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Saturday, February 04, 2023

Just a Pixel in a Pixel

 
—Poetry by Don Kingfisher Campbell, Alhambra, CA
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain
 
 
 
Electrified man screams he can't leave his little house

My brain is surrounded by a fence

My mind is a lion god worshipping a bed of roses

My soul is a cat sitting on a windowsill watching leaves dance

My eyes have been wishing they could climb branches by themselves for decades

My mouth is a troubled door opening wide for a blast of stones

My belly is a flying saucer ready to fly high above the clouds

My penis is an aloe vera plant that transforms into a palm tree

My legs are afraid of becoming pudgy gnomes

My feet are beer cans tossed through the gate of the future
 
 
 

 
 
Impressions of September LV

Shiny skyscraping hotels line the I-15

Casino-themed car-filled boulevards

Tanned homeless slumping along sidewalks

110-degree heat thickens the cloudless air

Mattresses left curbside in front of too many houses

Cultural businesses just like any other city

Palm trees and pools seen outside tower-room windows

Post-pandemic non-emptiness in smoky gambling halls

Man-made entertainment volcano blasts night fire

Balding retired men escort their women to $100-a-ticket shows

Neighborhoods of stuccoed homes in named clusters

The whole desert valley ringed by highways
 
 
 

 
 
You and Me
 
You like to see me
wearing basketball shorts

I look at you and enjoy curvy
stripes across your chest

But we are really painting
a domestic banner together

Me, sitting on a sofa
papers strewn about us

There is even a white plastic
trash can, for target practice

In my heart, I want to create
a poem that is a poster of two

Moments when we watch
leaves dance outside the blinds

In our dining room with
a Chinese calendar next
to a psychedelic tapestry

And you like to cut napkins
in half while I blow my nose

I guess this will be a notebook
page of the daily times we share

We both like to drink from hot
mugs, you coffee and me tea
 
 
 

 
 
Tulare Trek

Driving past golden hills

Then through the great agricultural valley

Smelling garlic and cows

Arrive at the city with two main streets

Every chain is there to choose from

First it's lunch Raising Canes

Check out dd's discounts, Dollar Tree, 99¢ Store, CVS

Followed by Blaze Pizza dinner

Back to the 200-square-foot square motel room

To watch some flat-screen basketball

While charging the phones

Occasional voices outside the closed draped window

My wife giggles at a rubber pillow from Thailand video

I'm ready to endure a night in a white double bed

With my sweetie by my side providing leg-on-leg warmth
 
 
 

 
 
Some Things to Do on This Planet

After a sunny afternoon spent indoors critiquing poetry on Zoom with friends
My wife and I go to the thrift store to look for bookcases
but she finds coffee or tea cups with matching saucers blue striped half price
Then back home I enjoy a salad made by my life partner
Finally relax selecting music to listen to and post on Facebook
Done with that I stroll over to the bathroom to pee
Switch on the light, look into the toilet
I see a tiny dark floater
Must have been left behind by you-know-who
There's even a crumpled ball of tissue beside it
Wait a second, this ain’t poop
Isn't that really a triangle on the surface
with two antennae twitching
It's a moth, soaked and suffering
I piss all over the little lake,
aiming for more indignity for the errant intruder and flush
An unpleasant way to end this stinking poem
 
 
 

 

Sequoia Sojourn

Gas up, hop on the freeway

Watch farmland become groves

Trees growing taller as the road winds

Feels like driving a sailboat through choppy waters

Signs declare narrow bridges, switchbacks, recent fires

An hour later reach the last space

In the closest parking and walk

Spot redwoods here and there increase in size

Down to the largest tree on Earth

Stranger couples take cellphone shots for each other

Stroll and find a double tree, a triple arbor

Look at the rings of a fallen giant

Thousands of years longer than a human life

Huff on stone steps back to the car

Sit on halved wood benches on the way

Then unwind the maze to return

Past homey hotels and restaurants

Homes with streams in their backyards

Arrive at the city to stay the night

Tomorrow morning retrace the highway home
 
 
 
 


Still Life

On one edge of the dining table,
a clear plastic gallon bottle of
purified drinking water is flanked
by two somewhat unevenly used
cardboard paper towel tubes.

One is to the inside left, the other
right, looking like two supplementary
fuel tanks for an Artemis booster rocket.

When observed from directly above,
the combination kind of appears to be
like a dog's face, with the two tubes
as eyes, the bottle cap a nose, and
its handle the jowls and mouth.
I imagine it barking out, woof!

Day after day the bottle is slowly
being emptied, the towel sheets
torn off one by one, until eventually
the empty cylinders are tossed into
a white plastic recycling bucket.

Just need to replace both
to create table art again.
 
 
 

 
 
She is a firework in my life

She makes my heart go boom

My breaths fall away like dominoes

My body wants to get on her bicycle

And ride, ride, ride until my mind    

Until her mind says the train

Our train is coming to the station

And I hug security and comfort

We have become family I plan

We plan our day and then we act

Shower dress breakfast brush exit

Into the optimistic world that is ours

And I pray we'll have decades we

Knowing our forms age as we go

Forward into unforeseeable future
 
 
 

 

It's All Too Much

A universe littered with galaxies beyond my imagination
Every spiral stretching outward festooned of stars
Each sun sporting some planets, moons and asteroids
This sphere always covered by untold clouds
Oceans alive since evolution evolved here
Thousands upon thousands of whales, sharks, and fish cruising currents
Shores infested in the billions because trees grow and humans manifest
Beings briefly bringing forth into being millions of buildings and books
Made merrier making music and art and children
A ground even more populated around a quadrillion animals and insects
Enough food and flowers to delight all those eyes and noses and mouths
Burgeoning brains recreate creating electric visions and revisions
I'm just a pixel in a pixel in a pixel in a pixel
Part of the whole shebang breathing in and out
Cosmic light went on, someday I am shut off
To be recycled as the planet pleases until it ceases
Also repurposed multiversally for unknowable time
Does God have a new design planned in the possibly etch-a-sketch future

_________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Dew drops on a dead leaf

—Don Campbell

The giant goes for a walk
under the blazing sun
    
The behemoth steps and steps
on long concrete sidewalk

A small insect traverses the
width of a rectangle just ahead

One gargantuan sandial darkens
the sky above the bug only briefly

It was the last thing it ever felt,
a mindless accident of location

_________________

Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA from Antioch University L.A., taught at Occidental College Upward Bound for 36 years, has been poetry editor of the
Angel City Review, publisher of Spectrum magazine, and host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading and workshop series in Pasadena, California. For awards, features, and publication credits, please go to http://dkc1031.blogspot.com/. Welcome to the Kitchen, Don, and don’t be a stranger!

Today, from 1-3pm, Amatoria Fine Art Books presents Ajuan Mance, author of 1
001 Black Men, in an author talk/signing, 1831 F St., Sacramento, CA. And tonight, 6pm: Escritores Del Nuevo Sol presents Hablemos del Amor featuring Zheyla Henrikson and Paul Aponte, plus open mic, at the Vida del Oro Foundation, 1324 Arden Way in Sacramento. Click UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS at the top of these column for details about this and other future poetry events in the NorCal area—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.

_________________

—Medusa
 
 
 
 Don Campbell





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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