Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

going down by the bow

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It’s an old seafaring term, meaning a ship sinking front end first. I just thought of it and laughed, remembering that it came to me as I sat listening to poets at last Summer’s SB Book and Author Festival. Most of them were great, but one poet was obviously – to me – uncomfortable with being on stage, at a microphone, in front of a group of people. I watched and listened and thought, “That poor woman is going down by the bow.” It struck me funny then too, and I’m only glad I didn’t blurt it out.

(You know that little switch in your head, that keeps you from yawping out thoughts best kept private? Do you think it can really be trusted? I’m never completely sure.)

Reading in public isn’t easy. We poets tend to be solitary when it comes to spelunking the caverns of our creative underworld. So to take one’s little offerings from the printer, carry them to a lecture hall or coffee house, and offer them up is an art or artifice in itself.

I consider myself well practiced in it, but I’ve taken on water and sailed off listing to starboard a few times myself.

All of which is prefatory to sending you off to mystic-lit, to read poet Joseph Gallo’s thoughts on readings. And you can read three of his fine poems too. … Aloud, if you please, if only to the cat or the living room wall. It’s all good practice.

sorry, john

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Although I’m backing Obama for president, I was sorry to see John Edwards leave the fray this morning. I think Edwards is a good one as politicians go. But while he’s got great experience and a level head, he’s not really a dramatic change from the business of Washington, is he?

And the truth is that, as good a president as I think Edwards would be, I think Obama would be great. It’s really time for a radical change in how this country conceives of leadership. It’s time to abandon our militaristic protectionism and take steps to recover from our addiction to – our co-dependence with – fear.

I feel like Obama is just the fundamental change we need.

I hope that Edwards will find something better to do, something more fun than being president, maybe something that allows him more time with his family. As a case in point, I don’t know if Al Gore would have had the latitude to do what he has for environmental awareness, if he’d been sitting in the Oval Office.

Watermelon

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Child, if you care to remember
this world, this life
you dream like a path
of certain distance quickly
walked and centered on a hill,
if you care to open it like
watermelon in summer
or like a prayer box
bearing a constellation of crosses
and sunsets, I hope
you consider your father,
his overtures to death
his music, and like sunlight
through the sprinkler
on a simple greening lawn,
his smile.



JKK
1.10.2008

time to read

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I’m feeling kind of dry, writing-wise. Indehiscent. Time to read, before I dry up and blow away.

So this weekend, I’m going to try to break away from the computer and do some serious reading. Weather should be right for it. It’s not going to be easy, because I’ve been working on putting together a small book of poems and prose vignettes, and I’m kind of hooked on doing that in my free time hours. But I’m convinced that it’s impossible to write if we don’t read.

Here’s what’s on the coffee table. Both are 5 star novels at amazon. Click the photo or the text link to check them out there.

hello world!

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My sitemeter says Metaphor has recently had visits from The Netherlands and Saskatoon Saskatchewan, way up north in Canada. Wow. Welcome.

It reminds me of the 70s, when we had a massive CB radio station, and an antenna on the roof that was larger than the house itself. We would talk to each other by skipping and squelching and exchange CQ Cards – custom designed postcards – via snail mail.

The equivalent of the CQ Card today is, of course, the much sought after but elusive Comment. Which, like voting, should be done early and often.

it has been a dark day

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The air over and around our little swale of California coastline has been unstable and disturbed. A snitty wind, an occasional spit of drizzle. It has matched my mood, which swooned last night when I picked up the newspaper at 1:00am, just to still my jittery thoughts and get some sleep.

“The newspaper?” you ask, incredulously. Weird, I know. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a paper for bedtime reading, instead of, say, poetry or a good novel. I wonder if God led to me pick up the press so I would find what I did.

I guess it would be good advice to say the obituaries are best perused in high daylight, because no one would prefer solitude and the small dark hours to learn that one of his friends is dead.

Over the weekend, I’ll write and share something about my old friend; his style, his kindness, his unique and interesting history. He was an acrobat, a dancer, a soldier, a friend. His name was George.

thunder & lightning very exciting

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Mama mia, we had us a storm here today, brothers and sisters. Santa Barbara is even getting mentioned on the Weather Channel, with 4 inches of rain, don’t ya know.

I love rain. This affinity runs in the family; my Dad is a minor rain deity; specifically, a Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer (cf, Rob McKenna, a minor character in So Long And Thanks for All The Fish.) And I especially appreciate it now that I live in a place that cannot possibly flood. I live in a second floor condo on the side of a concrete and asphalt hill, 60 feet above the level of a creek about half a mile away. So in order for water to reach me, as I may have explained here before, US 101 would have to be under water to the height of a five story building.

Which is a nice change from where I used to live, and dread the pineapple express rainstorms that sometimes blow across the eastern Pacific from Hawaii. Over there, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find my living room had an inch of water in the carpet. Just bloody lovely.

Anyway, we had some heavy lightning and thunder today. I had to unplug the computers. At one point I was down near the beach, about to unlock a dead-bolted solid wood door, when the thunder hit. I saw the door rattle in its frame from the sound waves. That was cool. But the best thing was just after sundown, when the clouds lifted just a little from the low coastal hills, revealing a dusting of snow.

Snow! It’s not bizarre; these coastal hills are around 2000 feet high. But it’s still very cool. Especially during the day. Usually, if we get snow on our hills it’s at night, and we wake up to it, and it melts by noon. So to have a nice white cloak during the day is special. Maybe I can get pictures in the morning.

my poor head

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is just emerging from the hedgehog’s fog of a cold, and not an hour too soon. There is so much to do and think about.

— Heath Ledger is dead? He was talented, and born the year I graduated from high school. Sad, sad.

After that, the news just gets bleak. No fault of mine. Here’s a picture of Happy. She has updated her blog, by the way. And speaking of movie stars, that hedgehog is a personal friend of Happy’s, as you can see here.

[click to enlarge]