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OBSCURE CLARITY

The poem I just wrote is black ink
   not the night dark horse
who approaches the fence
to greet me.

   All this white
is not the falling sky
   over a January
      pasture.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 07.24.09)

PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT LABOR RELATIONS ACT

I dust the smoke of a campfire
with an old crow feather. I pull
a smattering of latin out of my pocket
to drape as tinsel on an Bastille day
blue rose. I wash choruses
out of my lorazepam tablets.

I must stop now.

All my vowels threaten a strike
and suspend the negotiations:
I bent the collective bargaining rules
on the new poetry contract,
insisting the letter “y” choose solely
to be a vowel or a consonant
for consistency’s sake.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(featured in the poetry forum 07.24.09)

LITIGATION

The neighbor’s dog jumps the fence,
then shits in our yard.

Delphi shovels it up with feet set
in a wide stance.

The grass, wet with dew, with rain,
dampens Delphi’s shoes.

She writes notes and places them
in the neighbor’s mail box

as he refuses to open the door
to speak with her.

She makes friends with the beast
of a dog

so being in the yard does not
cause her fear.

Delphi scratches the dog on the belly,
behind the ears,

provides him treats, eventually
a bandana.

The dog still shits in our yard,
but refuses, now, to jump the fence,

sleeps on the old mat by our back door,
eats from a brand new bowl,

growls in such violence at the man
whose yard use to restrain him

that the man backs away
and drops his claim of ownership.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 07.24.09)

WRITERS' BLOCK

In nineteen-eighteen
the Spanish influenza
infected everyone in the world,
killing twenty-two million people,
while, at the same time,
World War One wound down
with a measly body count
of eight million.

Nature wins twenty-two to eight.

Authors and poets
spent millions of words
on thousands of pages
describing, reporting
and illustrating the war,
but not on line
mentioned the influenza,
no one published text
until the nineteen-nineties.

Looking back,
I see people marching
in victory parades
wearing white gauze masks
over their noses
and mouths
in the a futile attempt
to protect themselves
from something
they did not have words
to describe.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(featured in the poetry forum 05.09.09)

To order Kenneth's latest book "Writers' Block and other poems" please click here.

FOOTLING

Early in summer we worked the fields
planted indigo and slavery
jet airplanes and nuclear weaponry
baseball and a hundred meter dash.

It was a dry year with hale storms
and freak snows, a hundred million
pack rats and grasshoppers uncounted,
Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Late in Autumn we worked the fields
harvested mud and snails,
ten penny nails and barbed wire,
a black jack hand and a faro dealer.

It was a wet season with dry lightning
and dust bowls, a hundred million
football fans and ticket sales uncounted,
Hamas and Likud sitting down for tea.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 05.09.09)

Right?

By hand, with nib and ink,
Delphi scribes a new New Testament.

Silently she says to herself,
Once upon a time...,

then begins to write a real story
about Lisa, the girl next door,

and the twelve women who meet
every Wednesday at noon

to discuss poetry and the meanings
written between the lines

and the best way to determine
if a man means I love you

or uses the words as a tool
to pry off a pair of tight jeans.

Delphi mentions the Factory
instead of Babylon, lists the names

of all the girls who take their clothes off
and all the men (& women) who pay

the price of this fidelity to attraction,
stimulation, desire carnal beauty.

She pens no allegory, no revelation,
nothing for the trashy tabloids.

She pens a gospel of her friends
so that they might be remembered,

might remember that they are important
like Abraham, Sarah & Hagar.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 05.09.09)

INDIGESTION

A bad dream pastes
a collage of magazine images
on the moon, backlit
designer names
from a stellar platform,
but dims all the romance
around the world.

A woman tries to wake
from the mind’s
imaginative subconscious,
clean the sable brush of light
painting the inside canvas
of her rapidly moving eyes.

There is nothing wet
about this rain
of designer labels,
the monochrome multitude
of Ford model faces,
the craters that cup
bare breasts.

A woman holds
her breath in sleep,
tosses off the covers,
crosses legs,
beats her pillow,
then smothers it
against her belly.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(featured in the poetry forum 03.11.09)

JIGSAW PUZZLE

I googled Betty
and she showed up
in ten thousand
different locations—
picking up, sorting
and assembling pieces
bores me, so
goodbye.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 03.11.09)

COINCIDENCE

Delphi burns parchment, spells,
written in red ink, maybe blood,
by the man who believes
he possesses arcane power.

A wisp of ash floats up from a tin,
then, kite-like, swirls through the wind,
tailless, uncoordinated.

Many miles away, the man coughs,
foams at the mouth, his eyes bulge,
before he spits out a pretzel
stuck in his windpipe.

Grains of damp salt fall off
the once crisp, baked biscuit
and sink deep into the carpet.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 03.11.09)

ELLIE'S IMAGINATION GROWS LARGER THAN THE UNIVERSE

The drive that powers Ellie’s imagination beyond the great expanse
is that of a victim who can neither rid herself of a memory
nor learn to sidle up next to it and hold its hand.

Sometimes six-packs channel this energy into song,
into a dance so wild she spills from her banks
like a river filled, simultaneously, with rain and snow melt.

Usually silence sends the energy to the canvas,
to sombre pigments that fill the shadows with a threat
or place some figure in the deeper part of an ocean.

Sometimes the walls of her house conduct the colors
of her anger, though her television provides an amnesia
to the larger futility of self-directed rage.

Ellie gathers opposites hoping they’ll cancel each other out,
but they don’t. No big bang starts things all over again—
only the little lights moving farther away in the expanding universe.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(featured in the poetry forum 02.03.09)

LEARNING CURVE

Each morning the crows find
the animals whose journey
failed to cross the road completely.
They locate the tumbled carcasses
off to the side of the highway,
in the ditch where they rolled
or the splat still plastered
to the asphalt as blood congeals
with the oily, black surface.

The road-shoulder graveyard,
bone yard: antlers,
porcupine quills, wind driven
feathers. Flies navigate
the bands of heat lifting decay
to our noses and, soon,
maggots consume the red flesh,
the bacteria that swell a body
no more in motion.

Soon the coyotes will figure out
that they should herd their prey
to the road, let the big rigs
take down the moose, the elk
too large for the pack.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 02.03.09)

IHOP Stop

Where the dairy truck tipped
and spilled its contents
the desert hot highway
melted butter all over
everything.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 02.03.09)

STATE OF MIND

Spilled coffee and cat piss
fumes rise from the sofa.

An anonymous cock leaves a stain
on the inside of Peggy’s cheek.

The mop died years ago
and the floorboards suffer through neglect.

His grimy hands stroke her breasts,
squeeze, grease her nipples until she moans.

Rain attends the broken glass,
the ghost of a window.

He tells her to talk dirty to him.
She remains silent: doesn’t feel dirty at all.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 11.30.08)

RIVER LIFTS A DEAD FISH TOWARD THE SEA

It is in the early hours awake,
where time times four
drifts before the alarm set,
that I ask Jesus why I am here
and what I’ve done, which is nothing,
to deserve the desperate way I feel
and how the pain still tears
the soul’s seams faster than I
sew them up and I see
the thin line of beans
fall from the rough, burlap sack
that is my fabric.

Jesus does not answer, because
he is not here—just a thought
a twinkling, a wish for someone
to blame.

Really, it is because the answer
does not reside in this room,
in laying on a bed’s firm mattress,
but in the walk I take through the dark
down to the river, to the large rock
by the railroad bridge, where the ducks
cozy in the tall grasses, the radio towers’
blinking lights flash in the water
and the only sounds are those of emergency
and air blown through vacant buildings.

I wish to dump this feeling off on “fate,”
on “God’s will,” on—

The rustle of the branches in the oaks,
centuries old, speaks of the wind,
the shift of shadows on the black gleam
that is the river’s tug upon the moon.

Yes. I admit that all this life of mine
derives itself from choice
and consequence assigned by physics,
gravity, from the dead beyond my touch
of whom still I can not quite let go.

How can a person still alive feel so empty,
like a torn coffee sack, beans spilled across the floor
before the workers place them in the roaster,
fire them, crush them add water until they are this river
in the dark, by the old rust falling
from the unpainted steel: rails
unused for years and wooden ties too corrupt
to support much weight.

I mean: first light brushes the sky
and a few cars start their engines,
the ducks emerge from the tall grasses
where their paddle feet counter
the river’s current
and the swallows poke their heads
out of muddy nests under the rusty trestles.

I mean: there is a piece of rose quartz
I tumble in my hand, keep in my pocket,
a talisman to remind me of a remote notion
some call love.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 11.30.08)

LIVING WITH MISTAKES

Buy them a beer
and invite them over
for a barbecue
when happy hour
ends in a blaze
of fiery clouds.

Yes, they’ll spill
on the carpet,
dump a burger
into the grass,
and adjust pictures
on the walls,

and they’ll snore
on the couch
ready to disturb
your slumber.

Instead, stay up
and talk to them
about everything;
examine their crows feet,
their callousness,
their downward turning
smile. Become friendly,
intimate, so they never
worry you again.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 10.29.08)

POST APOCALYPSE CRISPIES

Death sipped tea at my dinning table,
read an Adrian Rich poem obliquely,
sat there pondering it for a few moments,
didn’t get the message.
Sipped tea again from one of my ceramic cups,
refilled it from the steaming pot,
knew he was in charge of the moment.
He tore the page out of the book,
folded it precisely,
placed it in his shirt pocket.

In profile Death watched me
out of the corner of his eye,
not conscious that the devil
hides in corners.
He knew I knew it was him —
the black robes, the bony death head
are a dead give away.
Death said to no one in particular
that he wanted to talk to young philosophers,
over turkish coffee in some dark bistro.
Wanted to hear them talk about him,
how much they longed to know him,
how they adored him —
maybe dance a waltz with a pretty girl
if the juke box had Strauss.

I offered Death Jimmy Santiago Bacca,
a one page Language of Life reading.
How Death was silent reading Jimmy’s words.
Ignored me, when I shouted,
READ IT OUT LOUD!
He shook his head sagely.
He got that poem.
Tore it out of the hardcover book,
folded the page precisely
placed it in his vest pocket.
Whispered over the back of his hand,
The guys on wall street
should read that poem,
before I declared them obsolete
and insignificant.

Death reached my bookshelf,
grabbed a book of my poems,
opened to a random page,
read Drop The Bomb
in his silent way.
Critical mass filled the kitchen,
broke most of my dishes,
splashed dishwater to the floor,
but turned my lead pipe-fittings to gold.
He tore the page from my book
folded it precisely,
placed it in his hip pocket.

Death looked at me
through the lens of my words,
a searchlight from my prison tower.
He tracked me, scythe gripped
in an ancient hand full of poems,
tracked me all the way to HiFi Cafe —
<<<there is poetry there on Fridays,
<<<all sorts of young intellectuals
<<<and a misfeathered angel,
<<<who keeps poems in many pockets.

Clothed in captured poems,
Death sat drinking that turkish stuff, in this bistro,
listened to all the young intellectuals
read poems about date rape and child abuse,
drive-by shootings and drug over doses,
loveless fucking at fifteen and teen suicides.
He learned how the young intellectuals
long to embrace Death,
especially the pretty girls.
All of them wanted that long slow dance,
but at the HiFi Cafe
there is no Strauss on the juke box.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 10.29.08)

(originally posted at Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry's "Under the Blue Umbrella")

PUT A MOTH IN THE SINK

In the rows of corn, back in seventy-nine,
in the split second before you lit your first cigarette,
you became conscious, for the first time
that you were making a choice.

It is the same now, but your body screams
for release from dry shudders,
that rack your back and tighten the skin on your neck
so that it feels like your skull is being crushed.
And the white line, you so carefully made straight
speaks seductions through the candle’s flame.

All your friends are there, laughing, joking, saying, Do-it! Do-it!
They line up with pom-poms, cheerleaders for your big play at their goal.

But they are in your blurred periphery.
<<<You are focused.
<<<You and the white powder.
<<<You finger the rolled bill.
<<<Your nostrils flare like a horse’s
<<<at the scent of a mountain lion.

But, also, you are in that eternity,
that split second of choice.
All the cards laid out in your mind.
All the other voices are silent.
Your inner being stands on the head of a pin.
And your pounding heart threatens
to knock you over.

Then that moth flies in from the night,
to sear itself in the candle’s flame.

There it is.
<<<On the table.

<<< <<<Burning.

<<<Wings evaporating
<<< <<< <<<into smoke.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(originally posted at Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry's "Under the Blue Umbrella")

(added 10.29.08)

I KNOW THAT I RAN OUT OF THINGS TO SAY

So why am I typing this poem,
this collection of words
that possess something
resembling a rhythm, a cadence.

An invitation to a wedding
sits on my table, opened,
waits for a card purchase,
a check written, a send off
of a friend I’ll, likely,
never see again.

Next to it, a Netflix package
ready to be popped into the mailbox,
to return a movie rated one star.

A calculator remains unused, collects dust
as I do the math in my head. Simple
calculations of interest, earnings, percents,
additions, subtractions as the economy
spins downward in semi-control.

A roll of the dice, probability,
combat results, no bets,
and morale checks, American
Civil War games stored on the shelf,
unplayed...

...the long nights, sleep alone,
in a bed for two, the smell of her
on her pillow, a long strand
of grey-blond hair—away,
a mission of mercy, a sick relative,
a must be done thing, stand
out of her way, of her being her,

of me blanking a slate,
all yesterdays’ words gone,
sent to publishers,
who rubber stamp rejection,
form letters, dear john....

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 07.30.08)

WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

You don’t know
love; anymore
you walk around
what is important,
fail to recognize—
lovely, you look,
lovely I admit out loud,
but refuse to kiss you
when you wear
brown, ready
for the garden,
weeds, while I
tie my shoes,
my hat on,
prepare to leave
for the cemetery,
for the girl
who plays flute
no more—
green, they keep
the grass green,
the stones turn brown
under the wet fall
resembling rain;
I gave up asking
why—it is important
to love her
though she moved
beyond recognition—
I return
empty of tears
to the beauty
of your hands
in the brown earth;
perspiration
dapples your face—
I kiss you,
because it’s important,
because you let me leave
for the place
you refuse to go.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 07.30.08)

SONGS FALL FROM HER

Unmistakably mad
the blond woman sings
her exit from the psych ward,
belts out The Liberty Song,
watches a flight of pigeons rise—
mistakes them for doves.

She cuts her hair short
with a knife borrowed
from a biker,
a favor she returns,
by allowing his thrusts
to stop her bleeding,
to fill her belly
with a new song.

She does not mourn
her changes, her new
nesting instinct.
She gathers plastic bags
onto a park-oak’s branch,
weaves them into home
from the example
of the birds.

She sits in the dark
all of her songs sung,
eats what remains
of the park bench offerings
to the pigeons, to her.

One day she mistakes
her water breaking
as a change of season,
climbs down, migrates
as the weight of the world
falls from her, flies away
never to be seen again.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 07.30.08)

Just before its butchering

Just when you think
he seeks something normal,
he screams, “Jesus. Oh, God!”
and violently applies
a box of crayons to paper
set upon a hot plate.

Or is that the middle
and this piece seeks a beginning
and, in time, an end?

It could be the fishheads
are something she steers into,
confusing them with fishtails
as the car glides past the ice
filled cart at the open air market.

No matter how hard
my foot hits the floor,
I am the passenger
and the breaks don’t engage,
so my eyes widen
and I brace myself,
but the car comes
to a stop just short
of the curb.

It tastes like middle to me,
and no amount of typing
will bring it to the end or find
a start this far down the page.

What can you do, but stop reading,
because nothing from this point on
makes much sense—

keep between elbow wrestles
crossed block sidewalk gaps
heaviness like your empty bells
burlap stucco light bulbs
lurid animal sweet hips goodbye

just before its butchering.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

(added 03.29.08)

U.S. Golden Rule Prayer

Dear lord grant us
five hundred pound bombs
and laser guided missiles
dropping from the sky
upon our neighborhoods.

Grant us midnight rendition
commando teams stealing
our local leaders.

Grant us electroshock treatment
and water boarding.

Grant us sleep deprivation
and hunger.

Grant us occupiers who ignore
the Geneva Convention on a whim,
on an order from the administration.

Grant us roadside fanatics
who destroy each others’ churches.

Grant us foreign soldiers on our streets
who kill indescrimently whenever
gang members harm anyone.

Grant us predator drones
above our cities and towns
and hell fire missiles
launched remotely from a man
peering endless hours into a TV screen.

Grant us IEDs and market place
truck bombs.

Grant us collateral damage:
childen’s body parts on street corners,
weddings showed by gunship fire,
families gunned down by checkpoints
guards.

Grant us an economy in ruins
and the graft and greed and corruption
of foreign companies.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

The light, darling. The light.

The woman standing
outside the thirteenth floor window
of an office building in Albquerque,
thinks she is in a Magrite painting,
fears the wind will take away her bowler,
believes cartoons are as real as reality
and that lack of belief
is just as strong as belief.

She does not feel it is her fault
that traffic is tied up for blocks
and emergency vehicles blare sirens,
that lights flash patriotically
and there are professional people
speaking at her from the window.

The view of the mountains and the river
is better from this vantage point
than from her windowless cubical
and the bird songs are far lovelier than her boss
who does not know how to say thank you.

In fact, this is a good place for a picnic
and she wishes her children
and her three ex-husbands would join her,
can’t understand why the deli
won’t deliver, as she has a taste for slaw.

The birds, she realizes, are too attached
to the notion of gravity and create
as big a flap as the fretting professionals,
but there are rain drops rising past her face
and she takes comfort in that sort of beauty.

She is hungry now, like Eve, takes the apple
of her eye from its traditional place
and eats it, consumes in twelve different ways
all the words of the apostles, even Bartholemew,
but not Mathias.

Finally, her daughter, in Paris, sets the paintbrush
in the tin of turpentine, wipes her hands clean
and goes to a corner cafe
for a glass of wine and whatever
the cook will whip up this close to midnight.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

HISTORY TAPS ITS FINGERS

History taps its fingers,
keeps geologic time,
waits for the next ice age
so it can sweep
all our technology shit
under the long carpet
of snow.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

MEMORY OF MIDDLE IOWA, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

It begins at the Trek convention
with the slim girl in the diaphanous blouse
who arrived with the conclusion:
this is the best place to get
the most guys in bed over a weekend.

Her rapture turns into a song
echoed down the hotel’s hallways
and is taken up as the new theme
for a boys-grown-old club
where, for twenty hours,
some guys think they are special.

But the numbness
that invades a marriage
dampens the thunder of orgasms,
until, really, it might as well
be the cough of a passer-by.

And elsewhere there is a guy—
a husband—struck by lightning,
as he puts the pieces together
from the convention blogs
after his business meetings.

She continues to walk
through the dark and dizzy nights
where the cliff-face is at hand
and, perhaps, she’ll fall off—
if not at the convention,
then when she gets home
to learn that it is now a house
with a broken furnace.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

WHITE SANDS

This is how I cut myself open
—dream a dream that I can’t quite make real, then
the wounds open from within and I fall

into my blood that collects in an open clamshell,

fall into moist bone
exposed by the ocean

that washes away the mountains I made,

fall into the shapes of extinct animals
that reside in the calcified rockface stripped bare,

and the night is the undertow that tears my flesh away
as easy as sand from this beach.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

Passionate Nowhere

My exhaustion originates
in burying dreams.

The boneyard is full of white stone.
It paves the streets of this small town

where the gas station is closed
forever plus a day.

What propulsion will send me
out of here, when the threat of rain

blocks the sky?

- Kenneth P. Gurney

Quarterly Bukowski Moment

You don’t know what it is like to be Spiritual
until you’ve climbed to the mountain top
and received instructions directly from God.

That’s how it should be for everyone, everywhere.
Some ordeal, like climbing a mountain,
or running through a thousand meters of flaming petrol,
or watching every episode of Gilligan’s Island in a row,
before you can wear the I’m Spiritual brand.

And I’m not talking about things like dying on the cross.
Dying is fucking easy. Living is hard. Do the nine to five
and come home and truly love your kids
through all their whining before their homework gets done
and find out what TV crap their watching, then turn the damn thing off.
Find the ef-fing morale courage to stand up to that bully cop
who thinks his tin shield gives him license
to baton beat the weed smoking, dread-lock neighbor fuck-up you hate so much
for encouraging his dog to shit on your well manicured lawn.

And don’t give me any New Age sweat lodge bull shit, either.
The only sweating that counts Spiritually is at the wrong end
of a nasty, blue-steel gun barrel, when you know you probably
have to take one for the team. And, you know, that in-the-hospital sweat
counts, too. Especially when you sit next to your motorcycle child
who is hooked up to wires and tubes and beepy-things
in that fancy, mechanical, hospital bed.

By the way, I don’t give a God damn rat’s ass
about the every-Sunday-go-to-church folks
who don’t give a flying fuck every other hour of the week.
That includes Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson
and every other well monied, TV evangelist, sin raking S.O.B.
They couldn’t fill a flee’s thimble with true Spirit
and no self respecting, on the job, Saint Peter
is letting them go anywhere but down.

So you don’t know what it’s like to be Spiritual.
You haven’t climbed to the mountain top, yet.
And I don’t mean any prissy Colorado fourteen.
I mean the heaven scratching Himalayas
where there are the ice preserved carcasses
of your failed predecessors, littering the way up
to God’s wondrous vocal cords.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

This is the leg-lift century
for all the bodies that wish
a figure as slim as a cloud
of blue smoke.

At the far end of the room
stand the people who lost
their left shoe.

I fail to recognize the names
delivered by the news anchor.
In this test of relevancy,
the horses in the barn I clean
defeat congress.

This is not tragedy or comedy,
just a little girl playing in the mud
and tomorrow is laundry day—
all our lost prayers collect
in the lint filter.

Hope is as sinister as the man
flapping his arms on the rooftop,
but this is the leg-lift century
and the world refuses
to spit him into the clouds.

The girl who forgets to weep
for her lost hat, fails to paint the sun
yellow in her desire for a truer shade,
a color Pantone released as a free agent
before the new season started.

Though I executed as many leg-lifts
as my body managed before exhaustion
stopped the sunset, my love, spread too thin,
proved insufficient to lift the layers of fog
from the many harbors where the living
weep for the dead waiting for the ride
of their new lives.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

not titled

Thunder over the desert
punctuates the runoff,
the flash fiction
of sandy arroyos
bursting with water,
the tenuous grip
of my hand
on an inkless pen.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

More Real

Delphi wishes to translate
from muse to person,
from thought to flesh.What novel character
wouldn’t want to write
their own lines, make
a racket, a stink, a life real
entering the field of time.I’d like to show her
how to part the curtain
behind my eyes, but
that well worn path of light
flows in. So, somehow,
she needs to work her way
to my breath and traverse
the tumble of air
that goes both in and out.Yes, that is it. Breath.
Like God placed into the ash
and dust. Mine into
ink and page.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

Standings

This morning I found
my favorite baseball team
fell from first, spinning
like a plane with one wing.The empty icebox yawns
a cavernous stagnation.The detritus of dead flies
waits for the vacuum
at the store, displayed
on the shelf in a box
so that I might purchase
the thought of cleanliness.In grease pencil, I draw
a scoreboard and bleachers
on the killing window
in the dream of Wrigley Field
and a youth spent shagging
fly balls in Chicagoland.One of the bugs
still has some buzz left,
vibrates on the wood
where the paint flakes,
sill weathered by water
that blows through
the slanted frame.I must go to the grocery,
sometime. Today. Maybe.

Or, at least, get a piece of newsprint—
the sports page I read—
with which to lift the dream
of rising flight off its back
and return it to the outdoors.

- Kenneth P. Gurney

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