Heaven To Kentucky

Morning hung on the wet city, Nashville’s electric streets hummed as we passed North to Kentucky. Weary with the silence of a life ending the gray skies laid heavy, like dreams of dying women wet with hope, a little hope where there seems to be none. 

Harvest is over, the rain settles on hearts waiting turning, spinning the ripe sun into a long after thought.

Peel falls from fruit one by one seeds lie cradled then wait. Did we see or hear furrows opening to the end of this season? Life’s moist earth readies her self for the new crop some remain as some go, sleeping forever waiting to rise from the bitter soil. Once I could have told you what wakes the empty night. Now I wonder if she can’t have her dreams the way she wants them. A place of peace and rest ready’s the land with soil dark and rich for seeds of thought, sprouts of living spiritual meaning raining dreams on the cold wet streets of a city in the south.

Before we got through Kentucky she had died. Rain still washed the green, pounded the afternoon into slow evening. Memories lie drowning in after thought, heaven was thrown from the windshield as the fertile earth turned.  

                                                      Ron Kempton  10/6/17

Tea Party

                                       

RSVP The windy hostess cloud and purple sun,

Leaves of melting seasons, every fern and poplar,

Make room in your turning calendar days of Whispers

And secrets poised for a prince far beyond the silent sea.

Oh dancer in such a palace as this, table set and china readied

 waiting for the guests to arrive, maddening the invisible chattering

as her soiree takes on the afternoon, muddled Cirrus, curious wren,

silent mist and queen of spades all subject to direction,

waiting for her there.    

Ron Kempton

Ezra's Silhouette

Boughs slip to meandering streams, creasing his heart

Beneath winged cirrus, through veins and branches, reaching

The wind, tearing wing and reddened ripe season apart

Revealing seeds in the frigid earth lying in soil sleeping

Roots stretch marrow to a longing whose shallow defenses

Fall lonesome cold , leafless dances, numbing his hands,

making every frozen night call down his senses. He

Stands in lonesome darkness wondering if spring is coming  

Desire, the moist fertile rain of men, fighting flesh

And it’s reach for the arms of Selfless summer skies,

Running streams of warm love, the tenderness of breasts

Is there ever seasons filled with summers warm eyes?

 Finally in each bloom she comes, wind tossed leaves

Shaded by silhouettes, and dreams that all of us believe.

                                                             

Ron Kempton 1/10/18  

American Terrorist, a wife and Me

   I had occasion to be standing outside a Piggly Wiggly the other day waiting for my wife who was inside buying a get well card for a friend who had just passed away. While waiting I saw a man whose attention I had caught walking my direction. I looked around hoping for an escape. With nothing to do and no- where to run I started trying to make myself spontaneously combust. When that didn’t work I gave in to the frightening fact that I was going to have to converse with another human being.

   He approached and said good morning I smiled and nodded. I always thought a nod was a great way to let a stranger know I have nothing to say. This did no good, he started in on the greed and damage that corporate America was doing to the whole world and how soon there won’t be any room to live or move because all of us will be over run by businesses that are all vying for our money. He went on: “ I mean really how much junk food do you need? Why don’t these people see what they’re doing to the land? There are almost no trees left on this entire planet. The green house gasses are destroying the polar ice caps and eating meat is killing all of humanity!  Did you know that last year almost a billion tons of waste was dumped into the ocean? We have to get together and stop the corporate onslaught of greed and corruption, governmental control and destruction of life as we know it.”

     He actually stopped raving long enough to ask me what I thought. I looked at him and said: “ You’re wearing a pair of Nike shoes, your butt is hung with a pair of Levi’s You have on a Miller high life tee shirt, and a ball cap that has a logo for the Boston Red Socks. Not only that but you’re standing there with a three thousand dollar cup of Starbucks Coffee in your hand. He stared at me and then looked up and down at himself. He shook his head and said “Man you just can’t get through to some people.”  As he walked away my wife emerged from her shopping with a basket full of all kinds of crap she found on sale.  “Honey look” she said “I found all this stuff for half off. “ I looked into the basket and said, “We don’t eat hardly anything in here.” “I know” she answered “but it was on sale.” “Did you get a card?” I asked. Her face went blank and she said “ooopps I forgot the card.” But wait I have this cake mix and some frosting, I’ll make that and take it over with some sour dough cheese bread from Panera.”    

 RK

Last Hippie Bystander

             Somewhere in the cool mist of my nothingness, I fell victim to my own showgirl attitude. That even stockings rip on a good night. Now, being male and having a strong sense of my own flexible testosterone image, I put my salad fork down and admitted my weaknesses as to the watered down version I’ve had about myself for most of my life.  Am I really a 61- year - old surviving member of the generation that played little brother and sister to the Hippie Movement?

        Or did the days just lumber past under dark clouds of social metamorphosis? Who’s that Johnny on your windshield calling you to join his movement where no movement exists? Who’s that girl with her body unwrapped so you can long for the tie-die mini-skirt wonders that lie beneath her VW bug? What happened to her when the roses bloomed outside her window and then, when she woke up, there was an old woman’s face pleading with her from the mirror.  There’s no dance left Baby. Those blacklight poster marches are all gone and meaningless in a world that only mirrors long gone reefers.

       That’s right. All that’s left is a truck full of monkeys throwing coconuts at the banana plantation while baboons play look at my dada lip explosion. And you’re so stupid that you believe everything they say. I just have one thing I’d like to say: After watching humans throw bricks, throw rocks, throw teargas canisters, light buildings on fire, houses on fire, cars on fire, clothes on fire, light themselves on fire. March up the street down the street, yell slogans, shoot each other, kill leaders, Make laws, change those laws, flip off the man, call people pigs, riot, scream and generally waste sixty years fighting. Knock over statues, insist on their rights, grow their hair, shave their hair, write protest songs, write protest books and learn to hate each other’s cultural differences… How the hell did cookies get smaller?

WAV

                                                       

It seemed to fight me, I wrestled without clean air. Maybe

Someone will rescue my heart and feed imagination’s lonesome sidewalk. Music for God’s calloused hands by his energy and through my head. Longing for woman aching from age, I keep working ‘cause I have to. Is it the art falling from my fingers? I can look at this blue screen, I can beg for the low turning river to save me. I can survive a baptism of thunder waiting for too old to catch me running. Yesterday I ate too much today I starved. There is spirit, my fingers feel the fire and I look for a place. A place I can’t seem to feel. How long until I sleep?

    3/1/28 Ron Kempton

                                                                                                                                                            

Silence

Simple quiet

Like trees as they tiptoe across the velvet wings of the rising

Lastly each roll of silent crisp galaxy

Turning hushed whispers into a final gaze

 Just beyond the edge of distant hoof beats

 Between each word of the windy moon as she carries on her oratory    

Forgetting her lace, playing catch me if you can

With every moth, cricket, and fire-fly waiting on her open arms.

Stitched into seams, whispered rustling,

Sighs longing to touch that brief second

When moments hush the world and each breath falls silent

Owing to the life that’s lived between the twist of the second hand and 

the Last moment of starlight.

Simple quiet

Ron Kempton 2016