Category Archives: poems

Amends

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If I have hurt you, but I know
I have hurt you and left your love
withering like doves stunned
on wires, through countless days
of incredible sun, forgive the sun.

I have wandered off again,
looking for the perfect way
to make amends. I can’t imagine
finding it, except that you might
fly away and leave the wires

trembling and bare. 

Kyle Kimberlin
December 29, 2010*

 

Wiser men than myself have counseled the wisdom in taking personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admitting it. I’m sure they didn’t mean that coming face-to-face with one’s defects of character on an annual basis would be sufficient, and I hope no one thinks I’ve truly been so remiss. Still, as the year of entropy and disaffection yawns to a close, it seems fitting and proper to sweep the sidewalk just a bit. To the foregoing new poem, I would add just a bit.

I am a sinner who does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official.
— Francis Wolcott, Deadwood

No, that doesn’t seem quite right, normatively. I’ll try again.  

I am by the Grace of God a Christian man; by my actions, a great sinner.
– The Way of a Pilgrim, anonymous, Russia, 19th century

That’s better, because … you know … I offer my sincere contrition, gentle reader, if I have offended, this year. So I do hold out hope for absolution. Feel free to confer it in the comments. Bogdaproste. Many thanks for that, and for your attention in 2010.

pilgrim (Large) .

 

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December Comes

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Only an hour now remains of November. No fault of mine. I certainly didn’t hurry it along.

We had ourselves quite a sunset over The Channel this evening. I got a few shots.

(Click to enlarge.)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This was taken from the yard in front of my place, looking WSW. Near the bottom, left of center, you can see the great frigate HMS Sandflea. She’s sailing out in search of the illusive red-eyed abalone, for the finer restaurants of Santa Barbara. You know, cloth napkins, and all the iced tea you can drink.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After a few minutes, the clouds reddened and the massive ship had disappeared. Farewell, boys, and Godspeed. Be back by Friday, before the tourists roll in.

"Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro’me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me."

-   Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Boy, old Sam was the life of the party, wasn’t he? He wrote under the influence of opiates, they say.

“Some of us go singing
happily into death or into
afternoons with children
naming the shapes of clouds
that lead the shadows of force
off the sea. There is tea
in the evening and the windows
shine the inner spaces back to us.”

— Me, under the influence of nothing much at all.

Here’s to November, anyway.

Into The Silent

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One of my poems, as read by a guy who looks like Einstein. Why not?

When the sky turns
light again
I will stand up, I will
become a man
as the cool dawn
breeze returns.

I will not go out, I
will lie here
putting down roots
into this darkness
that I do not understand.

There will not be
birds, such as sing
for children at dawn.
I am becoming a man
all night, and when

the sky turns light
again, I will be a tomb.
With every sunrise I go
farther into the hard
core of the earth,

listening
as women far above
become fountains
with blue stones
in sunlight.

 

 

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ethereal daze

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Well, it’s been a quiet week here in Carpinteria, my hometown.

No, that’s not right. The week started out very noisy, with a massive – by local standards – thunderstorm on Monday night. Usually, if we get thunder and lightning here, it’s pretty wimpy. Such storms are small and brief, tending to pass along the Santa Barbara channel or over the coastal mountains. This one developed right over town. And it was angry about something.

lightning1

I’ve never heard fiercer thunder, or seen more ardent lightning, in this valley or over our ambitious little patch of sea.  And of course, the power went out.

Thunder, October 18*

Cymbals and symbols, drums
and the heartbeats of small creatures passing
into their certain eternities by and by.
And nothing we can do about any of that.
Except to smile into the darkness
and leave each other searching for a light.
Shantih.

We should let the master handle it:

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places    
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains    
He who was living is now dead    
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.
… a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain.
… Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

            Shantih shantih shantih

[Link]

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*Thunder, October 18 by Kyle Kimberlin 
is a rough draft poetic work, 
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Feel free to copy and share.

we are absences

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2109_patton_street_f
A new poem to share, tinted by October consciousness.
Remembering lying awake in the early morning in my grandparents’
house in the San Joaquin Valley, knowing the creaking floorboards were
my family, up early making coffee and starting breakfast.

Creak

The floors in my condominium 
creak and squeak as the wood 
under the carpet gives way under me. 
The windows give out onto views 
of the ocean and the coastal hills 
and other dwellings, streets where 
countless clustered lights are coming on. 
I am not alone if I move about the place 
and listen to the floors. 
These noises bring back memories. 
I wonder if they creak in houses we 
have left behind, when we move through, 
remembering. I hope they sag 
under the weight of us who haunt,
and wake the living people, causing 
fear. I used to wake there knowing 
the sound was someone sleepless, 
whom I loved. But something 
has gone wrong and now we're gone. 
We move invisibly through rooms where 
we are absences and memories and dreams. 
We creak the floors and make the curtains 
drift, then settle into chairs in places 
where the lights are long since out. 
We sit and whisper about love, transparently.  
Windows give out onto nothing but 
the past, flat and endless, steeped in fog. 
 
Kyle Kimberlin 
10.10.2010

 

SOLSTICE

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I thought I heard
the summer die.
It was a small sound
and hollow.
He sat here with me
under this sky made of steam
with a tired smile
and his hat on the floor.
We only said good morning
and that was always early.
But there was one day
of rain,
one shower at midnight.
I hope he will forgive me
his sad sad death.
An old poem, right for the day. It’s from Finding Oakland, which you can have free gratis in the sidebar. 

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Signal Fires

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The rain is mingling with light from the streetlamp
and light from my window
and soaking
into the long animal grass.

I know you cannot see these lights.
I have put ten miles between us
and the creeks, trees and hills.
An entire world of separation.

What will become of me?
The night is useless,
cold, and you are somewhere in the dark,
in Santa Barbara, dreaming.

The moon was rising out of Ojai
when I left you and drove home.
All the birds
in El Estero were asleep.

The moon is shining on the Channel now,
and maybe shining on Fort Ross,
the Russian cupolas and crosses
flashing signals from the cliffs.

A far and lonely place
where the road
makes love to gravity, clinging high
above the rocks and pounding surf.

My heart is dizzy like that road tonight.
Narrow, slick and dangerous.
I think of you
then watch the sky until my breath returns.

I walk the dog over the tracks
and down to the bluffs, into a shroud
of eucalyptus trees that watch
the sea in anguish as it rises and falls.

The sea does not care about me.
I love you but the sea does not care.
I need you but the sea is just rising and falling,
so I will light a fire on the edge, and wait.


Inspired by Carpinteria, the coast of
California, a little dog, and a girl.

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Signal Fires by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a
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the rain rising up

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I was leafing through an old notebook a few nights ago and found a snippet of poetry I wrote in a workshop in 1995. This seemed like a good time to polish it up and see if it will shine. 

So I edited it, moving lines and stanzas a little, correcting a few lost phrases, changing the breaks, and adding the title.

It is in part a celebration of a moment, and in part a wish to turn back time.

The Rain Again

My dog has been out
in the rain again,
and comes in bringing
small gifts of mud
between her toes and water
from her back to her chest
and I am here another night
to see this, her smile.

What if the whole storm
was shifted into reverse?
The rain rising up into the clouds,
swelling, growing heavier
and turning hard out to sea.

I dry her with a towel,
smelling the rain in her coat.
I am here, she is tugging
on the towel,playing,
and I would not
sell this for anything.

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The Rain Again by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Shelter

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He wants to change the world
only because that is what art
does.  He wants to stand
in a high place and draw it all
into himself –
all the mass and movement
of it, the music and time
and bleeding, surging life –
and let it sit quietly in a space
within him – near his lungs –
where it can breathe in and out
with him, bearing away the hours
and the small, animal sounds
of pain; and near his heart,
where it can find a new rhythm.
Something less a locomotive
than the sea. 
And when it has rested
for the years it takes a tree
to stand and live and die,
he’ll take it out and set it
softly on a table in the sun.
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little death

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The Dishwasher

is scouring the glasses and plates
the kitchen is humming happily
in the dark and I
am ready for my little death.
The ficus in the living room
is already asleep.
We had a beautiful sunset
with great bold clouds in the west
glowing then dark gray as the sun
went down behind a bank of fog.
The lamp on the desk is the last
one shining in the house
but not for long.
Papa’s clock has struck the half
and tomorrow may be
restless, bearing wind.

Kyle Kimberlin
10.20.2009

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