Creators focus on outputs rather than the general populace who focus on inputs. In their free moments, creators utilize their subconscious breakthroughs. Their days are filled with creative bursts, making them incredible at their craft.
If you want to have more creative flow in your life, stop checking your social media and email so much. Check them once or twice per day. Detach from the addiction to numb your mind and escape reality. Instead, get lost in the creative projects you’ve always wanted to do.
Hold Fast
The evening light is soft and kind.
If the night comes suddenly,
if darkness falls as a crisis,
unexpected despite the long twilight,
we will lie down against the cold earth
and hold fast, sheltering in its vague
contours against the wind,
and hope for morning.
I believe the sun, godly and indifferent,
will rise again behind the ruined trees,
silent when the birds are fled
to a brighter land. Then we will stand
and keep moving west, steps quickening,
dislodged from Time and joining
the everlasting sundown.
The evening light is soft and kind.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
To Understand
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
– Claude Monet
Ivory
I dream that I think about taking
a shower. I should, because
it would help me relax and sleep.
I dream that I have not slept
in three nights, that I should take a pill
or drink a glass of wine
and find a book with ivory pages,
easy on the eyes. I should climb
into bed then decide what the book
will be about and what is on
the pages, besides ivory.
Now I’m holding the book
in the shower. The pages dissolve
and flow down the drain.
There are elephants outside
in the dark, trampling the flowerbeds
and breaking the sprinklers, looking
for my address. The line of them
reaches back to the overpass.
They are taking the northbound exit.
A vast herd is thumping up the 101
because they heard I have pages
of ivory. But the book about time
is flowing out to sea. And if I don’t
wake up, I’ll never get to sleep.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
Night of Fear and Loathing
In recognition of the anniversary of The Night of Fear and Loathing, November 8, 2016, I have renewed my membership the the American Civil Liberties Union.
Impeach Trump
That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years.
Why Write Poetry?
I’ve just read, and herewith recommend, this interview by McSweeny’s of the poet Rebecca Lindenberg. Asked, “why write poetry?” she answers:
I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you “have something to say.” I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say. Poetry allows us to hold many related tangential notions in very close orbit around each other at the same time. The “unsayable” thing at the center of the poem becomes visible to the poet and reader in the same way that dark matter becomes visible to the astrophysicist. You can’t see it, but by measure of its effect on the visible, it can become so precise a silhouette you can almost know it.
nailed it
The Breaks
Saint John and The Frog
I was thumbing through an old poetry notebook of mine from 25 years ago. In an unfinished poem, I found a reference to this passage from the texts of Saint John of the Ladder.
It wants to be shared. What am I gonna do, post it on Facebook?
When we draw water from a well, it can happen that we inadvertently also bring up a frog. When we acquire virtues we can sometimes find ourselves involved with the vices which are imperceptibly interwoven with them. What I mean is this. Gluttony can be caught up with hospitality; lust with love; cunning with discernment; malice with prudence; duplicity, procrastination, slovenliness, stubbornness, wilfulness, and disobedience with meekness; refusal to learn with silence; conceit with joy; laziness with hope; nasty condemnation with love again; despondency and indolence with tranquillity; sarcasm with chastity; familiarity with lowliness. And behind all the virtues follows vainglory as a salve, or rather a poison, for everything.
Saint John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 26, “On Discernment”
November
It’s hard to find the moments
that I need, when the clouds
settle down and are quiet,
when the wind is the right
shade of blue, when all
of the people float over looking
like dogs or butterflies,
gathering dark
underbellies of rain.
Now you weep and I despise
myself, beyond atonement,
culpable for the starlight,
pushed to the brink
with the falling leaves.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
10.31.2017
Work in process, probably.
Creative Commons Licensed
Unseen
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives.
– Robert M. Pirsig
New poem coming from me today. The poem and I are going to get a few hours of rest first.
Oraciones por los muertos.
Flores por los muertos.
Flores por los muertos.
Los muertos están cerca.
Quality Time
Who would have thought that the term, “quality time” came from deep in the notebooks of Albert Camus. At least, he gets the credit today.
“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but ‘steal’ some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
Dog’s Birthday
Today is Brookie’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Brookie! She is a best friend and she is 6 years old. She is a wonderful dog. In honor of her day, here are two poems.
First is the Dog section from my longer poem A Terrible Thing.
The Dog
My life is a dance of ten or fifteen years, and I love
to hear my voice ring out into the all-too-silent world.
You can say so much with your silence, like the wind,
but a dog is a turning leaf and a sound.
There is a long river of light when the day gets old
and I grow tired, thinking of my food and where I sleep.
I am not afraid because the pack is with me.
I do not rest alone.
But you will, Man, and it makes me sad.
I have seen our tracks in the dust up ahead,
where they go from many to few, to two then one.
Mine don’t go on very long, but I have no words to tell you this.
~~~
What The Dog Owns
They say that we should live
in the moment, cherish and be
present entirely, the moment
being all we have.
And the future, the infinite
possibility, vast and strange
un-writtenness of it, dark swirling
Maybe of it, belongs to God.
But the past, with its happy smells
bright fuzzy motion, sudden pains
and great meals, long sleepy
afternoons, belongs completely
to the dog.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Metaphor 