I’ve decided to post this even though, as a poem, I think it lacks cohesion. I just feel like sharing this facet of my emotional life these days. On the night I wrote this, I felt like being experimental, whatever that means. The Wasteland was rumbling around in my brain. Also Kierkegaard. And I was thinking that we can be aware of events happening to other people, but ultimately every event in life happens to me. All experience is subjective.

Sunbright

1 Fear and Trembling

Hurry up, please. It’s time.
The governor has set a curfew now.

I had not thought Death had undone so many.
I mean Old Mr. Death, the Old Man.
The proprieties must be observed.

He stands on a hill outside town –
the insatiable wind.

He stands at the end of the street –
dogs barking.

He stands in the door of your kitchen –
the oven goes cold.

2 The Sickness

We who were living are now becalmed
in the currents of time.

We who are dying are impatient to escape
this vessel on the wind.

Why is there nowhere dark enough for rest?
The sun is vulgar to a man who would be free.

Pray for us sinners, now and until
the Old Man comes.

3 Unto Death

Pale hands at absolute zero
then whispers in the empty rooms.

May the judgment not be too heavy
upon us.

Hoarfrost – all of the flowers in your garden
are sleeping in a mist of tears.

A million dead? Oh no, far more. So count
the bodies all night long

then in the morning, sunbright gulls
on the peak of the roof.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed