STANDING ON THE CORNER OF CRITICAL MASS AND EVENT HORIZON WITH TOM WAYNE AND JOHN DEUSER, 5:47 AM (OR, "HEY MAN, IS THAT AN ACCORDION I'M HEARING?")

A million fish wash up dead
in a California harbor.

10, 000 cows keel over in Vietnam.

Thousands of Starlings, Turtle Doves
and Red Wing Blackbirds drop from the sky
in Italy, Sweden, South Dakota.

But elsewheres (and despite it all),
we’ve still managed to put in
another long (and more than respectable) night
of consorting with spirits and keeping
the Universal Kundalini humming
at that slightly heightened pitch (of radians
per reciprocal seconds) which
has been rumored to induce
an "informed euphoria" of sorts.

And now the early morning streets
(here in mid-town KC/MO, 5:47 on a
Monday morning) are strangely
Frisco/Portland-foggy and deserted
like one of those old-school/bad dream/
“where-did-everybody-go” sci/fi movies
from our paranoid, cold-war era past.

Or so it would seem
if not for the all-night diner with its
purple neon “OPEN” sign in the window
and the street light on the corner;

a peach-tinted glow hovering above us
like a stationary UFO whose (only mildly
bemused) occupants are, no-doubt, wondering
if these three zombified monkey-boys
and their fucked up little planet
are even worth the effort.

And from somewhere
deep inside the fog,

a strangely musical

wheezing...

-Jason Ryberg, 2011