QUOTABLE
Words are my only evidence that I have a shadow in this world. Only with a commitment to notebook and pen, early mornings in cold leather-backed chairs or empty dining room tables - and opening my senses - am I able to coax them out.
Bare tree with a life all its own today, your arms lifted by the marionette wind. No buds for you, yet. They are still a month away. For now, your skin is smooth over the branches as though it’s summer and you’ve been freshly shorn. The knots are blistering and cold and they bend with your trunk, as elbows and knees might flex. (more…)
Somehow, you know you must have a connection with them. They are fans of the same authors, the same books, and yet here they are in this America’s Funniest Home Video versions of American literature. Mercy on them, the these false poets, like false prophets, butchering another writer’s work the way a cover band might a wedding song. (more…)
The fish swim silver and gold
in the water kept warm
by the lamp light.
“Big boys use their spoons.”
I say this in all seriousness and leave the room.
My son is at the table in Sunday clothes.
He’s wearing a hat turned backwards, a plaid dress shirt and work gloves.
I have singled him out for not using cutlery
When so much more is wrong.
I don’t know if he’s followed my directions or not.
I’ll look in on him in another minute
and tell him to take off his hat and gloves.
He’ll think I am being hard on him because he’s the only boy
Or because that’s how fathers can be to sons
(a way his dad has learned from his own father).
Discipline for certain improprieties and poor manners at the table
Could set it all into motion.
Another generation given up on the one before.
Another generation placing importance on minutiae.
I act as though his using a spoon or being courteous makes him a better man
When I know those abilities are only polishing.
His soul is good.
His character is strong
And will be the rest of his life.
I will enforce the rules.
The spoon will be lifted.
The hat will come off – and so will the gloves.
The world will not be upset
Because my boy chooses to pick marshmallows from his bowl,
Line them straight on the wood grain
And smile broad, all teeth, a way I never could around my father.
Here’s my first shot at poetry (on this site, anyway.) It’s an ode to something sweet and unexpected on a desert night, in a place where people would never be if not for man’s persistence, inventiveness and greed. Vegas, of course. Mandalay Bay … all taken from bits and pieces of dialogue around me. FYI: Corona is my love dressed in white (label.)
By pool water colored electric blue by floodlights,
found love unexpected leaning on railing.
Hawaiian shirt, casual, shorts,
found love in white in unpretentious conversation, in pop culture,
watching first and saying nothing, then
a pleasant introduction sharing 80s and wine cooler embarassment,
relating to childhoods in Seattle Kansas City.
Beachboys play nice bartender pouring drinks,
kabobs with shrimp as table displays, golden rooftops seedy gambling.
An incidental audience fades away,
my heart comes clear and my thoughts go clouded,
how can it be this love in two places at once,
in tall free drinks searching us out on a trip that was not amounting to anything,
talking about moving to Hawaii with no money and making it last, riding Stratosphere roller coaster, Christianity, spirtuality, and drug mistakes.
Truth Project, indeed – an emissary close to the creator’s own heart.
Last call too fast and shuffling down narrow sidewalk like cattle under Palms.
Drinks carried out and promises to meet at a later date, fulfilled.
“How about those Mariners?”
One last squeeze of hand to wash down the desert,
on burning windswept dry streets and cab rides illuminated with rolling lights and foreign accents.
Sweet Corona, sweet as lime and bitter as salt, my love witness.
TITLE: Siddhartha
AUTHOR: Hermann Hesse
TITLE: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 19441990
AUTHOR: Charles Bukowski
913-314-2201
Kansas City, Missouri
kevin@kevinkuzma.com
Copyright © 2012 KevinKuzma.com
Site by Seven Places Productions
Photography by Aaron Lindberg
