April 28, 2021

invasive, pervasive, insidious
I’ve lost count of the nouns
used to describe all of this
lost count of the firmly attached
adjectives modifying attributes

particles rise from the id
in the beginning I dismissed them
as dust, motes, molecules of
irregularity in an otherwise
complacent juxtaposition of contrariness

things were supposed to click
that cricket expired
on the way to the launch pad
an atom sized snowflake shape
on the windshield

“so,” “but,” “yet,” those interjections
scrape the neurons from my
synapses, leave me disoriented
from too much random electricity
too much “I don’t know”

sadness is a charged word, and
like the electron, difficult to
locate in space and time
I’ll redefine that particle as
disappointment, stalled in the express lane

this conundrum with no beginning or end
this flux between Russian realism
and Puritanical utopian communes
this abyss between the close/far rims
of imaginary, self-created canyons

the metaphor of a yo-yo is apropos
also a balance scale, and the contrast
between centrifugal and centripetal forces
that yin-yang thing we aspired to
in our wonderfully naïve youthfulness

I meant to flush doves from the underbrush
there was a badger in there too
complacent and sluggish, unable to
decide whether or not
to attack

I’ve let go of the charged dialog
I’ve let go of imaginary energy channels
I’ve let go of broken timepieces
I’ve let go of over reaching
I’ve let go of, over and out

[RK, 4/28/21]

I Can Visualize But Cannot Manifest

I rub together your
lack of commitment and
lack of opinion
the fire is cathartic and cleansing
smoke rises like incense
sick and sweet
going up to the places
I only imagined

[RK, 4/28/21]

Metallurgy 101

you know me backwards and forwards
why the backpedal fundamentals?

you know me left and right
why the drone interrogation?

basis, root, foundation, all
lacking from the center & periphery

cloud, wind, night sky, reflect
the iron walls of your fears

[RK, 4/28/21]

Night Studio

There’s a hummingbird asleep 

in the keyhole, and the moon 

slid under the table an hour ago.

My phone’s taking payment

for work I haven’t started 

and maybe never will complete.

All those mile makers beginning 

to pile up in the corner 

have yet to be imagined. 

[LSS, 4/26/21]

Gifted

That thing I randomly encounter, 

like a stain in the kitchen sink

that the paper towel perfectly blots

into a ready-to-be-framed work of art. 

[LSS, 4/26/21]

Morning Practice

My shadow out running 

the beach at dawn,

opening and closing 

like a pair of scissors,

like a gasping fish begging 

to be cut from the gill net.

 

[LSS, 4/21/21]

Escaping Gravity

You’re piloting a balloon 

filled with the steam 

of your false narratives.

I saw you drifting overhead 

just as you jettisoned 

the last of your ballast.

[LSS, 4/21/21]

Kansas

In 1980 I flew through Iowa corn and
felt the hardscrabble pull of Nebraska.
I missed Kansas on the way to the new world
When Colorado and New Mexico appeared,
our Midwest Kelly green faded
to chromium oxide green agave,
jumping cholla, prickly pear cactus
tugging at my thin skin.

Kansas was county fairs, husky
farmer’s markets, wildflowers,
your trees lifted away,
a hot air balloon festival.
Now kelp forests reach up
from under the Pacific Ocean,
tugging the sky, as you tug in
the lobster traps.

[RK, 4/22/21]


Lullaby

I’ve seen that moon in a bucket
glowing like dying lightning bugs.

Steam rises as moon light
boils away the water.

You would say my imagination
creates a false narrative.

Yet the moon is melting a hole,
in the bucket, grass, mantle, the Earth.

[RK, 4/21/21]


Sea Change 2

butterflies, mosquitoes, and birds
shelter in the hurricane’s swirl
blended with salt water and debris
everything is weightless and identical

[RK, 4/21/21]

Offering

the rock tumbler takes away the edges
until there is nothing left to burn

[RK, 4/21/21]

Quench

bottled, filtered, reverse osmosis water
is good enough for tickweed and mice

you want chandeliers of salt water taffy
and perfect evening tree frog melodies

dew, honeydew, and homilies
stitched onto linen samplers

houses need water coming in, but
houses also need water going out

[RK, 4/21/21]

Interplanetary

Send me a telegram from Mars 

when you arrive. 

I will leave a light on, but I can’t 

tell you where I’ll be.

[LSS, 4/20/21]

Here on Earth

We’re lost in a tangle 

of deer trails and owl scat 

while coyotes and tree frogs 

argue about what time 

to set the alarm.

A bit of rain begins to fall,

and suddenly the night 

is upon us, a secret cinema 

entertaining us until dawn.

[LSS, 4/20/21]

Anything

I have felt that way about the sky 

on a dry summer day in Kansas, 

as though the trees were about 

to lift away, to drift away 

forever unless I thought 

something, said something, 

did something to give them 

weight and purpose.

[LSS, 4/20/21]

Ingenuity

Rain pulls the garden into the sky
Everything has gone to seed.

These are my favorite days, and
there go the emergency sirens.

I wish I was on Mars.

[RK, 4/20/21]

Trying to Run Again

I’m tethered to a dime-store moon 

drifting over the horizon. 

I’ve sprained my ankle too many times 

to trust the promise of a zero drop 

to keep me from falling.

[LSS, 4/19/21]

Stage Fright

I run outside 

the rehearsal space

and all the practiced 

gestures perfectly glazed 

in their frames.

[LSS, 4/19/21]

Edit

The work 

shrinks 

when I 

crop details 

that never 

did pertain.

[LSS, 4/19/21]

Kite

I’m thinking about this kite string
wound round my wrist, the uplift
of a dragon or dragonfly tugging
me along the beach

nice not to plod through soft sand
or navigate rocks and mangrove roots
nice to drag my heels like Bedrock brakes
or give in to fakir levitation

I’m thinking about the end of the island
that spit of sand where two opposing
currents grind diatoms into molecules
and tug at the ankles and calves

nice not to worry about rip tides,
random fishhooks, and broken whelks
nice to feel my thighs, belly, shoulders
bend forward, into, and under the surf

[RK, 4/18/21]


Foxed Mirror in the Recycling Bin

Your face, funhouse distorted, the first thing you see.
Your house, behind you, minimalist as always.
Your garden beds, trampled by tamed deer.

Your sewing machine humming with evidence.
Your breakfast dishes, washed and dried.
Your inspirational cup of first flush tea.

Your vision for the future.
Your hair lit from behind.
Your collection of talons.

Your eager eagle-eye.
Your inspiration.
Your pericardium.  

[RK, 4/18/21]


Stringent

Unglued,
you light the papery fuse
and throw firecrackers
as far as the eye can see.

You question your motivation.
There is no motivation.
There is only this hum of
plant life, holding on.

[RK, 4/18/21]


Strategy

I feel entranced and entangled.
Time heals all wounds, but sometimes
we bleed into the comfort zone.

I literally lay my cards on the table.
“Go With The Flow,” how apropos
under these pine tree circumstances.

I’m remembering a mountain at night,
fluid constellations prickling me
like strawberry hedgehog cactus.

It’s a comforting thought among
all of these disclaimers and dismay.
Will there be a sequel, I wonder?

[RK, 4/18/21]


Attempting to Understand my Current Fascination with Seashells and Binominal Nomenclature

Everything needs at least two names,
excepting celebrities and magicians.

Once upon a time there was a ‘plus’.
Once upon a time there was a ‘minus’.

Today’s obsession is no different, I’ve
merely moved into the exoskeleton realm.

Realm once meant something different,
intimate, sexual, and expansive.

Now split bivalves remind me of that place
that once joined us, before we became curators.

Once upon a time there was a ‘plus’ and a ‘minus’.
Now we hand each other ‘not equal to’ symbols.

[RK, 4/18/21]

Metacarpals

The lesson is not on your tongue

but in your fingers
tattooed by burning words
that slip away when you
turn your head and listen
to old conflicts on new days

[RK. 4/17/21]

Blue

Arachne pricks her finger on a spindle
and dribbles royal blood on her weavings.

Centuries later lapis lazuli is replaced
with fancy-schmancy shibori fabrics.

She’s always had a schoolgirl crush
on indigo.

[RK, 4/17/21]

Metapoem

You’re banking the words

on your tongue

afraid to burn them here

in this poem speaking

only to itself.

[LSS, 4/17/21]

Three More Ways of Looking

the fifth glance might have
stitched faint tracings into
a semblance of cloud cover

you’re covered in clover
mulching tea stained tissue
and threading cactus spines

a typical denouement
to act five would be closure
heard around the world

[RK, 4/17/21]

Four More Way of Looking

The crisp decisiveness of film noir,
shadows that you only notice on the
tenth viewing.

Those movies you remember so well
now grainy and analog, tacked to the
community bulletin board.

Summer repertory scripts curl with the heat
of your supply room. How much thread
have you, Clotho, spun this year?

A wisp of something more, inculcated
in daily moments of total awareness
during your daily merry-go-rounds.

[RK, 4/17/21]

En Plein Air

Hard lines almost invisible 

on the surface, but the tracings

underneath distract you 

from looking at the sky 

for the fifth time today.

[LSS, 4/17/21] 

Team Sport

Your offense is subtle, and
imperceptible as fugitive breezes.

Fumbles, foul balls, long drives
into the gorse. I’ve got this.

After two and a half years,
we call halftime. I realize

we’re at opposite ends
of the playing field,

different aims, divergent goals.

[RK, 4/16/21]

O Happy Day

a name slips away before dawn
what is important clamors for attention

drawing pencils labeled
2H, 4H, 5H, or simply 2

hard graphite leaves lines
that are almost not there

what is elusive
what is important

[RK, 4/16/21]


Three Ways of Looking

The peach, pear, and persimmon,
the mango, mulch pile, and morning.
Here is where the horse stumbled.

Fluid prairie memories divest themselves
of natural color. That red streaked sky
before true light.

Clouds race their shadows.
A death remembered.
Winter.

[RK, 4/16/21]


Tumbler

Maybe that’s a cocktail shaker
fixing martinis for James Bond,
or a cement mixer parked beside
cracked sidewalk squares.

Maybe that’s the start of an avalanche
in the Pyrenees or Andes, tickling
your heels while you ski madly
in many directions.

[RK, 4/16/21]

Need to Photograph

Pollen Count, 

Field Studies, 

Yellow Roofs, 

Ochre Mountains, 

Pepper Rain, 

Sleet to Hail,

Circles and Squares,

Rediscovered Island,

Four Ways of Looking 

at the Sky.

[LSS,  4/15/21]

Reservation List

Amazing how many figures

can get bleached out by the sun

waiting for you to load your 

camera with gourmet recipes,

searching for some hidden meaning 

reflected in a spoonful of broth, 

a soupçon of catacombs, hieroglyphs, 

and hesitation. 

[LSS, 4/14/21]

Cocktail Hour

I didn’t hear the shriek,

but there must have been one

when the sharp-shinned hawk

tore the first bit of flesh  

from that shrew, because 

the only sound I could hear 

was you loading your tumbler 

with beach pebbles and grit 

hoping to polish away 

the rough edge of nature. 

[LSS, 4/14/21]

Team Sport

Catching the falling 

plates before they 

hit the floor: 

I am pitcher;

you have lost

your mitt.

[LSS, 4/14/21]

Night Shift #13 (Ouch-e-wa-wa)

Accept my apology for fading like
interstellar radio signals.
My excuse is that now,
and for how long I do not know

life is a singularity, a planet in the
Goldilocks Zone. Verdant, green
and blue as we often expect, and
speckled with alien life forms.

Of course they are imaginary
and exist only as possibilities
in the convex mirror of
my relationship telescope.

Ah shit, I’m obfuscating again.
I meant to say: microscope
I meant to say: periscope.
I meant to say.

[RK, 4/13/21]


The Paper It’s Written On

Lack of commitment makes me weary, or
I weary of commitment. Either way you
must chose a respectable team to belong to.
I am the benched sideline freak of possibility.

Mark Twain said: The difference between the
right word and the almost right word,
is the difference between lightning
and the lightning bug.

He didn’t have to sit through endless
semi-finals with splinters in his ass.
He didn’t need to negotiate contracts
made of rainwater and misdemeanors.

[RK, 4/13/21]

Voice

I remember your voice
only because a Norwegian artist
captured it in an oil painting
in 1893.

I learned that tidbit in art school.
You were the woman in the trees
wide awake, still as belladonna
before the rain.

Everywhere I went you followed.
Somewhere forgetfulness crept in,
hammered my memory, lost
in a land of midnight sun.

I can and cannot remember.
What does listening sound like?

[RK, 4/13/21]

[Edvard Munch, “The Voice”, 1893, oil on canvas, 87.5 x 108 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA]

Night Shift #12

Amazing how vinegar and bleach
figure into this part of my life.

That bucket you are tempted to spill
takes center stage, lit from within.

It has become integral, icing on
a mega-cake in a mega season.

Your hilltop drone videos punctuate
my equilibrium. Pencils roll off the table.

That checkered tablecloth is out of place
in this Italian Mannerist diptych.

I signed up for swimming lessons,
found the lifeguard OFF DUTY.

[RK, 4/13/21]


Drone

The live streamed poetry readings go on forever.
They blend like goo in a food processor, echo
like a distant hum of bee-swarms. Contrived
and as dangerous as a plush toy alligator.  

[RK, 4/13/21]


Word Salad

Adverb vinegar, preposition oil,
shredded reminiscences, topped with
crumbled nonsense.

Eminently non-nutritious,
exceptionally plain. I await
the next celebrity cookbook.

[RK, 4-13-21]


Yikes

Folded and refolded pine needles on the park picnic table.
You look for meaning and mystery in the mundane.
I send you a photo of the sky reflected in a puddle.

Surely that should be enough.
Surely that will fill in the blanks.
Surely you don’t need to be hypnotized.

[RK, 4/13/21]

Night Shift Redux

Not this river of dreams 

flowing across your pillow

while I watch you sleep,

but this other body of water

I hold in my hands tempting 

the Chinese poets to sing 

me a lullaby about the moon 

in a bucket of bleach water.

[LSS, 4/12/21]

Sound Memory

I’m trying to remember your voice.

You always gave the appearance of listening.

What sound does listening make?

I can’t remember. 

[LSS, 4/12/21]

Morning Chill

There is nothing broken, 

nothing to throw away.

How do you expect me 

to rekindle the fire 

when you offer nothing 

I can burn?

[LSS, 4/10/21]

Sweet Dream

We are dancing in the music 

of the flames. It’s no disaster

that we are losing that room.

We’ve already begun rewriting 

the stories and drawing 

fresh water from the tap 

to quench our thirst.

[LSS, 4/10/21]

Finding Flow

Some days I don’t 

think until I’m running 

on the levy again 

with the river running beside 

me without need, 

unseen in the mist. 

[LSS, 4/9/21]

Specious Sunrise

A little bit of light

is lost every morning.

The transfer of power

is always incomplete. 

There is no such thing

as perfect balance.

The right brain never 

sees what you expect.

[LSS, 4/5/21]

Latin

She said: “Why are the Latin names so important?”
I pontificated about colloquial names in other languages
and how Latin allowed everyone on Earth
to agree about what was being referenced.
Environment. Ecology. Saving fading species.

I see the wheels turn inside her head.
The different species of snails and bivalves,
where they come from, why they are.
Then I begin labeling spice cabinet jars
in Latin. I can’t explain.

[RK, 4/4/21]


Sea Change

after the hurricanes I wonder
where the butterflies shelter
how mosquitoes survive
why the birds are happy

the osprey nest, untouched, each
beach rearranged yet recognizable
the give and take between us
undergoes daily sea changes

[RK, 4/4/21]


Species

a refuge of egrets, wood storks,
spoonbills, hundreds of coots,
pairs of blue-winged teals,
yet the opportunistic grackle
stalks the dusty parking lot
seeks the dropped crumb
and puts their finery to shame

[RK, 4/4/21]

Imperfect Specimen

I never really knew you,

but here you are anyway

pinned like a butterfly 

to my desk. 

Your velvet thorax 

thumps like a metronome, 

invisible ellipses recording 

the length of my examination 

into why I thought you 

should be as attached 

to this life as I am 

and why I didn’t just open 

the window when I had 

the chance to follow you 

and find out where you 

might be going.

[LSS, 4/4/21]