AT THIS VERY MOMENT

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,

clickity-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 still 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 is miraculously found

on a street corner somewhere across town,

speaking the living truth

in 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, peacefully, 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 I-V rig in-tow,

is shuffling his way across 39^th 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 pool-hall putsch is smoldering, 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, tragic-comic 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).

-Jason Ryberg, 2003