SOMETHING TO SAY

Consider a moment
those dank, primeval basements
and mud-flooded sub-basements of the brain

where the fish and lizards

and monkeys of our formative years

still wriggle and skitter and scurry about.

If we peer deep enough inside ourselves

we can see them, there, still completeing

their respective lengths of circuitry,

still telegraphing up their two-cents worth,

from time to time, despite all our attempts

at processing and refining them away

down the spiral staircase of the spine

out into the Big Nowhere.

Look, for example, how the Gar

with their jagged, maniacal grins

are all lustfully eyeing the little pink toes

of our haplessly bobbing frontal lobe,

while the Catfish are fatly content

to sift and slither in the rich,

fertile muck of prehistoric memory.

And the skinks and Geckos and Chameleons,

all contoured and layered together

in their crevices, are dreaming of the days

when they ran the show.

And the Monkeys,

that coffee and smoke saturated

back-room gaggle of gag-men

and speech writers, all hunched and contorted

over their cranky, old Underwoods,

are up against a bitch of a deadline.

For the Alpha Male needs something to say,

something witty and charming,

yet, still somehow mysterious and aloof.

And he needs it yesterday.

-Jason Ryberg, 2009