Something Like Normal

 

—Poetry by Jason Ryberg, Kansas City, MO  

—Public Domain Photos Courtesy 

of Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

THIS AND / OR THAT

Gusts
of
dead leaves
like ghosts who
just can’t lie still and
go to sleep, an otherwise well-
dressed man without his shoes, asking people for
advice as to the local cuisine, every television,
     everywhere, turned to a channel
with a soap opera overflowing with every
emotion, every radio
tuned to the latest
breaking news
about
this
and /
or
that.

 

 

 

 

 

SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL

         An
                              old
                    tree limb
                        cracking some-
                               where, out there in the
           deep wood, somehow intensifies
    the sharp power of the stars,                  
           the darkness between them
                        and all around us, and the stillness 

                        and silence                              

                            that always follows until we are
                       startled by the next rude intrusion,
                                be it a cow
                                         bellowing in
                                         the distance, or
                                   whippoorwill call, and
                                                           everything
                                                      settles
                                          on
                                                 down,
                                back
                                                  to
                                         something
                               like normal.  

                                            Whatever that is.

 

 

 

 

 

ORIGAMI CRANE

How
long
      has that
                been there? I
asked, meaning the black
                         origami crane hanging from
             the rear-view mirror of his faded sky blue
pick-up truck (still somehow functional and in-use
     on a daily basis), dancing and twirling
           above the dashboard in the cross-winds
coming in through our respective drivers’-side and
passenger windows,
                    to a cassette tape deck playing
     Little Richard’s Greatest Hits (from back when
            the later Reverend Richard Penniman was
            still shoutin’ bamalama down in Alabama,
   not giving a flying fuck what
        those crackers thought). And
                                    then my friend
                   asks When
                                    was
                        the
                              last
                                      time
                  you were
                               in town?” / “Five
             years, maybe. / Yeah, I
                           must have made it sometime,
                           since then.

               Little Richard does most of the talking
               after that.

 

 

 

 

 

FASHION STATEMENT

3-
D
     glasses
and a pork-
                  pie hat was a bold
                          fashion statement for a junior
high school kid to make in small town Kansas in
       the mid-‘80s. And she listened to the Kennedys,                               

             and she listened to the Ramones,
                 the Misfits, Bad Brains, Agent Orange,
and she wore combat boots and
            a black leather jacket, had
                                    a switch-blade knife and
                            just couldn’t
                                                give a
                                                          rat’s
                                                          ass.

 

 

 

 

 

THE DEAD THAT REMAIN UNAVENGED

It
takes
      disco
                         balls to snort
                         crank off the swirled horn
           of a pink unicorn while the
                             ghosts of Che Guevara and
                   Bob Marley give you the big, purpled-
                   fisted thumbs-up and the flaming
                                        skulls of the dead that  
                                        remain unavenged
           provide a chorus of multi-phonic singing 

                  while clacking their bones and pistons
                                to keep time as golden
                        sunflowers
                                           begin
                                                      to
                                                              fall.

_________________

Today’s LittleNip:

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps… so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder it.

—Dylan Thomas

_________________

—Medusa, welcoming back Jason Ryberg, who first visited the Kitchen in July of this year.

 

 

Jason Ryberg in the river

—Photo Courtesy of
someone else in the river

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that Poets Club of Lincoln
features Greg Gregory today; and
Tim Kahl, Gene Berson, and Iven Lourie
read in Nevada City tonight.
For info about these and other
upcoming poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!

 

LittleSnake’s Glimmer of Hope:

sudden breeze
rustles the skirts
of the valley oak~