March 7, 2011
In the library
even when I write bright
the intensity of the light
is subjective in fact
comparatively dim
when I stare down the stacks
and see the glow
that still escapes
from row upon row
of closed volumes
some ignited centuries ago
February 6, 2011 (I was 66)
It doesn’t surprise me
you were the one to become a soldier
and there are a dozen more
my mind would place in uniform
You never expressed the wish nor willingness
but I would have guessed you sensed aroma
in the stench of heroism and duty
Now you’ve lived long enough to taste the rust
from the rotten iron of irony
I understand the choices were few
for all of us in the cold
We took hold of the life lies in front of us
pulled and were pulled in return
Some got the short string
others tangled in the knots
A few untied a packaged gift
they assumed they deserved from birth
with that bow around their little finger
January 18
from this week in January 2011 (I was 66)
A twitch a tremble a tremor
We hold on to one another in fear
The result is a chain reaction
worry anxiety protective paranoia
We have no charms
no amulets no talisman no mojo
The beads have dissolved in tears
It is not fate destiny or karma
earth moves and we are of the earth
It jiggles it shakes it shudders
Everything settles into a low spot
The effects cannot assume a cause
Purpose is a cosmic conception
black hole or anti-matter
beyond my walnut mind
from this week of December, 2011 (I was 67)
Love the noun is an abstraction that
can only be indicated by love the verb
Love the verb is better indicated in the less
overt and sometimes superficial typical
physical action (hug kiss hand over
heart) More subtle indicators can be
emblematic or more heavy handed
symbolic It is not the enduring aspects
of love that are difficult to invoke
it’s the fleeting ephemeral unstable
quality even when it feels eternal
To relate that is as elusive
as discovering the real thing
It should never be quite what you think it is
from this week in December, 2011 (I was 59)
Rothenberg at midnight in December
The night watchman has cleared the streets
We emerge from the smoke of the Altfrankishe
and a deliberate encounter with strangers
The cold air is good in the lungs
we exhale frost against the moon
We walk frozen stones under St. Jacob’s archway
permitted a quiet encounter with history
We follow the church shadow in the dark
as so many have done before
Peter the Rock asleep in the Garden
Moonlight falls upon the Lord in Prayer
depicted precisely at his desperate hour
We are witness with new awareness
At this time the city is ours
The chill plays upon my spine
from those other centuries
those other December nights
Those other walkers welcome us
into the niche of their granite company
I give it solitary contemplation
across the cobbles to Rodergasse
bowed to the wafer moon
from this week in December, 2011 (I was 59)
Rothenberg at midnight in December
The night watchman has cleared the streets
We emerge from the smoke of the Altfrankishe
and a deliberate encounter with strangers
The cold air is good in the lungs
we exhale frost against the moon
We walk frozen stones under St. Jacob’s archway
permitted a quiet encounter with history
We follow the church shadow in the dark
as so many have done before
Peter the Rock asleep in the Garden
Moonlight falls upon the Lord in Prayer
depicted precisely at his desperate hour
We are witness with new awareness
At this time the city is ours
The chill plays upon my spine
from those other centuries
those other December nights
Those other walkers welcome us
into the niche of their granite company
I give it solitary contemplation
across the cobbles to Rodergasse
bowed to the wafer moon
November 13, 2010 (I was 66)
Those boxes in the garage
packed and labeled and stacked
from an other part of life
we never intended to abandon
when we renovated
A pyramid of cardboard stones
where a car should be
a monument instead of a movement
Somethings create their own past
somethings entombed we never meant to bury
from this week in July, 2011 (I was 66)
A Chinese lacquered bowl
passes from one to another
old men with bony hands
from which they measure
spoonfuls of white sugar
She enters with swift grace
a blur of perfume
the blue porcelain teapot
blowing plumes of steam
From the veranda she hears
water slapped onto the dry stone
and she imagines the dark boys
smelling of hair oil and talc
beaching their boat on the rocks
in the deep black under the trees
stirring an unmeasurable sweetness
July 1, 2011 (I was 66)
Turn of the phrase is not done on a lathe
not wheeled and peeled into curls
not furrowed and beveled and burnished
always a bit smaller than first uttered
More like the looped string game
I grasp the line within your fingers
stretch and expand what you hand me
to another contortion supported geometrically
June 30, 2011 (I was 66)
Where are the stories of animals
struck by lightning?
Bolts down the throats of giraffes
flattened elephants
Sparks arcing between the poles of elk antlers
Dogs peeing on split trees
Animals electrically altered
to become more or less of what
they originally were
I hear of people getting hit
all the time
Any who survive are life-shaken
June 24, 2011 (I was 66)
Listen to the emanations from your empty shell
to the howling of those airless winds
There are voices that call only when you listen
Listen with the window open to the songs
of birds that may not be in the trees
though their songs have been for centuries
On your rock sit and listen to the streams
streaming over rocks then they flow
flow wider sound deeper and the light
plays through wet surfaces to shadow
invisibilities across the river stones
The invisibilities dance to music only you can hear
emanating from your empty shell
June 5, 2011 (I was 66)
My mother was on the Village Council
She first ran when I was twelve
I didn’t know she was going to do it
My wife is on the City Council
Been married twenty-five years before she ran
I didn’t know she was going to do it
I know I did not cause it
Forget the psychology of the subconscious
or purposeful co-incidence
It was not my fault
Really
I could never stand to sit
so long in long meetings
my mother to decide where the one
new street light would go
exactly
my wife to study survey consider
cross-town routes with freeway access
and judicial zoning to include affordable housing
but both of them mostly
to confront the guy whose pit bull broke
through the fence again
May 7, 2011 (I was 66)
Even in looking foolish
the fool makes mistakes
when he is not careful enough
to appear continually ridiculous
Unless he upsets his own apple cart
someone will try to buy an apple
Part of a shirt tail should hang out
a cowlick of hair remains untamed
Easy enough to keep speech a bit obtuse
Silence is too easily mistaken for wit
A subtle faux pas in appearance
more dependable less questionable un-beguiling
Blind vigilance the reliable tool of the reliable tool
incredulity his favorite tactic
April 30, 2011 (I was 66)
THE JAILS An Adaptation of E. A. Poe, The Bells
(Hear me read both at JohnKallio.com Go to: Audio)
I
Hear the hinges in the jails -
County jails!
What a night of mischief their whining unveils!
How they grate and rasp and scrape
In the icy air of night
While the pimps that over-sprinkle
All the streets seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight.
Doing time, time, time
For a sort of Runic crime,
To the din incarceration inevitably wails
From the jails, jails, jails, jails,
Jails, jails, jails-
From the helling and the yelling of the jails.
II
Hear the mad prison wails –
The penitent flails!
What a tale of terror now his turbulency scales!
In the startled ear of night
How he screams out his afright!
Too much horrified to speak
He can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In futile expostulation to the deaf from the barred.
In his clamorous appealing to the mercy of the guard,
Crying higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And his resolute endeavor
To invoke a now or never
From a mute and timeless moon.
Oh the jails, jails, jails!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour.
Pounding heartbeats perturbate the air!
Yet the ear fully knows
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger grows and grows.
The ear distinctly details
From the screwing
And tattooing
How the danger nails and impales
In the wrangling and the mangling in the anger of the jails –
Of the jails,
Of the jails, jails, jails, jails
Jails, jails, jails –
In the clamor and the clangor of the jails!
III
Hear the moaning from the jails –
Foreign jails!
What a world of solemn thought their monody assails!
Of the tortures in the night
How we shiver at the sight
And melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
Ah, the people that we accuse,
Detainees that we abuse
Are alone.
And who keeps the cagelings captive
In their muffled monotone
Feels a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone.
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human –
They are Ghouls.
And our country collects the tolls
Of their subhuman souls, souls, souls;
Souls
Sounding from the jails!
Our sense of justice fails,
Drowning in the jails!
We steal their time, time, time
for a sort of punic crime
Resounding in the jails –
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the throbbing of the jails,
Of the jails, jails, jails –
To the sobbing of the jails;
Keep time, time, time
As he wails, wails, wails,
In terror, terrorist tales
Revolting in the jails!
In the jails, jails, jails –
To the jolting of the jails,
Of the jails, jails, jails, jails,
Jails, jails, jails –
To the moaning and the groaning of the jails.
April 23, 2011 (I was 66)
Is the crisis mode of the world
indeed more severe than my life has seen
Or has my awareness grown acute
by exclusion of ordinary perception
We remedy symptoms pray for cures
out of fervent habit
and subdued expectation
Youth is allowed to drive
the insignificant used vehicle
we magnanimously passed on
once our parents died
They drive to trivial music they memorized
as we did to Disneyland
where the dresses of Snow White and Cinderella
have faded and Prince Charming
is some guy with a foot fetish
who still lives with his parents
Perceptions do change with the times
March 19, 2011 (I was 66)
In the solarium of the Ahwahnee great room
at an oak table next to the waterfall fountain
the five great windows bathe in white
it snowed heavily last night
No matter where you’ve lived
you have not experienced the scenic intensity
of This reality
It is what makes ansel adams lower case
A laden live oak sheds weighty flakes
a sagging sugar pine turned dwarf pine
Buried boundary poles and whited wire
separate one white field from another white field
The trees are not trees
they are thick webs of white
releasing a secondary storm in the gravity and warm
The place is too public for serious thought
though passing visitors are silenced by the sight
The more private side room would be as bright
but I chose this place to occupy
the same space we made a family portrait
more than two decades of snow ago
now soaked deep as the Miwok into the valley floor
And all This not to mention the backdrop
amassed granite to glacier peak
white sheathed scarps rise to limit sky
wall away thoughts of this Japanese winter
where ominous flakes of fallout drift
March 5, 2011 (I was 65)
The kind of poems I most appreciate…
detail moments in the distant past
more real than all of yesterday:
Stanley Kunitz, “Portrait”
acknowledge the private inner existence that creates
every individual:
Stephen Dunn, “A Secret Life”
recognize the elements of the atmosphere to create
the import of the message before the reader suspects it:
Gary Snyder, “Hay for the Horses”
distill the original images and notions from which aspects
of complex ideas and knowledge were formed or first realized:
Heather McHugh, “Place Where Things Got”
follow the threads of information back and forth
until you have the whole cloth and feel smart wearing it:
Robert Pinsky, “Shirt”
demonstrate how our clumsy inability to act can lead us
to the correct non-action:
Stephen Dunn, “At the Smithville Methodist Church”
speak directly in conversational tone and reveal purpose
when I didn’t know there was one:
Paul Zimmer, “What Zimmer Would Be”;
Karl Shapiro, “Garage Sale”
January 7, 2011 (I was 66)
Not in it a fog on the ocean
viewed from a high cliff under a blue sky
drifts in pleasing mystery
breaking here and there to reveal
waves spattering on sharp rock
or swirling eddies of every color
through the vapor
In it on the ocean there is no sky
and the cliff a ghost you don’t want to hear
too close looming unseen
open mouth baring teeth
and sloshing hungry saliva
in your face
