AT THIS VERY MOMENT

by Jason Ryberg

At this very moment,
there are glittering super-strings
of Mardi Gras beads and necklaces
made of eagle's claws and shark's teeth
hanging from the rear view mirror
of someone's brand new Humvee,
clickety-clicking in the cool autumn breeze,
and a flock of geese honking high overhead,
and a freight train warily signaling its approach.

At this very moment,
there is a single, eagle feather
lilting across the prairie
on the wings of that same autumn breeze
that's rolling out to us, in wave after wave,
down from the Rockies and over the plains
(or maybe even from across
the Great Spiral Arm),
ringing wind chimes, rattling paper lanterns
and delivering random dreams like love letters
or tufts of milkweed pods all along the way.

At this very moment,
a royal flush is surfacing
from a marathon card game in Kansas City, MO
and someone is saying "NOW THAT'S
WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!"
and a fallen angel, with mismatched shoes
and a tattooed tear, is miraculously found
on a street corner somewhere across town,
speaking the living truth
in a strange, archaic tongues,
scaring the hell out of the locals.

At this very moment,
the sun's gold bullion
and chests of plundered doubloons
are safely tucked away in a Swiss bank vault
(while the moon's family silver
is being traded openly on the Night's black market
for precious units of sleep).

At this very moment,
the ocean's thundering hooves
are stirring an old woman from her sleep
in an old refrigerator box under a bridge
in East St. Louis, Illinois,
and just twenty miles to the south of her
a heifer, marked for slaughter,
is snuffling, zen-fully, through the clover.

At this very moment,
a lone gunman with
a head full of boogeymen
(and a belly full of snakes) is mounting the stairs
of a bell-tower, somewhere,
and some damn fool is pissing
in God's prize-winning rose bushes,
and spiders are dropping from the trees
into Reason's troubled sleep.

At this very moment,
a temple bell in Kyoto
is gonging and gonging and gonging,

crickets and arrowheads, and pint bottles,
sitting on fence posts, are channeling the tiny
crystalline music of the spheres,

and a group of killer whales,
washed up on a beach resort
in the Gulf of Mexico,
is just about to be found
by a group of hired killers
(currently in a transitional period
and considering a new line of work).

At this very moment,
an army of one is being picked away
one by one by one;

A pizza-delivery driver
with a bomb locked around his neck
is pleading with the police
"Please hurry, I don't have much time."

And a haggard old boy in a cub's jersey,
with an IV rig in tow,
is shuffling his way across 39th Street
towards Mia's Discount Liquor Store,
hell-bent on a six pack of High Life
and a pack of Lucky Strikes.
At this very moment,
a new revolution is a mouldering, world-wide,
in the bellies of bar-stool philosophers
and secret lovers of life who want nothing less
than a world soaked through
with something approximating truth,
something very nearly close to beauty

(if they themselves cannot be beautiful,
cannot unravel themselves completely
from the snares and coils
of convenient but life-affirming lies).

At this very moment,

a bus full of nuns and orphans
is tumbling, end over end,
through a tear in the space/time continuum,
and cops and killers and rich men's whores
are all out circling our ever-diminishing perimeter
(in their concentric, tragicomic trajectories),
each one hungrily sniffing
for that one, red feather of blood
on the Night's hot, black breath.

At this very moment,
stars and moonflowers are starting to open,
a black dog (blind in one eye)
is barking and barking far off on the horizon,
a 62' purple Impala suddenly takes flight
out on 69 Highway (giving the slip
to enemy agents in hot pursuit),

and an aging satellite,
its aching back loaded down with uranium 238
is finally being put to pasture,
finally being sent out on its last, great vision quest

into the turbulent, swirling surface of Jupiter

(and only a 2% chance,
they say, of Jupiter
going
nuclear).