Jason Ryberg
The Gnome in
the Corner (Or, Pulling Weeds in the Garden of Earthly
Delights)
Here,
inside the wire-mesh margins
of the lush, over-flowing Garden
Of Earthly
Delights one has to wonder,
sometimes,
whether there can possibly be a
more
maddeningly torturous plight
(albeit,
of the more gardenly varietal
type)
than finding yourself in over your
head
in a little world full of
burstingly ripe nymphs
and nyads, that, no matter what
you say or do,
cannot hear or see or, in some
other way,
get a feel for you, or, those very
same
nymphs and nyads very obviously in
the company
of various garden variety sorts of
newly-moneyed
new world orderlies and alpha
white knights
and future provider-types that, in
every conceivable way,
appear to be the very antithesis
of you.
And you know exactly what they'll
all be
doing later don't you, you silly,
little garden
gnome, you, when they've all gone
home
and there's just the moon, the
garden and you?
And the only thing that could
possibly be
less relevant than the noxious
weeds
of a garden gnome's quasi-poetic
self pity
(that is, to this new world
order)
is the strange, wild flower of a
poem
sprouting from a crack in the
head
of that very gnome, all alone in
the corner.
Madame
Leveaux, Fortune Teller and Police Psychic, Hands Out a Little
Free Advice
To come
upon a red guitar
propped in the corner of an empty
room
at that exact point in the day
when afternoon
is about to shift into
evening
means you will soon be
embroiled
in a scandal with a blue-eyed
girl.
To dream of an elevator
shaft
coughing up an ocean of blood is a
sign
that someone close to you, maybe
even family,
is plotting your
downfall.
A noose swinging from a tree on a
hill
means you will marry many
times
before you find the right
one.
A beer bottle standing in the
middle
of a country crossroads
means
that a decision of some
importance
must soon be made.
To dream, repeatedly, of a votive
candle
burning in an attic bedroom
window
means you will soon change
religions,
political parties or the color of
your hair.
To wake from a dream of washing
dishes
and find yourself washing dishes
is a sign
that you are about to receive a
large inheritance.
Too see a telephone pole by the
side of the road
suddenly begin to shoot sparks and
smoke
means that you will soon encounter
temptation
you might not be able to fend
off.
To see the face of your
enemy
in the skin of a potato, in a
bank
of clouds or looking up at
you
from the coffee in your cup
means
you should probably
keep
a low profile for
awhile.
To find an ancient map
folded up in the pages of a
book
on seventeenth century French
Painters
means you will soon begin a
strange journey
with someone you haven’t spoken to
in years.
Tomatoes
The big
secret is
that there is no big
secret,
no code to break,
no great conspiracy but money and
power,
and certainly no celestial shine
to that
certain 1- 0.01% of very often
disarmingly
charming narcissists and
sociopaths
or their (most certainly charmed)
lives;
everyone of us drifting, minute by
minute,
closer and closer to that dreaded
edge
of the cliff and its totally
X-treme drop-off (dude),
out into The Big Who Knows Where
or What...
The blue wind that circles the
Earth?
The white light of sudden
universal merger?
The total blackout of unknowable
nothingness?
(by which the torments of the
flesh
and the mind must surely be
rendered
null and unto the void and
finally
done away with for good,
right?)
Or maybe there is some
non-corporeal (yet
somehow cohesive and sentient)
part of us
that survives the death of the
body
and occupies eternity in either
some
wholesome, middle-American (and
otherwise
asexual) Hometown, USA,
or is, instead, tortured,
mutilated and burned (forever
and ever, Amen), presumably,
because we met
someone’s pre- or post facto
requisites
for being a bad (or merely naughty
or
disobedient) person or simply
refused
(or never had the opportunity) to
sign
on the dotted line at the bottom
of the last
(of many) page(s) of the
membership contract
to the One, True and Spiritually
Correct Social Club.
Seems to me that the
theory
with the highest degree of
probability
is that we most likely come
from
some configuration of dirt and to
some
configuration of dirt we
eventually return.
For so many people,
this rather innocuous
meme
seems to be the icy, intrusive
finger
forced rudely into the tender,
pink
sphincter at the back of the
mind,
the first crack in the quaint,
little
Christmas snow-globe in which they
live
and which, apparently, must wildly
distort
the sights and sounds of the
outside world,
beyond the glass, in truly
frightening ways...
No, it’s not a
hurricane,
it’s just a little
mist.
No, I’m not going to rob
you
or try to indoctrinate your
children
into the homosexual
lifestyle,
I’m only going to the
garden
to get some tomatoes,
which, I would be
more than glad
to share with
you.
Jason
Ryberg is the author of seven books of poetry, six screenplays,
a few short stories, several angry letters to various magazine
and newspaper editors, and a box full of folders, notebooks and
scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a
novel. He is currently an artist-in-residence at The Prospero
Institute of Disquieted Poetics and an aspiring b-movie actor.
His latest collection of poems is Down, Down and Away
(co-authored with Josh Rizer and released by Spartan Press). He
lives in Kansas City, Missouri with a rooster named Little Red
and a billygoat named Giuseppe. Feel free to look up his skirt
at jasonryberg.blogspot.com
February, 2012
http://
jasonryberg.blogspot.com
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