“We shall go warm.
We shall go on by the light of our hearts.
We shall burn mightily in the new year.
We shall go on together—
O you who stand alone on the rim of the earth and are cold,
I salute you here!”
From “Greeting” by May Sarton, New Year’s Eve, 1937
Everyone I know is uncomfortable.
Everyone wants a different house,
something with glass walls
where they can be seen in happiness.
But farther from people.
Hell is other people.
A quiet house is needed, in the trees,
with clean lines and good bones.
High ceilings to let it breathe deep.
A stone foundation, a garden for butterflies.
A warm kitchen for late night suffering.
Quiet neighbors, preferably dead,
barely whispering if they must.
A kettle on the stove to exhale memories;
A kettle that won’t forget I was here.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
A sycamore leaf floats flat
in a puddle on the black street.
It turns slowly in a shadow
that’s been with you all of your life.
And nothing can be done.
Everyone cares but no one comes
to help. Step over it, go on across
so long as the signal allows
into the bright coffeehouse.
The one where the woman
plays guitar sometimes.
Find a table with good light.
Order something with hot milk.
Order warm bread.
Be benevolent with the tip.
Remember all memory is fleeting.
Forget how far you have come in the rain.
The shadow still falls on the notebook,
on every page, despite the lights
overhead and the bright conversations
of others whose children are in school,
who never saw the leaf on the broad
green tree, making shadow; the leaf
that fell and died to bring you here.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
I miss you but you’re dead
and I don’t know what that means,
beyond words and their delusions.
Everything is so mysterious.
I can’t go where you’ve gone
until I’m called.
Even then, is it a journey within Being
or a vanishing point?
No one knows but we still have today
this hazy summer ending soon,
the life around us torpid and drunk
with light. Even you belong here,
Being remembered, still part
Of everything so mysterious.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
For some days, I’ve been working on a post for this blog. It’s about my writing practice, as it has evolved over the past couple of years. It’s a struggle. Hard to focus. I mean both my writing practice and the writing of the new blog post. The world is too much with me. Then tonight I was re-reading an article by Kim Stafford, a poet and son of William Stafford; the latter being one of my favorite poets and a true inspiration. In this article, Kim Stafford outlines the 4 elements of each entry in his father’s daily writing practice. He would date the page, write some prose notes on his experiences, write an aphorism or something to elevate his thoughts, and:
Then he would write something like a poem… or notes toward a poem… or just an exploratory set of lines that never became a poem. To write in poetic lines, rather than prose — this can begin a process for distilling from ordinary experience the extraordinary report of literature. For this day, again, you give yourself a chance to discover worthy things. Nothing stupendous may occur… but if you do not bring yourself to this point, nothing stupendous will happen for sure… and you will spend the balance of your day in blind reaction to the imperatives of the outer world — worn down, buffeted, diminished, martyred.
Yes, that’s it. That’s where I am. Buffeted. I feel like my mind has been dragooned into service of the national psyche and its soul-sucking obsessions. You know the ones I’m talking about and it’s not Game of Thrones. Well, it’s sort of like that. There is an army of the dead and a lot of guys cheesed off that their slaves have been freed. But I digress.
Of course it’s good to be informed, but not influenced. And these days, we are all a’swimmin’ in opinion and very little objectivity. It’s good to be aware of the situation, so long as the situation isn’t fraught with anxiety and exaggeration – cognitive distortion. Is it possible to be prepared for an uncertain and potential chaotic future without being constantly worried – terrorized? I think we owe it to ourselves to try.
“It is likely that some troubles will befall us; but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened! How often has the expected never come to pass! And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives.”
Tomorrow there may come cold wind and rain. That doesn’t mean we need to sit in our homes tonight, soaking wet and shivering. Instead, heads on a swivel and eyes on the path, right?
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone.
Yes, I need to follow my path. I must discover worthy things. And take a few good notes.
Wish me luck.
Oh, and one more thing, lest I be accused of ambiguity:
There are many names for home.
Safety is one of them, into which we lock ourselves,
or simply the place of all slipping away.
The flowers fading on the table
don’t know they’ve been cut,
affirming only being where they belong.
At home there is always a clock
that no one has wound, compelled
to tick by the steady unwinding of hope.
I have meat ye know not of, Christ said,
meaning a kind of home. Many mansions,
brighter than time and far beyond.
So God is another name for home,
and time because everything here
is a memory, mind returning to another world.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
I have been waiting here, it seems like years.
The tides rise and fall. Old Luna, battered
and pale, barely shines for me at all.
The house is tired now and moans
to lay down its walls like limbs, like fallen
logs across a steam.
What are you waiting for? she cries.
For love, I say. For people to stay
or the courage of one oak on a hill
in tall grass, or the strength to give up.
Waiting is easier.
The house is aligned with the stars
where they’ve fallen, somewhere
in the east. Tonight, there is half a moon
to give me hope. I look up and watch,
waiting for these muses to decide.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
“The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.”
– G.K. Chesterton
I’ve sent this by email to my Congressman.
Dear Rep. Carbajal –
What are you doing today, on Trump’s birthday, to resist his mendacious and destructive presidency? I’m taking the time to write to my congressman and ask him to for the love of God do something – Impeach Trump. If only on principle, and especially on principle, he must be impeached. The Constitution is our principles; therefore, our nation is made of principles. Trump despises and abjures them, one and all. Do your duty, sir. Stand and act today for impeachment!
Respectfully,
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Carpinteria.
“I’m very tolerant of stillness. I don’t mind sitting there for half an hour. I’d rather not move my hands just to move them; I’ll wait for the right thing.”
– Jonathan Lethem
I breathe Time in and breathe it out.
Draw in a day and the hours
rush out like a breeze over dandelions.
One dog after another rises
from her sleep in a blaze of light,
turns to sigh and lie back down.
So, it must be better not to take
such large gulps of Time; just a little,
like this moment of my pencil
growing dull, or the next in which
you are reading this. Inhaling just
these few poor words,
exhaling forgiveness into the stillness
of some future room, so brightly lit.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
Metaphor 