Nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat…

Whoever he may
     have been, once, way back in the
long ago, the wind
     must have just come along, one
day, and absconded
     with his identity and his
social standing all
     together, leaving him fall
from home and his friends,
     and only getting farther
with each passing day,
     like a drunk man chasing his
     hat off the edge of a cliff.

Kick me (for David Floyd)

Strange to find, that all
            this time, you’ve been riding the
      donkey that you’ve been
                    looking for (a kick me sign
      taped to your back, your glasses
                        on your head, (as usual)).

I am a lineman for the county…

Now this is some old
     school elevator music
says the guy riding
     up with me (each to our own
individual
     vertical destinies (with
no resting place for
     either one of us on this
shared journey to what-
     ever private fates await
us, respectively)),
     and it seems to be a sweet
and syrupy string
     arrangement of Glenn Campbell’s
Wichita Lineman,
     and we both just sort of Zen-
out and mumble the
     words to ourselves while watching
the floor number go
     up (and, apparently, old
school elevator
     music is not without its
     psychological effects).

Nothing and Everything

A fat, blue Buddha
moon is smiling and reflect-
                                      ing upon nothing
     and everything in the smooth
     glassy surface of an old
                         horse trough full of rainwater.

Rowing Myself Across the River Styx

While I was busy
     drinking pink champagne from the
silver slipper moon
     and snorting pixie dust off
the plastique tit of
     a fallen angel type, I
suddenly noticed
     my burial shroud didn’t
have any pockets
     (having been snatched up rather
unexpectedly
     by the deus ex machina
of fate from a some-
     what tense and precarious
moment like one of
     those Magic Claw toy machines
descending from the
     clouds) and, apparently, I
was gonna have to
     row myself in my own damn
     coffin across the river.

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 Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time sand wonderful woodland critters. Somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

You can find more of Jason’s work here on Ink Pantry.