Is the world already disappearing me?
No one survives The Forgetting forever
but this seems a little premature.
The clock is powered by a battery,
thank God. But that keeps
it running, not honest.
Everyone has one chance to stand
in the light and be visible, and mine
passed before the new millennium.
The sun sifts the day in brilliant
graceful patterns
through the miniblinds.
Oh, I remember now. I don’t know
what, but it was beautiful
and you were there.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
– T.S. Eliot
All I want to do is to write
it down, whatever it is
that can’t be written
or spoken or even dreamed
and only seen if we look
away, only heard
in the exhalations of the waves.
If we look away and talk
about tomorrow, it rises up
at our backs in the long
grass, there in the deepest
shadows of the trees.
Don’t look back, don’t yearn
or pray to see it. Say no name
of the lost or left behind
and still beloved.
I’ve tried all that but it slips
away to hide among the years.
Still it’s all I want, to catch
it once on paper in my time
with you, to give it that
elusive name, to prove
that I have loved you
more than eternity.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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Now I am sixty in less than a month.
I’ve seen seven hundred twenty moons
blaze up and light the orchards
and the sea then fade away.
It’s time to deconstruct my life;
no time to rest, to elegize the years.
What’s past was wasted or was spent.
But how to dismantle and renew?
Does anyone remember where
we stored the paint?
Yes, I know I shouldn’t joke
but sometimes either you laugh
or cry, can’t sleep, or sleep through
half the morning, burning days.
Seven hundred moons or more
or less in sixty years, though most
of them rose and shone unseen
on the roof of the house.
And I will tell you a secret:
the mind does not remember pain.
It might recall the lurid shadows
where pain rose and the light
that drove it away. So we should
go out when the moon is full
and pray for the sun to rise.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Draft 4, 5.07.2021
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After a year everything seems the same
except the light in this room keeps changing.
On sunny days it reflects from the neighbor’s
garage, so people and cars cast shadows
on the ceiling and the walls.
I live in Plato’s Cave.
Now there must be clouds moving in
to block the sun. Yes, but here it comes
again, the light on this page, and then
it’s gone. The bands of brightness
on the ceiling flash and my pencil
moves across the paper,
signifying time.
In the room the shadows come and go
and are your people still alright?
And have you had your shots?
Then here comes spring with plans
to travel, feel the world go warm again,
which in our case we have not got.
I have been indoors too long, alone.
But that will be my story; it has always
been my story: How I outlived the year
to see today amidst
the boredom and the horror and the glory.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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Half a million are dead in America
and what is a poet supposed to say?
We have only words,
only the icons of grief.
I have this pencil and paper,
so small in a world which I thought
was benign, beautiful and interlaced with light.
I have never felt more useless
except that I can offer what’s holy.
I can utter the word Love and hope
that somewhere on the Earth
a bell happens to ring
or a meadowlark cries out in wonder.
I’m sorry I don’t have more to give
except maybe to say
May they rest in peace.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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I feel sad. How can they say that love
exists only now, only today,
when I know I need to love you
tomorrow, as I have since we met?
And I know it’s been years.
If nothing else, the turning planet
proves it: Time is created by motion
and by the rhythm of a beating heart.
Some days, everything is reduced
to this, and to expectations – the
process of diagnostics. Hope exists
just in the future, whether the future
is real or not. The Now isn’t always
a place to call home.
I feel sad. Stuck in the future again.
And don’t even mention the crows
or the ocean this time.
Nothing is rising and falling all night
under a February moon or alighting
on some trembling branch of faith.
It just is what it is and I’m tired
of Fear stopping by to spoil the music
and the softened light of winter days.
I’m just sad because everything
worth loving and holding tight
with joy and gratitude is fragile,
and mortal and precious, like you.
Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving
that transcends dimensions of time and space.
Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it.
– Interstellar
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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Breathe in and whisper God.
Breathe out and cry Oh World.
Then sigh oh short winter grass.
There is nothing we ought to do
so be still, be a creature believed
by God, before He set the Earth
to spin and Time to walk.
And what might walk the other way?
Death is too easy to write – on a page
we see it circling overhead, a flock
of dark wings. The winter sky is bright
but pale and we see the walker
coming straight ahead,
never tiring, never sleeping, day and night.
It only slows to listen if we sing.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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“In life, only the small details
are worth weeping over.”
— Phaedrus
Here comes that old ghost again.
up from the backyard grass
like a whisp of sandalwood
also orange blossom drifting
from the corner of the yard.
The ghost shimmers back and forth
to get my attention.
It is the time I killed a sparrow
with my BB gun. Fifty years
and I don’t still know why
except I thought that’s what you do
with such a thing.
I didn’t know what death is,
that it’s always personal.
Only two events are in the world,
without exception.
The bird wasn’t finished with living
and very confused, frightened.
So was I. We met in the sunlight
and made a ghost.
There is no such thing as an unloaded
gun or a small cruelty. So we are still there,
still terrified on the razor of time because
this is what plagues and haunts us.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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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.
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
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I would like to give you a gift.
Here’s everything I can remember,
if I can find a vessel to hold it.
I imagine a mason jar
that once held Grandma’s jelly,
or the wooden bowl my brother
made in shop class,
almost 40 years ago.
How many thoughts can fit in such a space?
I ought to remember a lot of my life
but it seems that everything collapses
as it dries, becoming smaller
before it blows away.
So you should be able to carry this home.
Leave it in a place where there is light
in the afternoon, where birds can be heard
in the morning. Sometimes it will bring
shadows and rain, but often it will shine.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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he sits up on the edge of the bed
and wonders what his soul looks like.
He’s never seen it himself, but other people do,
when he makes them laugh or causes pain.
No one will describe his soul to him,
so he imagines a green light hovering – a tiny
beacon in the air – just there in the center
of the room. It follows him everywhere,
retreating to safety when he’s angry,
looking out windows while he speaks.
He should be ashamed. So long now
since his soul was put to use.
When the moon sets and the sun appears
to lead us through another day of plague
and fear, the little light that woke him up
will flicker there and fade away.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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Alright, gentle readers. Gettin’ down to it. Gettin’ serious. “Because here we were dealing with the pit and prune juice of poor Beat life itself, in the godawful streets of Man.”
– Kerouac
____________________________________
My bicycle is gone, the one with the banana
seat, hand brakes and handlebars
like rams’ horns, wrapped with yellow glitter tape.
It was 5 speed, which was boss in 1972.
Chased by a German Shepherd, I rode it
into a ditch. My mother rescued me.
Papa’s typewriter cannot be found,
a heavy old Royal with black
and red ribbon. No electricity required.
He let me play with it but he used it
to write letters about dogs — German Shepherds.
And dogs arrived and they were good
— his dogs didn’t chase children off the road.
Phone books are gone. Are they even
printed anymore? No need – all of the names
are lost to time and all of the time is lost
to suffering and fear. No one is even
naming the dead. I didn’t know Death
could take so many without bombs
or guns or a very good reason. Casus
belli. We’re going to need a bigger book.
Months and days and hours are gone,
disappeared in the tule fog of quarantine
and unknowing, and weeks of fear
and counting of the unremembered Dead.
The soul waits in a closet the back of the house,
with the sweaters we were wearing
when the world blew down.
All of the Kingdoms of Hope are gone,
all of the plans we had, the bright joyful
memories of time to come.
Who can remember Christmas in a plague?
How we met back in 2020, and we hugged,
hands around the table. In the kitchen,
side by side. We hoped!
We remembered a future more bright
than it ever could have been.
So any time you want to weep for all
that is gone, brothers and sisters, I’ll join you.
From hopefully safely now and here.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
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Metaphor 