Tag Archives: poetry

Personality Disorders

by kaweah

Sam Barber, sitting in the redwood parlor playing Adagio
for Strings on the Steinway, and Una’s in the bathtub
running the cold tap with a pistol in her hand and a bullet
in her breast, her black broth bleeding out, making warm
curlicues all around her, an arm reaching out
for more sleeping pills.

Behind the piano, the door to the guest room is closed
for J.R. and his guest, romping on the deathbed
and I’m seasick on the heaving edge, looking out
the west window—the reaper in the surf.

Yeats, J.R.’s comrade is fog-white with age
and madness and running naked through the poppies
singing for the tatters in his coat and brandishing
Una’s best cleaver at the star-eyed tourists.

© 2016 Kaweah

RJA 2016

by kaweah

The Robinson Jeffers Association (RJA) Conference for 2016 in Carmel-by-the-Sea was a great learning opportunity as usual, though participation was somewhat low. The twofold fact that I was able to (1) recite my own poetry at Tor House and (2) present on the state of Carmel in 1916 (when it was incorporated, a century ago), probably says a lot about the present state of the RJA. That is to say that the RJA ought to be able to draw more legitimate contributors so that the likes of yours truly might be kept out of the spotlight.

I do think that Robinson Jeffers as a topic, plus the important themes that his work addresses, is important enough to draw in researchers and artists. I suppose I need to help promote the RJA, in spite of the fact that I am nobody.

I do appreciate having been provided an opportunity to recite my poetry before the Jeffers community for the first time, and as well, to have been permitted to correct some common misconceptions about Jeffers and Carmel, albeit before a reduced Sunday audience.

Sunday was the 100th anniversary of Verdun, one of the most horrible slaughters in human history (the word ‘battle’ doesn’t seem to fit), so I started the morning off with a recitation of The Second Coming, a popular poem of Una’s idol William Butler Yeats. Next, I played a short movie consisting of images of old Monterey, Pebble Beach, Carmel, San Francisco from a hundred years ago—plus images from the Great War, to the music of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, a popular anthem of the war. I really put the “Ken Burns effect” to work in the little music video. After that, I just reeled off a slue of slides to address the said misconceptions. In a nutshell, my point was that Jeffers sometimes made the Carmel Point of 1916 seem more remote,  rural, and wild than it actually had been. Jeffers was perfectly capable of “honeying his truth with lying” as he accused other poets of doing.

I hope I didn’t upset anybody too much. Nobody loves Jeffers’ poetry more than yours truly, but let’s do be honest. I can hardly imagine Jeffers himself seeing it any other way.

Falco urbanus

by kaweah

“Jeffers is my God.” — Charles Bukowski

When the blades of the falcon’s
    silhouette flash
Between the bright towers of the City
    we rub our eyes.
Pigeons squat in gutters
    on watch for shadows.
Not the ruddy-tailed buzzard
    the poet lionized;
Bagger of rodents, wounded birds,
    wayward fledglings,
Squats atop Tudor cottages and
    unicorn castles;
The brute too clumsy to thread
    a cypress hedge,
Hover above the moor, nosedive
    from infinity.

 Continue reading →

Inscription on Helicon

by kaweah

I have seen her now: seasoned with eternity,
simmers in her sky-cold sylvan pool, hard and white
as the waning moon and quartzite banks, the last softening
membrane of youth seared away in the slow forge of forever;
breast peppered with translucent constellations
when the sun breaks through the leaves.

No fleshy delicacy—even of the slightest young brides,
but the taut, radiant hide of an ageless queen,
Immortal virgin, so say they, but naught of docile innocence;
her purity: homicidal violence.

She it is who haunts the dread hinterland,
    forbidden interior, wildland of man;
        No love for the society of Olympus,
and no Earth Mother, more terrible
    than any Aphrodite.

I have etched here these scars on this stone, scraped
    as I hide, catching my breath, wrapping my wounds,
        year over year, binding my bones,
        to report that I have run this long,
    even to the sacred springs on Helicon.
Not pious nor merciful, she makes sport of me still.
    The hounds come.
        Acteon

© 2015–16 Kaweah

The Stacks

by kaweah

I don’t recall how it began
I was asleep at the time
maybe long ago in a boy’s dream or some
half-remembered adventure
wandering again
through that vast and foreign city of childhood
that never once was the same
in so many days and dreams
maybe this time he’d lost someone
I don’t recall
Hearst Avenue or some such
boulevard    walking downward
a fenced park to his side    an iron gate
concrete path    neoclassic façade    the
pinkness of granite
the cherrywood doors    ajar
Stepping up    cold stone by stone
slipped with the night air    through the entryway
to the dark inside    a broad desk    a bronze reading lamp
too dim to penetrate the dense air and a woman
old white hair skin folded in ribbed shadows
in the green lamplight seated at the desk
stood and turned not seeing me    walked out from behind
the oak battlement    turned his way cocked her head to say
follow me patron and so he did    back to the stacks
the green lamplight remained    fading at our backs
her ancient wiry frame    hung a knee-length dress
black in the green light    vanished here and there
as she passed through the shadows of
the densely packed shelves
the knocking of her heels
echoed off the bindings and the floor
her bunned hair was black now in the dim light
the curve of her hips was complete
each leg in fullness but undressed
seeming to note my hesitation she turned back
she was young she was fruitful she
wore the old woman’s dress
but it embraced her now and her glasses had the same frames
but the glass was dark as the stacks    somehow I knew
I knew her from somewhere she stopped and turned and
she pulled a book off-shelf    handed it to him and
she leaned against the shelving and waited
I looked through the volume all the pages were naked
he looked up to her and showed her    two of the empty sheets
she turned away to the stack and reached up
lifting off her heels to her toes
dangerously drew out another volume
I could hardly make out the black silhouette of her face
her hair    her dress her calves in the crescent light
her bow-like length flush against the mass of bindings
she pulled the book down and I turned timidly as
she handed the book to him and
I handed the empty book back    only to find
the next book was empty    so
she led me down the slot canyon handing him
volume after volume of emptiness
sometimes the pages were fresh
white and glossy sometimes they were
yellowed and cracked with time and
the verdant librarian she led me
though the shadow to where the stacks ended at a wall
the shelves there empty    but for a single book
I could see this clearly    in the light of a naked bulb
that shone from high on the wall    I could see that
the librarian’s dress though black was not opaque
I could see her through it in the white light as she
handed him the lone book that he could not open
because of what I saw under the linen
some kind of writing
the script glowed dimly in the light in the black fabric
he reached for her collar and turned it out
there was writing
in some Latin form    there was another collar
under the collar    white and it too had writing and
he turned it over and I saw the deeper layers
and I licked his fingertips and he peeled back the sheets
back as the pages of her breast opened    a white rose
the petals turned silently    the words
incomprehensible and familiar
he dug through into her pages and I
listened to her breathing    clearly
and deeply
with every new page my hands tingle
to the touch of every silk petal
but the fingers begin to quake and stumble
and the pages slip out of their grasp
and the dreamer slips out of the dream
eyes fixed to the ceiling
we listen to the breathing

© 2013–14 Kaweah