let’s us step into the dead-centre of some old
country crossroads one hot and starry night,
after drinking too much moon-shine and challenge
the gods or ghosts of your ancestors to a fight
just for something to do.
Let’s put the torch to the master’s crops tonight
and call him out to his front porch and dare that
old motherfucker to do something about it.
Let’s you and me put on our Sunday best,
get some flowers and a heart-shaped box of candy
and go a-courtin.’
You take Trouble and I’ll take Bad Luck,
‘cause Bad Luck is better than no luck
and Trouble is just good fun.
All Throughout the Day
Steam is rising up
from the newly
laid tarmac on HWY D
after a brief but intense
summer thunder-shower
this morning that came
and went before the sun
could even slip behind
a cloud, and the radio is
telling us to expect similar
activity all throughout
the day, and now it’s back
to the music with Tommy
James and the Shondells
doing “Crimson and Clover”
and I say hell yes to the
prospects of both more
Tommy James and the
Shondells in all our lives
as well as more sporadic
bursts of thunder and
lightning and rain while
the sun continues to
shine, brightly,
throughout
the day.
Meaner Than the Devil on a Slow Day
Hell, I read the good
book, the Holy Bible, “the
word of the Lord,” and
if there is a god
like that and even half of
that shit is halfway
true, then he’s a mean
motherfucker, way meaner
than the Devil, on
a slow day, even:
one of those big types always
answering “why” with
“because I said so,
that’s why,” and it’s their way and
no other, and they
want you doing what
they say, when they say it, not
what they do, not to
mention all the blood,
floods, locusts and plagues, the rapes
and the killing of
the first born male child
and “if you don’t like it here,
you can go to hell.”
The Buddha Comes to Belle, MO
I have only just
recently noticed the old
man sitting every
morning at the end
of his half-mile gravel drive,
just outside of town,
in a sort of sling
seat he’s somehow managed to
Jerry-rig on to his
walker, in which he
will sit for hours, waving and
smiling, in a sort
of blissed-out yet still
serene Buddha kind of way
at all the cars as
they roll in and out
of town, until the mailman
finally arrives
with his truck full of
goodies, where it’s always hit
or miss these days, and
then they’ll trade a few
jokes and some local gossip
and then he’ll shuffle
back to the house for
lunch and a quick nap, we can
safely imagine.
A Grand Old Time
Last night
the moon made me get up
from my kitchen table and
my cracked bone china mug
of herbal tea, put on my coat
and my hat, walk out the
back door and wander off
into the hills to run with my
wild cousins, the coyotes,
through fields and backyards
and gardens, howling, yipping
and generally laughing it up,
having a grand old time of it all,
with no thoughts of tomorrow,
when suddenly the sun
began creeping up over
the distant tree line
and told us all
to get on
home.
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.
Jason on Facebook.
