The Burning Year

It’s just a year.

A measurement of time.

All too soon run out.

It’s just a year.

Yet somehow a physical representation.

Like a Psychopomp.

It’s just a year.

Leading away to the hereafter.

Leaving us in bittersweet tears.

It’s just a year.

A paper implement.

Meant for keeping track of days ahead and past.

It’s just a year.

A Calendar.

2011.

It’s just a year.

I’ll spit on you.

I’ll tear you pieces.

What you have taken

Can never, ever be replaced.

I’ll set you afire.

Curse your memory to the ends of it all.

I’ll burn your pages one at a time.

Take delight in the ending of you.

For what you have taken.

It’s just a year.

The burning year.

Midnight, it is done.

K.J.K.  11-30-2011

To my Father: Raymond Keyser. I miss you every day, Dad.

Divinity

Lord,

You know me.

My hopes, dreams, passions.

It seems, sometimes, though.

That you like the game of baseball.

Now I'm not a sport's fan, Lord.

But it seems like your favorite pitch is the curve ball.

When you least expect it.

WHAM!

Here I sit, worrying about this or that.

When something out of left field.

Throws me for a loop.

Left field..

Got three on base, Lord.

I'm gonna bunt...

K.J.K.  - J.J. / K.J.

Happy Meal

Food court at the mall.

Doesn't matter which mall, their all the same.

She struggles in.

Walking to the side where Mc Donnalds trumpets it's golden arches.

Four footed walking stick slowly carrying her to the counter.

Happy meal, two cokes, a Big Mac.

She labors to get to the table.

Not the first table she passes by, nor the third.

But a table on the far side, near the mall entrance.

There she finally sits.

Putting the table in order.

Happy meal, coke on one side, Big Mac, other coke by her.

Napkins placed by each setting along with a fork she takes out of her purse.

She looks over and over again at the mall clock.

As if counting the magnitude of seconds passing.

Looking back to the mall entrance with eyes, eyes, that will soon sleep.

Time freezes, refuses to pass.

She cleans her glasses.

Hands shaking, more then before.

Mall door opens.

He is that age just before the teen years call him away.

To concerns of sports, cars, girls.

Her face brightens.

They hug.

In a voice more shaky then her hands:

"I got you your happy meal."

They talk.

Over the din of the shoppers.

Making memories.

Happy meals.....

K.J.K. 4-1-00

Circle of Life

It begins at the autumn of our souls.

When all is turning rust colored.

Leaves to brown, flowers to dust.

The wheel in the sky moves on.

With or without us.

Who neither aid nor hinder its progress.

After fall, comes winter.

Laying its cool crisp blanket of snow all around.

Showing that rust can turn to pure, virgin, white.

The wheel in the sky moves on.

With or without us.

Who neither aid nor hinder its progress.

The landscape turns a gentler shade.

One of brown mixed with green.

Spring returns life to the world.

The wheel in the sky moves on.

With or without us.

Who neither aid nor hinder its progress.

It is summer and the green of Earth surrounds us.

Mixed with colors of every hue.

As flowers open wide and rock back and forth in the breeze.

The wheel in the sky moves on.

With or without us.

Who neither aid nor hinder its progress.

The wheel is season.

The wheel is change.

The wheel is forever.

K.J.K.  06-23-96

Thanks

Thanks for the morning.

The music

The wind

The sun

The moon.

Thanks for Family

Friends

Pets

The deer across the street

The spiders under my house.

Thanks for breath

Touch

Smell

Thirst

Hunger.

Thanks for life

Friendship

Intimacy

Love.

Thanks for the bright blessings given and now shared.

Thanks!

K.J.K. 08-13-11

Of Summer and Dreams of Untold

Oh summer what a bummer;

Storms and floods and rain.

Oh summer what a bummer;

You are driving me quite insane.

Oh summer, what a bummer;

Although I’ll regret it I’m sure.

Oh summer, what a bummer;

This is the last one I’ll endure.

Oh summer, what a bummer;

Loading the car is done.

Oh summer, what a bummer;

Onwards to the land of the midnight sun!

K.J.K. 07/28/2011

Love Is Love

Love is love is love is love.

     It's not the same, it's not the same.

Love is the slice of life.

     The moments of heart beat, thigh beat, eye beat.

Love is love is love is love.

     What have you got when it is done?

     But moment's of thought.

     Measures that have come though hearts.

Foreboding of life;

     Love is love is love is love.

Have you known the pleasure of the moment?

     Hearts beating together.
     Hearts beating in rhythm and rhythm and rhythm and rhythm and time and time.

Love is love is love is love.

     Have you seen the moment of her breasts

     Sky lighted upon shallows of night.

Hearts in bondage.

     Moments thrashing.

     Throw the dice.

Landscape of her body;

     Mountains, five valleys.

     Cascade off her mind.

     Mind is body, shaped like ecstasy.

Love is love is love is love.

     Know but man - woman.

Love is love is love is love.

     Trace the outline of her nipples

     In the soft, soft moments of erect night....

K.J.K.  11-25-01

The Telling Years

These are the telling years:

The smoke drifts away.

The orange-red flames subside.

Clouds part.

Letting another orange through.

The sun shines -

Upon faces still stained by tears.

Soot, dirt, dust.

The sun gathers us in its warmth.

Heart, soul, body.

Leading us to the realm of “play” again.

Where we can forget about the storm, the fire, the dark.

Play on sea and beach.

On green, grassy hill with blanket and picnic basket.

In beds of tomatoes, growing towards their full, red, sweet self’s.

But we know it now.

It sits in the corner of our consciousness.

Pecking away like some nagging pain.

The soul will tremble.

The storm will return.

And more will burn.

K.J.K. 05-08-11

The Blue Bunny Bop

It was during the time of night that is as dark as ink, it was then I started dreaming, I think!

I was at the place that we all know and Blue Bunny came alive; told me where to go.

I came to a room that was never there, of this I can truly swear.

Oh and following me did Blue Bunny hop.  For the sign on the door said "WELCOME TO THE BLUE BUNNY BOP".

I entered the room and to my surprise I saw thousands and thousands of Blue Bunnies staring me in the eyes!!!!

In the back you were standing alone, waiting for a Blue Bunny to get off the phone.

I was just about to ask you to dance when that alarm clock bell ruined my chance!

So this is my story, probably stupid you think.

But just now, I saw Blue Bunny wink!!

K.J.K.  - Easter 1984

Land's End

Waveland Avenue, a street in Chicago. More then just a street, though.  It’s the place where I grew up. In my poetry I have always referred to it as “Land Ave.”  No more secrets:

In my mind I am again standing in that old house, I see the past floating by like snowflakes caught by a January's wind:

The snow is coming down.  Hours have passed and still it keeps coming down.  Chicago is like some broken watch. All of its parts lay motionless, frozen in the snow.  Nothing is open; all the buses are stopped and stuck in snow banks.

All the neighbors band together and hire a plowing company. They dump the snow in the backyard, to make a mountain of snow.  It rises higher then any kid, fence, or grown-up.

Eileen and I build a snow fort on this mountain's peak and race down it with our sleds.

It was like magic, our own mountain...

It is Christmas Eve.  It had snowed earlier in the day and the ground was covered with a crisp, cool, white layer of glistening snow.

Dad is working at the pizza place and mother says we have to get our coats on to go out and look at the Christmas lights up and down Waveland.

So we go up, down, and around the block looking at all the lights and decorations. Tired and worn out from all the walking we return home to find that Santa was there while we were out!

Even if I had seen Dad's red station wagon leaving just as we turned the corner towards home...

Grandma is sitting up close to her television, cursing the Cub’s Ron Santo.  It is the important game with the Mets and the Cubs are losing...

Laura swings the stick at the piñata.  She only nicks it and sends it whirling madly out of control, to be stopped by her father...

Running to the corner store to buy ice cream bars during the great riots of 1968...

Painting a hockey rink on the basement floor as a gift to Brian, and irritating mother...

Coming home from kindergarten to find mother crying and JFK dead...

Spending rainy days playing catch and breaking windows, upstairs...

The day the picture that now hangs on my wall was taken.  A picture of all of us when we were young...

Images continue to flash before my eyes, more images then there are words to say or un-spent emotion left to express them.

I am gone from Waveland, but I can still visit that old, grey, house as long as I carry these memories within my heart.

K.J.K.

04-14-11 (Revised)

12-02-95

        

Cars a Field

Surrounded by fields of SUV's

I sit alone in my small, grey car.

Trembling in the cold spring dusk.

Around me a super sized America.

Grows bigger by the day.

Drowning in its own gluttonous waste

K.J.K.  03/27/11

Place of the Body

Tight jeans fit tight bodies.

Hemlock vines grow from every lawn.

Where the Green God’s lure enraptures the heart.

Steals humanity from scarlet phrases -

Calling with drum beats, heart beats:

Boom..Da..Da!  Boom..Da..Da!  Boom..Da..Da!  Boom!

They march like Soldiers.

Lead by this green God - Money.

Whose son is Vanity.

Daughter is Shallowness.

His wife, the seductress is on television, calling all to court.

With the promise of more things to a populace who already possess too much.

Not understanding why they feel so empty inside, un-fulfilled.

How they find themselves captured for a moment by the sun as it rises, orange and large.

Only to shake the notion of such beauty off as one of those fuzzy areas not already defined for them to comprehend by 5^th avenue.

Tight jeans on tight bodies, emptiness within.

An emptiness they’ll never admit to, except in the darkness of night.

While they lay in their warm downy soft beds.

And shiver....

K.J.K.  

11-11-99

02-11-11 (Revised)

Choices

(The Devil Wears Horned Rim Glasses)

Saw the Devil yesterday.

On train to tower.

Talking in tongues.

Moved his glasses down to curled nose.

Smiled

Pufffffed his joynt.

"Where ya heading - boy?"

He took a drag.

Ex-haled.

"Me sir?"

"Anyone else on this train - boy?"

Look to around to be alone.

"I don't know"

The Devil laughed

"Ya better be sure you're on the right track - boy."

The beggar appeared.

Walking down the aisle with all his worldly possessions and a bottle of gin.

Asked me for some money.

I know all he will do is buy more booze.

I decline.

The Devil snickers and gives him a fiver.

The Devil's red eyes flair.

"You deny him happiness!"

I close my eyes.

The Devil laughs.

"For the grace of your God"

"There go you by."

The truth of it sends a shock down my spine.

Where I now stand in my life.

The choices I have made.

Led me here.

To this train.

Talk'n with the Devil.

White wolf

Comes from my soul.

Growls at the Devil.

He doesn't even flinch

"Struck a nerve, didn't I - boy!"

The Devil gets out of his seat.

Brings his face close.

"Look'n forward to seeing ya - boy"

Puffs sulfur smoke in my eyes.

I stand to face to the Devil.

"You won't be seeing me anymore."

The train stops at station.

"You think you can come in to my thoughts and bully me?"

"I've known bully's all my life and you, sir, are no better.” Take your smoke, your pokes, and your prods off this train!"

The Devil laughs.

"Gonna make me - boy."

And I make up my mind.

I see a railroad switch in my head.

And pull it.

The Devil drops his joynt.

Now It's his turn to growl

"Be see'n ya 'round - boy!"

Puffs a final puff in my face.

The Devil exits the train.

Doors hiss shut like the snake he is.

And someone is tapping on my shoulder.

Vision blurry to focus.

The conductor is standing in aisle.

"We are in the station, you were asleep."

I missed my stop.

Have to take a train back to it.

This time on the right track.

K.J.K. 4-18-04

Cliff Walking

He stood in the corner of This and That.

Shivering from what?

The wind, the rain?

Something else?

Hurricane force winds.

Inside and out.

This is the last of the given moments.

The Creator dangles in front on your face.

He thinks aloud:

"Like a carrot on a stick."

Is this a big step?

Or the last step?

Either way one will not know until that step is taken.

And then it's too late.

K.J.K.  02/05/11

Prelude to the End

One of his "gifts" is to see trends not evident to most.

The cosmic aligning of what may come.

If trends stay true.

A Mass conspiracy of events.

Seemingly unrelated.

Foretell the start of Ragnarök.

Where the great tree will split.

Freeing those trapped in its trunk.

Allowing their souls to move on.

And he, that pillar of a man.

Will stand on the red stained beach.

Alone.

K.J.K.  02/05/2011