TOMATOES

The big secret is
that there is no big secret,
no code to break,
no great conspiracy but money and power,
and certainly no celestial shine to that
certain 1% of very often disarmingly
charming narcissists and sociopaths
or their(most certainly charmed) lives;

everyone of us drifting,
minute by minute,
closer and closer to that dreaded
edge of the cliff and its Big Drop Off,
out into who knows where or what...

The blue wind that encircles the Earth?
The white light of sudden universal conciousness?
The total blackout of unknowable nothingness
(by which the torments of the flesh
and the mind must surely be rendered
null and unto the void and finally
done away with for good)?

Or maybe there is some non-corporeal (yet
somehow cohesive and sentient) part of us
that survives the death of the body
and occupies eternity in either some
wholesome, middle-American (and otherwise
asexual) Hometown, USA,

or is, instead, tortured, mutilated and burned (forever
and ever, Amen), presumably, because we met
someone’s pre- or post facto requisites
for being a bad (or merely naughty or
disobedient) person or simply refused
(or never had the opportunity) to sign
on the dotted line at the bottom
of the last (of many) page(s)
of the membership contract to the One,
True and Spiritually Correct Social Club.

Seems to me that the theory
with the highest degree of probability
is that we most likely come from
some configuration of dirt and to some
configuration of dirt we eventually return.

For so many people,
this rather innocuous meme
seems to be the icy, intrusive finger
forced rudely into the tender, pink
sphincter at the back of the mind,

the first crack in the quaint, little
Christmas snow-globe in which they live
and which, apparently, must distort
the sights and sounds of the outside world,
beyond the glass, in truly frightening ways...

No, it’s not a hurricane,
it’s just a little mist.

No, I’m not going to rob you
or try to indoctrinate your children
into the homosexual lifestyle,

I’m only going to the garden
to get some tomatoes,

which, I would be
more than glad
to share with
you.


-Jason Ryberg, 2011