THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF INFINITE REGRESSION

Those far-off and fleeting buzzards

of indeterminate feeling,

pyrning and gyring on the horizon,

those flittering moths of thought

recently seen accumulating, at the oddest times,

on the shimmering quicksilver edge

of your mind's magnificent fish-eye lens...

they've been rapidly devolving

into dubious notions and bizarre insecurities

concerning the teleological motions

of moth's wings and the polar ice-caps of Mars

(and their collusion and subsequent influence

over your own precarious place

in the grand schemata

of people, places and things)...

And what about that sweet, young thing, there,

givin' you the cheerleader sneer

from across the bar?

What is that, exactly, that she's beaming out,

so radiantly?

Loathing?

Pity?

Some subtle shade of pathos, at best?

Or that grizzled, hoary Ahab

of a character shootin' you the stink-eye

from the back window of a passing bus...

Maybe it all adds up to nothing much,

but, something both all-knowing

and faintly unwholesome was

most definitely transmitted in the brief,

teleo-scopic instant of that

thousand-yard stare.

And those little clickity-clicks

and distant kettle whistles

and whispering phantoms of white noise

you'd swear, sometimes, just like

billowing clouds of gnats and other no-see-ems

(hosting the reincarnated souls

of grievous sinners, no doubt)

always mucking up your receptions

and transmissions.

What could their involvement be

in all of this and to what possible purpose

and degree?

Sabotage?

Subterfuge?

Hostile take-over?

Well, maybe you've even thought to yourself,

from time to time, "how strange

to always be found, lately,

playing the part of the sad, little

Charlie Chaplin of a clown

in Life's three-ring sodomy circus."

Zen masters, fortune cookies

and bar-stool philosophers,

street-sweepers, antique dealers

and the capricious daughters

of Mexican generals, alike,

will tell you,

it is precisely at these moments that

one must immediately pull the rip-cord

and nullify all contracts and pre-arrangements with the world,

let loose the horses,

release the hounds,

and set free the birds of paradisal light

that have languished too long in their cages.

But, most importantly,

one must stalk and chase and feed, voraciously,

upon the hot, dripping, still-beating hearts

of wide open spaces.

-Jason Ryberg, 2004