CONNOLLY RYAN
lives in western Massachusetts.






A Grunt is its Own Regime


If God is a flea-trainer
whose middle name
is failure,
what matter then that you are wearing
outdated clothing when out on a date?

or that the sunset seems a morosely
episodic ballet of restraint? Applause
will trail you to the grave if you gamble
your ambitions away; but even if you don't,
you will be pilfered of your warmth and wealth

by friends disguised as friends.







The Man with the Broken Brain


The man with the broken brain
likes to wonder about all the lovely
gravies and stuffings inside a songbird.
It is more a gratitude than a hatred
he feels toward those flippy pipers,
whose bawdy twitters, afterall, broke his brain:

for just as, when you stare too long
into the sun you lose your eyes,
listening too closely to the opus
of a single bird
can make of a brain a shattered toyshop;

and of a man a better animal, one who dotes
on diminutive anatomies rather than on less
feathery issues, such as finance, excess and guilt.
His wife, sentient mate, focuses
from a distance, on the point where his children
have made a playground of him.







How to Make a Drum Circle


Enter cattle.
And the circular clatter
of dreamy ruminations.

Kill off the mentor.
The one whose mantras
corroded the wheatfields.

Throw in a rhythm
grabbed from the garbage
of blank ethnicity.

Try to forget your mouths
are minus signs, that your chins
are paralyzed chapels.

Now close your heads and explain
the people to the people
using only your hands

and the greed that God gave you.