Sunday, December 26, 2021

All I Was Ever Told by Jason Ryberg

Down through the clouds’
raggedy, tattered fabric
and the trees’ veinous limbs,
branches and twigs, the moon
shone blue, sometimes,
on the tin roof of the old
(semi) converted tar-paper
shotgun shack I lived in,
for free (mostly), that year,
out back of the big house
where my somewhat effete
and mildly eccentric friend
lived with his very eccentric
mother, like something straight
the fuck out of a goddamned
Faulkner or Capote novel

another friend was overheard
to say (complete with idiot
man-child kept in the basement
I, myself, often suspected),
and all I was ever told was to
mow the lawn and shovel the snow,
help yourself to the liquor cabinet
and try not to burn the
whole place down.




Jason Ryberg is the author of thirteen 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. His latest collection of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Would Have Done it this Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021).

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