16
STILL-LIFE WITH CATFISH, JAMES BROWN, DRAGON AND FREIGHT TRAIN
The walls are peeling
and the ceiling is rotting
and the clock in the corner
is chipping away at the night.
And outside, a dog is barking somewhere far off
and someone's shouting down on the street
"HEY RON! HEY RON!
IT WASN'T ME, MAN, IT WASN'T ME!"
And the fan on the floor
is brushing out a sultry rhythm
and the pipes are whispering
all the secrets of those who've lived here before
and the fridge is humming low
"darlin' do you remember meeee?"
And the used car salesman upstairs
is laughing like a mandrill
(or crying like a kookaburra),
the people next door; fighting or fucking:
through the walls it's hard to tell.
But through the unlikely collusion
of these people, this place
and all the little things, randomly arranged,
along the winding spectrum in between,
sometimes, I think some larger,
more primal thing is trying to contact me.
I have to admit,
it's hard to make out most of the time,
like there's just too much
metaphysical clutter or white cosmic noise
for the message to get through.
In a painting on the wall, for instance,
a fat catfish is giving the fish-eye
to a hook and worm.
In the corner, sitting on a table,
between a jug of homemade blackberry wine
and a bowl full of nectarines,
the bust of James Brown is eyeing me
just a little too knowingly,
letting me know with that wicked grin of his
that he's seen everything
(and that means every thing!).
And somewhere, at the bottom
of the deep, murky gravel pit of my gut,
down among the bottles and bones,
the scuttled cars and sunken rowboats,
down among the spiky, prehistoric fish-things
and chitinous mollusks
that skulk and sniff about in the oily dark
of this forgotten world,
The Dragon is tossing and turning again,
tossing and turning,
cursing his rotten luck of having been found out again
by the only bigger and badder monstrosity
on the block than him, this accursed marauding insomnia
that now comes calling whenever it pleases
("yes it does, whenever it pleases!").
Though, truth be told, he has been giving
more and more thought
as time slowly tics and ratchets by,
to raging up in a thunderous,
loco-motional flurry of fang
and claw and fire and wing
and taking a good-size chunk
out of the ass-end of the world.
Just to see the looks on our faces.
But outside, up here on the surface,
Beneath a neo-classical nocturnal scene
Of cirrus clouds and contrails
And a bright mag-light of a moon,
A freight train bound for
Talala, OK, Tucumcari, NM, Ithaca, NY
Or other exotic parts unknown to most of us
Is rumbling its way past the building again,
Shaking the very pillars of the earth
Like wave after wave of armored cavalry,
Rattling the aching frame of Atlas, even…
"How often's it go by, man?"
"So often you won't even notice."
Jason Ryberg lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he owns
and operates a music store called Little Red Rooster Vinyl
And Cds. He is the author of five books of poetry, with a
sixth one on the way. They are most easily found at
www.unholydaypress.com, or, ask for them at a local bookstore
near you. He'd sure appreciate it if you'd buy one of his books
and drop him a line at A Shogun Named Jason.
