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Saturday, March 19, 2022

Jason Ryberg Contemplates The Nostalgia Of Panasonic Boom Boxes, Bukowski Schtick, And The Great Grandpappy Progenitor/Original Sinner Of The Species

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. 


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