Oh, by the way,
I ran into an incarnation
of the Buddha the other day
(and a truly strange variation, I gotta say),
with a mile-high pompadour,
razor-sharp chops and wrap-around shades.
He was comin’ out of Dave’s Stagecoach Inn
as I was walkin’ in like it was fate that
we were somehow supposed to meet, there-in,
(‘cause I could see it in his eye
and I could tell he could see it in mine).
So, I said I’d been contemplating, lately,
the idea of entering a monastery,
at which he smiled, placidly, in that placid,
all-knowing Buddha sort of way, and asked me
why, to which I artfully parried with perhaps
you could first provide an example of what
a proper response might sound like but he just replied
with there are no proper or improper answers,
only the questioning and the answering,
to which I then said, purple,
at which he smiled again and, with what I’d swear
was a tear forming in the corner of his eye, said,
very wise, little cricket, very wise.
So, of course I shot him where he stood
(you know, just to watch him die),
the Great Modern American Mantra repeating
happily ever after in my mind:
Why ask why,
why ask why,
why ask why?

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 and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River.