MEAN BOY LOOKING FOR HIS GUN (OR, PORTRAIT OF THE “WORD” AS MUSE, MASTER AND ESTRANGED, NON-GENDER-SPECIFIC LOVER)

Let’s have another go at The Word, shall we,
my fellow frustrated tasters of the humble/
hind tit/squirrel pie of poetry (and all other
writer wanna-be types, as well,)

those of us who sometimes find ourselves
standing on the verge of calling it off,

those of us just about to walk away
and find a new substitute religion (if but
the Great American Mega Church of
Cheap Labor, Easy Credit and Unlimited
Conspicuous Consumption)?

Let’s smack it around a little, shall we?
Give it something to really think about
and let it sob and moan, all alone,
late into the night, for a change,
instead of languidly lolling and lounging about
on the crisp, pristine propriety of the officially
certified and validated page

or prancing about on a well-lit stage where
people are at least somewhat obligated
by genteel, bourgeois convention to
politely acknowledge its presence and
quaint, little performances, regardless.

Let’s be coy and capricious with it.
Let’s play passive/aggressive games with it.
Let’s get it swashbuckling, snot-slinging,
knee-walking drunk, then poke and prod it
off the high-dive, into the deep end
of the gene pool where sneering sorority girls
and high-end hipster chicks circle and snap
sarcastically at all its pleas and cries for help.

Let’s call it on the phone at odd hours,
then hang up after the inevitable,
“goddamn it, I know it’s you!”

Let’s drive by its house multiple times,
making notes of the makes and license plates
of any cars parked on the street or in the drive.

Let’s stand outside its bedroom window,
late one night, holding up an old boom box
playing, over and over, some of the things
it’s said to us over the years.

Let’s all go home alone with a half-gallon
handle of Chevas Regal or Cutty Sark.

Let’s watch reality shows where fat cops
kick the shit out of niggers and white trash.

Let’s scream at our favorite over-paid loser teams.

Let’s grumble and guffaw and “goddamn right”
along with all the vicious, snarling, frothing
voices on the A.M. dial.

Let’s play Russian Roulette
with a pillow case full of revolvers.

Fuck it.

What’d The Word ever do for any of us?

-Jason Ryberg, 2011