Selected Poetry by Jason Ryberg

Photo Source: Unsplash

Keeping the Faith

The leathery, brown

skeleton of an old burned-

out hippie, wearing

a tie-dyed ‘Dead t-

shirt two-sizes too big is

peddling a beat-

to-shit bicycle

(with ape-hangers, banana

seat, and basket full

of groceries (just

barely fast enough to keep

it upright)), down the

street, puffing a vape-

pen (loaded with who knows what),

flashing us an old-

school peace sign and a

big toothy grin, shouting out,

Keep the faith, brothers!

Can’t Say That I Have

Boy, you ever feel

like you had your skeleton

pulled right out of you

and slowly turned and

blackened over a fire, then

sowed back up inside

your skin, and then just

sent on your merry fuckin’

doo-dah way with a

boot in the ass and

not even a fare-thee-well,

out the door and in-

to the big bad world                   

to fend for yourself and try,

somehow, to make sense

of the whole damn thing,

and you can barely even

hold a thought or put

two words together

as you shamble your dumb ass      

down the street like some

psyche ward eee-skay-pee, 

and that’s when The Man decides

to roll up on ya?.

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless love letters (never sent). He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly,Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “And When There Was No Crawfish, We Ate Sand (co-authored with Abraham Smith, Justin Hamm and John Dorsey (OAC Press, 2025)).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.