BIGGER THAN LIFE

      by Jason Ryberg

Here we are, brothers and sisters;

little lost lambs
at play in elysian fields of corn
(slated to be transformed
into a tarmacked parking lot
and mega-mall
for the Lord).

Yes, here we are
beneath a vast, expansive canopy
of Big American Sky,

beneath criss-crossing contrails
and ever-multiplying spy-satellites.

Behold, the climate controlled
post, post-modern Mecca of 21st Century America
(newly sanitized and deus-ex-mechanized for us
into an ominous, omnivorous Star Wars Death Star)
marauding its way to wherever
the hot chicks and the hot spots are.

And here, at the clogged and burning
bloody heart of doubled-up clusters
of knotted highway
that twist and trail
and snake away
off into meaningless meandering sentences
scrawled into a faceless landscape;

a bounty of boundless suburban sprawl
where, these days, it's all strip-malls, corporate franchises
and blackly bubblin' asphalt,
strip-searched and mined
of every grain, tid-bit and least divisible
unit of soul,
where now, with frenzied
slicing, intercising intersections,
terraces, courts, cul-de-sacs
and round-a-bouts and all,
we are suddenly hobbled to a crawl

on our (less and less than merry) way
to yet another sub-suburban
subdivision of Nowheresville, USA.

But then, suddenly,
out of a strangely beautiful nowhere
none of us could have ever expected,
that some higher power
surely must have contracted
specifically for our limitless enjoyment and use,

somewhere along good ol' US 82,

Violets and Bluebells begin to appear,
Buttercups and Yellow Asters,
Purple Headed Blackbirds

and there, quickly approaching on our right,

just this side
of the last place of rest
for the rest of our lives,
the pouty, petulant lips
of a trailer-park princess
gone porn star queen,
beaming down, almost beatifically
from a roadside billboard,

bigger than life,

promising us
(for the right price, anyway)
the heart and soul
and credit card
of America.
 

IN WHICH MONKEY-BOY ATTEMPTS
TO GO TOE-TO-TOE WITH THE MASTER
(ROUND 2)

            by Jason Ryberg

1) If you've died, unwittingly,
    and decide you desperately
    need to know the time,
    ask the man with the fez
    and the red velvet smoking jacket.

2) The sky-blue bicycle
    (on which so much depends),
    you know, the one propped against the bus-stop,
    where the old woman sits
    holding a clucking chicken
    in a brown paper bag;
    well, it finally won its freedom
    one day by simply being nothing more
    than a sky-blue bicycle.

3) The earth, in Autumn,
    most likely meditates upon
    those things, that only it knows
    still need to be done
    before it can go to sleep.

4) God doesn't live on the moon,
    but he does own a flop-house
    motel there, where for $35 a night,
    you get mirrors on the walls,
    Kama Sutra on the TV, Gideon humming
    to himself in the bottom drawer.


5)  The Moon's giant sky-nets haul in
       its nightly catch of moonflowers
       and starfish, phone numbers and pocket watches,
       car keys, cigarette lighters and dash-board buddhas.

6) As a matter of fact
     a growing number of scientists, poets
     and metaphysicians, alike,
      believe our life is a frequency
      somewhere between the violent polarities
      of sex and death.

7) Sex will most likely always be
      an admittedly phenomenal
      but futile attempt
      at summoning spirits.

8) Death will most likely be
       an entrance to somewhere else,
       hopefully not a waiting room.

9) When sliced open by the gleaming
       knives of summer, the watermelon
       is not murdered, but instead, finally set free
       to  work its magic on the world.                   .

10) The question should not be
    the distance in meters between
    the sun and its progeny of oranges,
    but instead, what is the annual out-put
    of oranges by the sun?

11) Sometimes a persons life
       seems to be nothing more
       than a footrace between
       the soul and the skeleton.

12) It is strange that we are not
       more shell-shocked by Autumn's
       awesome explosions.

13) Spring is the golden-hearted goddess
       of beauty and eros that mystifies and intoxicates us
       with promises we know she won't keep.


Bio: Jason Ryberg is the author of seven books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box of loose papers that could one day be loosely construed as a novel and a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His latest collection of poems, Blunt Trauma
(co-authored with Iris Appelquist and released by Spartan Press), is available at
www.prosperosbookstore.com.