Jason Ryberg's Blog

it was a normal day 


full of bees we killed an hour saying a lot of nothing trying to say something and the weather was perfect. 
the children were getting hurt it wasn’t too sunny or hot or anything like that and the clover pulled at our bees inside it was painful for a minute saying all that nothing over and through all the something like honey seeping out. sappy children with their contusions and tantrums they brought perfect purple blossoms even with tears and the leaves broken it was such a beautiful day for crying in the park and i can’t lie it seemed like your bees were really fat loud flies and my bees were bees.


-Iris Appelquist

FIRE SNAKE

Grampa (or not) Woody, who rode
the old trails from Tahlequah
to the stone bones of the Rocky's,
listened to the storyteller
tell the tale of how Coyote
stole fire from three witches,
three witches with three black
nails that gave the chipmunks
their three black stripes,
and how Coyote finally hid fire
in wood for the people to use.

Woody smiles a crooked brown
smile, just like Coyote.

Later, while tending his rattlesnakes
-snakes that cannot hear their own rattle-
Woody tells me another part
of that tale that few knew
-like the paths he took-

How the running Coyote
came across brother Snake,
who said he could hide the fire
in his den under the earth.

"It's worth a try..." Said Coyote,
but Snake, who in those days
had a magnificent pelt of soft fur,
burned with fire instead,
and became the hairless, hard-scaled one
with the shaking tail,
shaking to escape the fire
to this day.

On the western plains of Kansas
they are using the fire to burn off
last year's crop, Coyote's gift
and Snake's bane, a miles-long
ribbon of fire, curling,
shaking a thousand tails.

Somewhere Snake watches, terrified,
envious of his failed bravery
and his lost innocence, transfixed.

To this day, only witches
and snakes know
the real secret of fire:

We all want to hold it,
but forget we have to burn.


-Brandon Whitehead

Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems
Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire
The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles


It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.


-Billy Collins

ODE TO THE SLAP

Yes to the slap because its sound is flesh
on flesh and fleshought be part of any ode.
Yes to that succulent whomp of body on body, of hips and bellies and butts
as hands grab a lover's flesh.I praise the slap that got me breathing
air not amniotic fluid,tough guys in movies who know to slap you around or slap you silly,
a cold slap on the face,the sizzle of a steak your lover's slapped against the griddle.
Or maybe it's the short-order cook sleeved in hula girl tattooswaiting for the shift to end, and a chance to change his shirt.
Huzzah for slapjacks, slapshots, slapstick,pimp-slaps, bitch-slaps, and slapdashedness.
~
Earl Edwards, NFL head-slapping scourge,was a boyhood hero for the mayhem his taped-up right hand dealt.
My own behavior, on the other hand,construed as mayhem by adults around me,
induced many a slap from my mother – who never had the heart to give us
a good whacking crack – but what could mothers know of lunatic boys?
I forgive my father for slapping my face or just as often my behind –
stinging blows meant to sting,and correct,
when I did those things you do,like soak yourself slapping home through puddles.
And I forgive the ocean,
and lakes and rivers and all bodies of waterthat slap against the shore
to leave us lonely and alone –longing for that sound, that slapping slosh
which soothed us long before we woke to airand our first cold slap.



-Ed Tato

TRICK OR TREAT AMERICA
OPEN UP YOUR BIG FAT MOUTH
trick or treat america open up your mouth spit it out you are not earth's only miracle you are also a great big fucking pain in the Ass and a launching pad of terrible ambitions unbalanced egg cream the moon and planets make way for you & your super-ego men your beauty castaways your ecstatic frack-happy legal thieves O god you are an awkward nation with your sidewalk soup and your belly side up your fist full mountain dew put up or shut up open me first and your dreams your dreams! Your dreams die here on your blacktop highway on your trail of tears you ripped off the Indians you left em for dead you been and Look what you gave back beercans tossed from the gravy train -- america your football helmets crash pads crop dusters and charlton heston your easy terms and no deposit oh drugstore carnival oh panty raids and unrepentant capitalism when i have said i love you i did not lie i love you open twentyfour hours i love you bald headed as a bassett hound and your pagan love song I love your neighbors yes and your Soupy sales & magic tricks roadrunner ain’t got nothing on you & your apple farms poolhalls and palm trees jazzified in the new Orleans creole night o FUCK it america all your glory’s gone up your nostrils but what the shit, it’s Halloween! my favorite pagan holiday! I forgive y ou I love you I god bless You! Trick or treat Ding Dong Hand over the candy Motherfucker!


-George Wallace

WARHOL SOUP 
hey waiter waiter what’s this jellyfish doing in my Warhol soup -- why 
I’ll tell you mister it's doing the watusi it’s doing the backstroke it’s 
doing the merengue & the fly

it’s meditating like a fuck bunny from mars it’s a devil in disguise & it’ll 
screw you up with its silkscreen elvis & its angular ass & tits with its 
wingtips & its long sharp teeth

but waiter waiter what’s this marilyn doing in my Warhol soup -- why 
you don’t know what you’re messing with mister it’s doing the ‘i tease 
you’ it’s doing the ‘turn me on dead man’

it’s doing the i use, you you use me -- the i suck you, i eat you, then i 
spit you out like snake meat on a cold plate

but waiter waiter what’s this mushroom cloud doing in my Warhol soup -- 
why listen up mister it’s doing the edie it’s doing the joe

it’s doing the heroin freak the hedonist rag it’s doing the candy darling 
the nico the ultraviolet & the lou reed too -- & if i told you once i told 
you a thousand times

a spoonful of that long hard darkness will get you all tangled up & 
wishing you could throw that bitches broth away but you can’t


-GEORGE WALLACE

"Spa Psychic"

You will have a vision of your true love
in the fumes of toxic nail polish.
A child’s face will manifest
in a post-sauna mirage.
The glyph that eventually leads
you down a light path
will appear in a mud mask spread.
The pains of your future lost limb
will be transmuted in the hot rock
stone massage of now.
You are not your muscles--
but a cloud of impressions:
blue in the shade, violet when you lie
white when you’re being read.
No longer a Hanged Man--
spurred black boots on a wire
but a pre-life soldier
waiting in the hotsprings
of psychic disorder.


-Jackie Treiber

REPORT ON THE FOURTH

Alone in the house on
the fourth of july bang
one hundred and five all around
no shade the orioles bang and
sparrows droop panting in the trees
and the bang and the beer
marches bang bang from the refrigerator

a dripping line of bottles
along the living room floor
bang the policemen doze like sweating birds

one man bang bang one man
is arrested in drunken slow motion
while trying to get a bang

a drink of water from a
filling station air hose
bang on the fourth of july.

-Harley Elliott

Vacupuncture

i wish i could remove thingsin answer to this western solutionof adding things on,this triple quarter pounder big mac of solutions and remedies,this high fructose, blazing sodium seasoning used to spice up spoiled food for thought.i wish deft and expert hands could move along your body, removinggaffs, tridents, harpoons, rescue hooks,all the leistersthat the tiny little people have lashed to youto bring you down.the acupuncture didn’t work after all,not with the tools they used anyway,the hypodermic needles,the ballpoint pen tracheotomies,the intubations,all of it ghastly and invasive,all of meant tovaccinate you from the truth of yourself.baggage?you’ve got a luggage rack, pal.i wish i could take that away instead of inventing more storage.cross to bear?buddy, your hauling all of latitude and longitude itselfand i wish i could remove thatinstead of strutting it on some sick runway.it would be great to scrape off the irritationsinstead of adding meditations to cope with them.basically we’re talking about subtracting illnessas opposed to adding medication, make sense?what i’m getting at is that most of us don’t needneedles put in,we need syringes pulled out,the needles that crocheted the spaghetti of our brainsinto some foreign tapestry.imagine an expert coming along quietly,painlessly removing the darts, the flechettes, the arrows,the pikes,the spears,pulling off the bear traps,slipping the thorns from your pawand finally, with the help of several orderlies,removing you from the life you have embedded yourself inlike an alabama tick.it would be nice to apply that dentist’s vacuumand withdraw all the slobberfrom your cheeks,the salivation from coveting greener grass.it would be best if thatsuction tube were applied,withdrawing the thing that came to term in youthat you never came to terms with. the thing they shot you full ofwhen they fucked you.in fact,
come to think of it,it would be healthiest ifyou just forgot you ever read this.

-Joshua Rizer

THE DOG
the dog was born
with three legs, which is
a lot better than
one of his legs
having been rent
from his body in
an accident or maiming.
there was no visible scar,
no missing patch of fur
to tell others that he
was once whole; once,
but no longer,
much like themselves.
he learned to walk, still…
even run, even hunt. his life
was just as busy as that
of any dog with
four legs.
he once saw a dog
with five legs—a stunted,
lame leg grown out of its
chest and he felt
a feeling that, for dogs,
is as close to pity
as i can describe.
after adolescence, he
could forget that
he was so obviously different
from other dogs, whose
differences would
require some investigation.
he took several mates
and begat many
children, none of whom shared
his defect. he had trouble
with dances and swimming.
he sometimes became no reason.

-Iris Appelquist