SON OF “IT”

Sometime’s
It comes to us
early in the morning
just before the Boss Man turns on the big light
or the middle of the saddest,
most haunted part of night-

some kind of slavering,
black behemoth, from what little we can see;

all teeth, tusks and talons,
snuffle and snarl
and primal, predatory aura.

A lonesome and sorrowful thing,
that looks to be part wombat,
swamp gator and slithering bottom-dweller,
mandrill, blood hound, wild boar
and raging wooly mammoth,

as well as something distinctly...

other.

Sometimes it batters at the gates
of my brain with its great paws,
and its battering ram of a skull
like the giant fist of an angry
underworld god, shaking the walls
of this remote little city-state of mind.

Sometimes
It just rubs its back up against
the great tree trunk of my spine,
thrumming and thrumming
with what surely must be the funky frequency
of warm fuzzy love,

or, at the very least, the manic need
to satisfy some maddening metaphysical itch
(his or mine, Im never sure).

And, sometimes
it’s content to merely loiter
and look on, inquisitively,
studying our most insignificant routines
from just inside the tree line,
just beyond the reach
of our guard lights,

nothing but your classic “dark silhouette
and glowing set of eyes...”

But, of course, it could never really
charge out of that dark forest
of the wild night world of the soul,

and, by some freak cosmic occurrence
of a just and loving god blinking
or even looking the other way,

make its way into our safe, little,
climate-controlled environment.

Could it?


-Jason Ryberg, 2009