BUMBLEBEES BUZZ

coyotes howl. hyenas
cackle. cats yelp and
yowl with their tails
'neath a rocker.

bumblebees
buzz. crappy
cars clunk. eye
sockets pop
when they’re
bopped with a
baseball.

rats tisk. lizards
hiss. my dog
croons a tune
that sounds
like “I love you.”

-ryn gargulinski.01.06.11

NOAH

the rain came
thick in tucumcari – it
tried its wet best to
drown both my goats one
stood
atop the
other – smashed her
bony back down in the
muddy flood – the bottom
goat bobbled her frail
back gave way her head
dipped quick below
the surface -- we rescued
the two to the laundryroom –
where both promptly peed
on the floor – the
perfume of ammonia
seeped deep beneath
linoleum as they
pawed hooves all over
white walls – bit a big
hole in the flimsy tin
dryer hose.

-Ryn Gargulinski.12.23.10

ODE TO ALL THE ARTISTS

You will not –

hold me
down, mr.
man will not
shave off my eyebrows or
yank out my teeth or rip lashes
from my lids or chop limbs at my
knees you will not – you

cannot –
reduce me.

You cannot --
quash

my flame, mr.
man cannot piss
on my bonfire hurl
water on my torch snuff the
innate hot blaze that long makes
my skin scorch cannot hush that

spicy sizzle

in my soul – that
consumes me with
the need to
create.

-Ryn Gargulinski.12.05.10

NOSES

deviated
septum turned
up like a ski slope
punched flat on a boxer
too big for your glasses too
small for your face there is so
much – that can go wrong – with
noses.

-Ryn Gargulinski.2010
see more ryn poetry at ryngargulinski.com

HAIKU: ONE DAY

one day everyone
will wake up happy and they
won’t know what to do.

-Ryn Gargulinski.05.01.10


Illustration from Ryn Gargulinski's book BONY YOGA

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

hummingbird hatchlings are the
size of a bumblebee what this
could mean is beginning to
trouble me – how many are
smashed in a mean, panicked
streak by folks who see a
stinger that is really just a
beak.

-Ryn Gargulinski.04.18.10

DEATH IN THE GRAND CANYON

By Ryn Gargulinski

this one was frozen in a gully
this one had tumbled from the
brink – that one was found
near his water face down as
some voices told him not to drink

this one was swept in a
flash flood – this one was
blanched by the sun – that one
went far in his very fast car that
had sped to its very last run

this one was drowned in the
river – this one was crushed
by big stones -- that one don’t
know how he happened to go
all that’s left is a pile of bones

this one was posing for a
photo – this one veered way
off his course -- and that
one was shoved by a
husband out of love as it’s
cheaper than
getting a
divorce.

See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.Etsy.com.

Check out her blogs at TucsonCitizen.com

THE FAVOR

alcohol kills
slowly my mom
watched it in her
neighbor who lived
well into her 50s until
body parts shut down – a
fresh teen in her yearbook wrote a
sad dark ode to hangovers was
hooked on drugs by 25 then
murdered by a john – as
sick as it was it was
quick – and maybe
he did her a
favor.

-Ryn Gargulinski.01.2010


See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.Etsy.com.

Check out her blogs at TucsonCitizen.com

NEGATIVE NELLIE

sometimes I hear his
negative voice march
mantras through the
tunnels in my head – the
coffee’s not
strong enough the dog
leash not
long enough the
TV’s too
little the cheese
grater sucks – like

goldilocks rarely
satisfied – I’m sad as
that used to be
me.


-Ryn Gargulinski.01.2010


See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.Etsy.com.

Check out her blogs at TucsonCitizen.com

ARTISTIC LICENSE

I am supposed
to be sensitive for I am
an artist – I cry at a
raindrop get mad at a
bus stop get mushy
from friendships find joy in
the absurd – the world

is my
personal attacker – and I may
one day go and cut off
my ear.

-Ryn Gargulinski.12.09

See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.Etsy.com.

Check out her blogs at TucsonCitizen.com

GOALIE

you’d think his new
dog toy was a bloody
rabbit or a bowl full of
guts the way
sawyer defends it, his
teeth bared, a growl – the

same way I still
defend my
heart.

-Ryn Gargulinski.12.2009

See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.etsy.com

ANGRY PEOPLE

sometimes I
feel their hate – it
radiates like toxins bores
holes through my skull smells
acrid like sulfur eats tunnels
through my nose I wonder
what made their souls so
hardened – what charred their
hearts to blackened scraps
of coal.

-Ryn Gargulinski.12.2009

See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.etsy.com

MEETING HIS MOTHER

by Ryn Gargulinski

I wanted her
to like me because she
was his mom and he
was my boyfriend and
the first impression is the
lasting impression that can
make or mar the future make her
hate me for 12 years so I brought a
homemade trinket chitted chat about
her past said I really like your house this fine
gold carpet looks brand new and she

may have gone and
liked me just fine – if my dog had not
straddled that
gold carpet and
peed.

See more Ryn writing and art at RynRules.com and Rynski.etsy.com

GREEN ONIONS

by Ryn Gargulinski

When I chop
green onions I
think of you the
technique you learned in
cooking school about
peeling off the layers to get to
the good stuff nestled deep
inside – when I

said it wastes half the onion you asked
did I like such things that were
scratchy and bland – which is what

happened to our relationship we
stopped laughing stopped trusting you
pretended to have a job at some restaurant but just
hid around the corner as I took the

train to work – but some
fond stuff is still
nestled deep inside – in that
tasty plump core called
nostalgia.

NOSTALGIA

by Ryn Gargulinski

I sometimes pine for
strange things like a
colored candy necklace that would
quickly stain your skin or the trek we’d
take to buy them from the
cottage to the gas mart past the
quarry where the frogs rot in the days
before quarries were fenced off in the days
before sunshine could cancer you in the days
before heartbreak before loss
of friends and pets the days
where you didn’t even care (when)
a necklace stained
your skin.

Read more Rynski poetry at Scribd.com/rynski.

REBEL - a poem in five parts

by Ryn Gargulinski

i.
if all my pets
rebelled they could
easily kill me – with their
dog claws their
rat scratch their
catalog of teeth – a fat
lizard who might
suck out my
eyes.

ii.
uppers downers cocaine meth –
heroin crack and PCP – all
rebellion – against the will
to live.

iii.
james dean was a
rebel without a cause my friend
dave was a rebel without a
house – while sweet
dean seemed so sexy in his
studly leather angst my friend
dave became
bedraggled began
to smell.

iv.
I shaved thick
rebellious lines on the
side of my
head but the lines were not
parallel and I looked
like an idiot.

v.
if all my pets
rebelled they could
easily kill me – and so
could an angry batch of
kids.

See more Rynski poetry at RynRules.com or http://www.scribd.com/rynski

DOG IS GOD SPELLED BACKWARDS

the dog
chewed off his hind leg
not thinking twice not
thinking just doing it sort of
the way I moved to New York
or the way they perform abortions.

it’s easy not to think
that’s the easy part I often
meditate in traffic going the wrong way
with my eyes closed someone told me
that was dangerous
after they stopped laughing.

It’s easy to think
of gloom & doom and the way
my gerbil’s neck snapped when
I threw him against the cage
after he bit me
an accident
I hid in my brother’s room.

it’s hard
to stay solid,
to stay still, to keep hold
of the air when you are hissing
above the sunset or clunking
below the coal mines with a sickening thud
usually reserved for old men getting hit by cabs
or an old broad’s pocketbook, just don’t call her a broad,
or other things you are sorry for
that had to happen anyway.

-Ryn Gargulinski, 2001

CHEZ WINDEX

The Housecleaning Poem

my house
thanks me
when I
clean it by
embracing
me with
sweetness
and not
smelling like
someone
died.

-Ryn Gargulinski.09.30.09


Click here for more poems and Ryn's website

LAWNBOY

watching grass grow may
be mundane but when you
spy the first
spudlets in their
soft, supple
sprouts six
days from reseeding
like it said on the
bag you get a thrill as each
little bud pops up – so

tender, so vernal, so
fragile – and not yet
discovered by the
dogs.

-Ryn Gargulinski.09.12.09

Click here for more poems by Ryn

Click here for Ryn's website

CHASTISED

In the wake of the WTC disaster

I wasn’t born yet
for the Kennedy thing but this morning
on the 69th Street Pier I saw the
smoke billow out from the World Trade Center
across the way but chalked it up to
being no big deal since I had just
written a poem about pollution.

I found out
I was wrong.

It hit me first
at work
when I heard the news that a plane came
hijacked from Boston to New York and I thought
of my brother, although he lived in Boston several lives
ago, I wanted to know he was ok but

nothing was ok. Nothing was alright and then
the lady’s voice on 1010 declared the second
tower came town and that didn’t hit me yet
until I heard Manhattan now has
a new skyline...

I thought of my
drawings I must redo as I
answered the e-mails from frantic friends
still in Michigan typing in all caps
PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE OK and it
hit me again

on the ride home on my bike
since my boss -- and the Senate -- declared it time to close after
hearing -- six times -- this is a national emergency and he
offered to drive all of us home, me and my bike if I
took off the tire and I was
about to accept when he
locked the keys in his car so I pedaled -- cautiously --
through the dampered streets, past another guy
on a bike wearing a bright white surgical mask and
thought, since I smoke, if I did the same thing I would feel
like a hypocrite I feel

we have a glimpse
of WWIII never mind Archduke
Ferdinand the Third or the shot heard round the world I just heard
the radio bleed that the Arabs on the West Bank
are handing out candy, they are having a party, saying that
God is good there is death in America,
the garden-shaped wuss we could all blame Bush
and hummus and indigo things but I don’t know enough to jab
or point political fingers -- I only know enough
to know that
I am scared

and I only know enough to hope that the
slumbering oaf we call a country
stirs itself awake enough
to rear its massive head
in prayer.

-Ryn Gargulinski.09.11.01

Click here for more poems by Ryn

Click here for Ryn's website