Piranha Juice and Panther Piss (Bussokusekika)
It was another
night of throwing back double
shots of piranha
juice and chasing them with tall
glasses of luke-warm panther
piss, and that’s when she walked in…
Until Further Notice
Seems like nothing productive
ever gets done on days like today
(not without a costly uphill battle, anyway),
here in this Any Ugly Cow Town, U.S.A.:
mid-July, no wind and 97-plus degrees in the shade
and God’s murder-red eye cocked and burning at us
in such a way as to suggest he’s been having second
thoughts about the human race (if not all of creation).
Meanwhile, cars continue to zoom their fleshy,
semi-sentient contents from one climate-controlled
environment to another, buses barrel and
bounce along on fluffy clouds of diesel fumes
and pedestrians do the heat stroke zombie shuffle
up and down the street, hoping to find that one
retail purchase that puts it all into perspective.
In other words, nothing much is happening
(at least not in the immediate vicinity of yours truly),
certainly no sexual or romantic intrigue to speak of,
no unforeseen meeting of great minds,
no major contributions to, or advancements of,
the arts and / or sciences on our part (those of us
who’ve somehow managed to find ourselves
(and each other) in this mercifully cool,
night-dark bar in the middle of the afternoon).
Probably safe to assume (so we might as well
get used to it), until further notice, there will,
most likely, be no retying knots that
should have been left untouched,
no putting the fallen baby bird of our lives
back in its nest.
Intimations of Mortality
Through a Mad Dog’s Eyes
(or, Lamar Pye Contemplates,
What Could Be, His Last Supper)
Through a mad dog’s eyes,
the right subtle shift in perception,
like the tumble and click of a combination lock
or secret code or complex equation,
suddenly fathomed at 3 or 4am, maybe,
can bring you to your bended knees
on the cold flower-patterned linoleum
of God’s dungeon floor.
Soon you find yourself there, nightly,
supplicant and luridly genuflected
before the smooth, round ass of Lady Death,
(of which, it is rumored, tastes faintly
of French Vanilla, Mimosa and black powder).
Looking through a mad dog’s eyes,
one can even come to admire
the legendary phantom sniper
(your long-lost evil twin, perhaps) who
has suddenly begun to appear, everywhere:
on rooftops and overpasses and grassy knolls ,
in the backseats of unmarked cars,
in the cruxes of the tallest trees
and ‘round every other corner
in the corners of your eyes.
It is whispered among the elders of the tribe
that he’s put many a mad dog into a shallow grave,
and lately, the tiny mosquito frequency of his cross hairs
has been tickling your ears and purring, incessantly,
around your sweaty furrowed brow.
But, meanwhile,
just outside of town,
all the bloodshot TV-eyes
are turning away from the senator’s aide
and the half-naked cheerleader
who are being pulled from the lake,
and the cops are all out raking the cornfield
with hounds teeth and itchy trigger fingers,
hoping to find a trace
of the raggedy, rangy scarecrow of a man
with the nail in his foot and a bullet in his side.
But, we all know it’s you.
You’re the one.
And you’re just kickin’ it,
sittin’ inside your Naugahyde booth
in the diner by the side of the road,
takin’ it all in from the big-screen picture window.
And they’re comin’, boy,
they’re comin’ for you.
They’re lookin’ for somebody’s crazy uncle,|
somebody’s low-down, good-for-nothin’ son,
somebody’s shit-head brother-in-law,
written off for dead ten years ago —
one more dirty white boy
that no one but his mama could ever love.
But she died.
Yeah, that’s right, this has been just another sad
cocaine / Cadillac cowboy song
about one more unwanted lone wolf / black sheep /
red-headed, hair-lipped step-child of God,who got tired after all the years
of trying to tell the old man what he wanted to hear,
tired of tryin’ to do the right thing
and always getting’ it thrown back
in your face all wrong,
tired of tryin’ so damn hard to be good
when the world just begs you to be bad.|
And there he is, boys,
just sittin’ there,|
beamin’ out a wounded tiger’s smile,
pickin’ the last little bits of his last meal
from his fearsome teeth
with a thorn.
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.