Our Better Angels

When I walked into my kitchen this morning, a disembodied computer voice roused itself and said to me:

“Good morning, Kyle. Today is Barack Obama’s last day as President of the United States. He is the 44th president and the first African American elected to that office. Thank you, Mr. President.”

I felt at once sad and grateful, angry, nauseated, and infected by despair. “Yes, thank you and thank you,” I thought, “but my God what have we done?”

This evening I wrote a blog post about my apprehension and my thoughts on citizenship, and posted that on another website. You can read it here, if you’re so inclined.

Here on Metaphor, I’ll just say that by my clock it’s after midnight in Washington DC; it is January 20, 2017. Thank you, Mr. Obama, and your wife and family, for your service and sacrifice offered with surpassing poise and manifest in good faith.

God bless and save America.

 

The Engine

We argue about flowers
We raise our voices
and the flowers stand
proudly in the withering light

From another room
they simply whisper hush

We never cared about flowers
This is just steam from the engine
that drives the great shafts
of our darkness

A wonderful machine
covered with flowers

 

J. Kyle Kimberlin

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All Who Wander

I was born out of Heaven
onto Earth and my life
is in this place.

I was born with a craving for stillness
and music that sways a little
like trees in the wind.

I was born out of Heaven
meant for Heaven and somehow
got delayed, drawn here because
I heard you crying
and knew I would be loved.

For a moment here with you, I
will not be missed in the eternity
to which I’m traveling.

When I arrive, I will find the house
well lit and a soft bed
and music in the sky.
But I will miss this home.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
2nd Draft 12.21.2016

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A Credo for the Year’s Shortest Day

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

– Robert Fulghum

Resolution of the City of San Francisco

It makes me proud to be a Californian. [Link]

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently passed a resolution, introduced by Board President London Breed, in response to the election of Donald Trump. The resolution reads as follows:

 

WHEREAS, On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected to become the 45th President of the United States; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That no matter the threats made by President-elect Trump, San Francisco will remain a Sanctuary City. We will not turn our back on the men and women from other countries who help make this city great, and who represent over one third of our population. This is the Golden Gate—we build bridges, not walls; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That we will never back down on women’s rights, whether in healthcare, the workplace, or any other area threatened by a man who treats women as obstacles to be demeaned or objects to be assaulted. And just as important, we will ensure our young girls grow up with role models who show them they can be or do anything; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That there will be no conversion therapy, no withdrawal of rights in San Francisco. We began hosting gay weddings twelve years ago, and we are not stopping now. And to all the LGBTQ people all over the country who feel scared, bullied, or alone: You matter. You are seen; you are loved; and San Francisco will never stop fighting for you; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That we still believe in this nation’s founding principle of religious freedom. We do not ban people for their faith. And the only lists we keep are on invitations to come pray together; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That Black Lives Matter in San Francisco, even if they may not in the White House. And guided by President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, we will continue reforming our police department and rebuilding trust between police and communities of color so all citizens feel safe in their neighborhoods; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That climate change is not a hoax, or a plot by the Chinese. In this city, surrounded by water on three sides, science matters. And we will continue our work on CleanPower, Zero Waste, and everything else we are doing to protect future generations; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That we have been providing universal health care in this city for nearly a decade, and if the new administration follows through on its callous promise to revoke health insurance from 20 million people, San Franciscans will be protected; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That we are the birthplace of the United Nations, a city made stronger by the thousands of international visitors we welcome every day. We will remain committed to internationalism and to our friends and allies around the world—whether the administration in Washington is or not; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That San Francisco will remain a Transit First city and will continue building Muni and BART systems we can all rely upon, whether this administration follows through on its platform to eliminate federal transit funding or not; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That California is the sixth largest economy in the world. The Bay Area is the innovation capital of the country. We will not be bullied by threats to revoke our federal funding, nor will we sacrifice our values or members of our community for your dollar; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That we condemn all hate crimes and hate speech perpetrated in this election’s wake. That although the United States will soon have a President who has demonstrated a lack of respect for the values we hold in the highest regard in San Francisco, it cannot change who we are, and it will never change our values. We argue, we campaign, we debate vigorously within San Francisco, but on these points we are 100 percent united. We will fight discrimination and recklessness in all its forms. We are one City. And we will move forward together.

Little Boats

I rarely go down to the water’s edge
preferring to be here on my hill.
I can see the field of dry flowers
where men will come soon
to build the new road.
They will throw up dust.

And I can see the little boats
come and go with their sails
the colors of festival.
They leave a white scar
on the sea. Someday
a boat will come for me.

I will be terrified and I will go alone.

 

J. Kyle Kimberlin
2nd draft, 12.09.2016

Creative Commons Licensed

The Stars

We share the same mind
and timid sorrows
the same lights and breezes,
the same nights in which no one
looked up to notice the stars
turning in the distant past.
We go in and sit in lamplight,
call on love and other incantations
to keep us here
and anchored to the earth.

 

J. Kyle Kimberlin
2016

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Futility

“I don’t know why we long so for permanence, why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs. With futility, we cling to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. We visit and revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up, searching for the remembered grove of trees and the little fence. We clutch our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques, we pray to the everlasting and eternal. Yet, in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs that nothing lasts, that it is all passing away. All that we see around us, including our own bodies, is shifting and evaporating and one day will be gone. “
Alan Lightman
The Accidental Universe (2014)

Freeze-dried America

It’s cold in America tonight. It rained briefly here in Santa Barbara today and the clear air behind the little front of wet is pressing on the house. But in America it is more than literally cold. Our hemisphere is blandly tilting away from the sun’s equinoctial rays, but that’s just what it does this time of year, even in times of hope and clarity. The nights are long and clear and the road to anywhere that matters, where hope and consolation can be found, seems longer than it did in October. Or is it me? I look around the Internet for the usual lights of insight and find dark windows…

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery

No joke, serious; so much depression. Many of my favorite poets and writers, bloggers and vloggers – normally uplifted and uplifting people – have stopped generating content. Vlogger Chris Pirillo in Seattle says he hasn’t picked up his camera in weeks. Blogger and actor Wil Wheaton in Los Angeles is working the Kubler-Ross stages of grief like a tautological litany; a long day’s journal into an existential feedback loop.

America the Plum Blossoms are Falling

All through the social networks, there is so much anger. All of the cries of “no, wait, you can’t, he’s insane, he’ll destroy everything our parents built and ruin everything we might have left behind as well” are dying away like a long freight train that took 2 weeks to rumble to a stop. Now the anger is turning from Big Cheeto and the Fetus Funeral Kid to the townspeople who brought this lunacy down around our heads.

I’m experiencing the same kind of writer’s brain-lock by the way; it’s much worse than writer’s block. I can write but do you think I want to be writing this current events drivel? Do I seem to have the talent for it? Hell no. I’m a poet and a writer of the quiet ontological rooms at the back of the house. The dusty guest bedrooms, where the shoes in the closet belong to the beloved dead. I hate what’s happening in the consciousness of the country almost as much as what’s happening in the streets, the schools, and in the dooryards of the mosques and synagogues.

So I don’t blame the angry people; in fact, I have to join them. This wasn’t an election of a new president and vice president for these United States. This wasn’t a shift from liberal to conservative, from tax and spend to budgetary frugality (a myth, anyway). This was a fucking coup e’etat; a putsch. Our country has been illegally overthrown. Trump had help from foreign powers including Russia. And the Director of the FBI interfered with the election. So America the Beautiful has voted – by a margin so slim it raises the specter of  capital crimes- to become a much different nation than we were.

It’s one thing to want a new president for the country, it’s another to want a different country. And instead of a president, let’s let these crazyass racists who hate everybody run the shit. Nope, you can bring in a new pitcher but we’re not switching from baseball to Mayan basketball, where the losers get their heads chopped off. And come to think of it, Hillary won the damn election anyway. But I digress.

No. No. No! I will not accept the United States becoming a racist, fear-mongering land of knuckle-dragging simian celebrants of some misbegotten, pathetic Nazi cult of ignorance. I do not acquiesce; I demur. You don’t like it, bite me. I’ve lost all tolerance for fools. And I pity the next one I hear sneering about sour grapes and poor losers.

[Shit] Here, watch this excellent video and read an old poem. I’m running out of words, pitching a fit or a fever, and I need to make sure the lights of the coastline are still shining in the cold.

 

    “next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

– e e cummings