.
The
Garden of Punishment
3am
and
a bell goes off
somewhere
in the dank,
cavernous
sub-
sub-basement
of
my skull,
sending
all the lizards
and
crickets
skittering,
signaling
once,
twice,
three
times,
that
once again
the
rich, fertile
sub-terran
soil of my soul
is
about to host
an
after-hours
battle
royale.
Here
is where
the
issues, conundrums
and
controversies
of
the day are nightly
wrestled,
reconfigured
and
hammered out.
And
at this
particular
instance
of
Insomnolent Half-Dream,
the
scenario has assumed
the
curious manifestation
of
a steel-cage match
(complete
with razor-wire,
cowbells
and
kabuki
sticks!).
In
one corner,
the
surly, pissy demon
of
Pernicious Debt!
In
the other,
the
voracious troll
of
Conspicuous Consumption!
An audience
of Shriners,
nuns
and Boy Scouts
howls
for blood
and
tits!
For
they know, they know,
before
anyone may enter
the
Kingdom of Dreams,
they
must first walk
through
the Garden
of Punishment.
Jason Ryberg
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen 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, a couple of angry
letters to various magazine and newspaper editors.
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 latest collection
of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023).
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.