Panning For Gold in the Gutter
Mysterious musics
are emanating from this
castle made of bones
while the cornfields grind
out their daily prayers to
the clouds (who remain,
otherwise, unmoved)
and flocks of wheeling birds are
blurring the western
horizon, and a
silver moth is flittering
through a cloud of
mosquitos (seeking
a subject they may bleed as
pale as the moon’s skull),
and the angels are
playing spades in the attic,
and the poets are
panning for gold in
the gutter (which is never
the same gutter, twice,
they say, no matter
how many times the poet
wakes up drunk in it).
Driving in the Country, Listening
to KC and the Sunshine Band
Today would be as
fine a day as any to
fly a kite beneath
a blue sky packed with
clouds like big bellied Buddhas
full of smiles that beam
with joy and blissful
benevolence in every
direction at once.
And while it’s true that
graves grow only deeper and
the dead more dead with
each passing moment,
still, that’s no reason to wind
the pocket watch at
the center of your
mind to the point of breaking,
or to sleep with a
brick for a pillow,
nor consort with nor confide
in the man whose soul
is as black as an
old bucket full of dirty
motor oil. Today
is a day to let
the five cups of the senses
runneth over, to
be nothing more than
a feather balanced on the
nose of a clown, to
do a little dance
in the middle of the cross-
roads of time and space.
Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five 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 countless love letters (never sent). 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 work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “And When There Was No Crawfish, We Ate Sand (co-authored with Abraham Smith, Justin Hamm and John Dorsey (OAC Press, 2025)).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
Mysterious musics
are emanating from this
castle made of bones
while the cornfields grind
out their daily prayers to
the clouds (who remain,
otherwise, unmoved)
and flocks of wheeling birds are
blurring the western
horizon, and a
silver moth is flittering
through a cloud of
mosquitos (seeking
a subject they may bleed as
pale as the moon’s skull),
and the angels are
playing spades in the attic,
and the poets are
panning for gold in
the gutter (which is never
the same gutter, twice,
they say, no matter
how many times the poet
wakes up drunk in it).
Driving in the Country, Listening
to KC and the Sunshine Band
Today would be as
fine a day as any to
fly a kite beneath
a blue sky packed with
clouds like big bellied Buddhas
full of smiles that beam
with joy and blissful
benevolence in every
direction at once.
And while it’s true that
graves grow only deeper and
the dead more dead with
each passing moment,
still, that’s no reason to wind
the pocket watch at
the center of your
mind to the point of breaking,
or to sleep with a
brick for a pillow,
nor consort with nor confide
in the man whose soul
is as black as an
old bucket full of dirty
motor oil. Today
is a day to let
the five cups of the senses
runneth over, to
be nothing more than
a feather balanced on the
nose of a clown, to
do a little dance
in the middle of the cross-
roads of time and space.
Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five 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 countless love letters (never sent). 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 work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “And When There Was No Crawfish, We Ate Sand (co-authored with Abraham Smith, Justin Hamm and John Dorsey (OAC Press, 2025)).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
