1) Skipping Your Ten Year
High School Reunion
Then there was that time
me and Big Earl Corby were
out there on HWY 40, driving
around just like old times in his
primer-grey pick-up truck (that
was somehow still holding together
and running after all the years)
with a twelve-pack of Schaffer
or Black Label or one of the other
old reliables and one of those basic,
standard-issue Panasonic boom boxes
(also somehow still holding together
and working, despite the wear and tear)
that everybody had at some point
back in junior high or high school
in the late 80s before, presumably,
moving on to bigger and boomier things,
and an old cassette tape (once again,
still somehow working, despite the odds)
with Black Flag’s Rise Above on one side
and the Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for
Rotting Vegetables on the other,
and we’d flipped that tape four or
five times by then that day, just
retracing the old back roads we
used to explore way back when
we had nothing better to do and,
yessir, it was damned near
like old times.
2) Dead and Buried
The last of them what could still get away with that
schtick (at least in a no bullshit / in your
face kind of way) probably would had to have been
Bukowski, and they made damn sure to bury him
deep and seal the tomb up good and tight when
he died just to be sure the last whiff of a trace of
the spirit of the rebel / outsider / rock star
poet stayed dead and buried in there with
him to serve as a warning and example to
any others; so you might as well deal with it
now and just move on: cuz nobody and
I mean nobody gives half a flying fuck-all
about the sad and lonely sexistential angst
and pain of middle-aged white male poets,
and all their demons and their old baggage, do they?
3) Tripping Me Up
Seems like I’ve spent the better part
of the past two decades reviewing and sifting
through all the old security tapes,
going over all my hastily scrawled notes,
retracing my footsteps back through
the winding, rollicking lollapalooza of it all,
trying to track down and identify
the one original misstep (in a life
of so many notable missteps),
that set things into motion and
would come into play, over and over,
for years to come.
We’re talking the Prime Mover /
Pater Familias of all FUBARS,
the exact x/y coordinates from which
the continuum of its progeny of lesser faux pas,
fumbles and faceplants have ever since issued forth
for their own respective moments in the sun,
replicating the original memetic material
in various mutated forms, to the best of their ability,
but never again quite regaining the former glory
of their great, great grandpappy progenitor /
original sinner of the species,
but still, to their credit, somehow managing
to jam my frequencies and trip me up
whenever they can.
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.