Author: katkarney

This is the mostly-true story of my futile attempt to be a good Samaritan.  Like many mostly-true stories, it ends with a decapitation.

the finch’s prayer

on the searing asphalt,
a paralyzed finch is dying
golden on the center line.

the broken wing extends
a supplication, a benediction
while drafts from passing traffic
pull him closer to the track of tires

i run to him, raise him
crying out, unable to fight
his panicked eyes meet mine
keenly conscious of finite time

wrapping the bird in a towel,
i beg help from three men in a field
who are embarrassed enough by my tears
to pause their summer labors

we watch the slow throes
the lungs fill with blood
the men calmly repeat
“put it out of its misery”
until one takes a spade
and all the suffering
brave into his hands
and bids me “turn away”

lord, don’t be hard on your songbirds
if we are ever slowly fading!

may a kind soul uplift us
a swift edge sever all knowing
let a soft heart grieve the passing
with a garden to rest our bones

I’m often stuck inside my head.  Traveling should theoretically provide clarity, but in practice, the hurt often compounds.

A poem for you, written from the loft of the coziest Airbnb cabin in Maine.

baby grand blues

there’s a little cabin
on the morgan bay
with a time-worn baby grand.
i once touched the keys,
unworthy of the honor.

the piano
was beyond
my understanding.
as were the tides
and their sliding schedule.
i felt them slip beneath my fingers
towards the sweet release of knowing.

i cried but the tides
could not return a time
when you belonged to me.

i cried but the tides
could not inure me
to the present.

the tides replied:
learn to love yourself
or at least to play the piano.

(01-OCT-2018 – Surry, Maine)

Dostoevsky says it’s hard to find a sister if God hasn’t given you one.  I guess I got lucky, so this poem is for her.

(Please see: Hiraeth pronunciation)

hiraeth

jane says
there are five seasons
in everyone’s heart
all interspersed with hiraeth.

a welsh word
with no direct translation.
a homesickness,
yearning,
longing for something
that is not attainable.

kind of like the blues.
blue like daydreams,
blue in kentucky,
blue for losing
an ideal that
never existed.

i told jane
i know this
silver thread
that connects
the sorrows of
our pining hearts.
everything she’s said
i’ve lost before.

(Crater Lake, Oregon – October 2010)

Gram Parsons was a talented and beautiful musician.

Due to his artistic vision, I have met many people, traveled to new places, and experienced sensations that somehow already felt like part of my soul.

This is an ode to Gram and the restive, creative spirit in all of us.

fallen angel

i am captivated by your cosmic reveries.
soft-spoken and gentle,
like the warm touch of desert air
on bare shoulders.

johnny-on-the-spot, singing morphine hymns
with an easy voice, like powdered sugar.
don’t say i could love anyone like you.
don’t say my faith is just a hitch in time.

crowned crisp white,
blue stars burnt the brim,
you knew the rhinestones
foretold your falling.

A little backyard melodrama of recent development.

between cats and kestrels

the kestrel perches on the poplar
to survey the stream
and regally scans the embankment.

the fat black and white barn cat is poised
noiseless on the stony hill
patiently biding her sovereign time.

the field mice, with their tawny winter fur,
are hiding… if they are smart.
death simply waits for an opening.

the cat knows she could kill the whole damn world,
if she only had the chance!
the bird knows his limits of skill and strength.

each hunter feigns to ignore the other –
professionals often do –
barely masking the disdain between them.

My 2-year-old niece got a kaleidoscope for Christmas.   It was fun showing her how it works. She was mesmerized by the endless combination of elaborate patterns and the play of light across the mirrors.

She worked really hard to coordinate her movements, and was finally able to do it herself.  Nobody can perceive the designs in exactly the way she sees them.

Life is pretty cool like that.

reflections

into ardent minds.

one that never fades,

even when the scope

has shifted.

 

A wallflower’s perception of the anxiety-and-hope combustion-engine known as “live music”.

atom and ether

the patrons here are soft-spoken bards a far trip from home
in the twilight humming of lights,
in this painfully slow showcase of pride and pity,
they can’t hide under the neon red cover of nightmare fueled prose.
their burning eyes tell of fire-branded, grass-stained hopes.

all the ticking pipe bombs of heart-shorn analysts
slide from the streets to slow-drawled songs in saloons.
drifters in the tavern, a Kid with a crooked smirk,
that Kid drinking at the bar on an old stool
with a poised posture for his friends and lovers

the handsome rake of light and songs,
sitting gracefully twining his legs,
sitting at the bar, smiling with wide unguarded eyes,
sitting and half-daring
to hunt the cricket sawing a star in time

he pulls down a bright white sunbeam,
wended and trapped with rhythmic chills.
his pallid lust slays as the cold slow waves of smoke carry –
the ether of his mouth and fingers are fatal
within one second of his smile.

a haze of ether steeps and falls cross-wise
on the gilded beer cans, stacks of papers;
steeps and falls cross-wise for twenty dollars,
steeps and dies with a slip of time, a cap of lies,
on sheets of scribbled set-lists and unanswered prayers.

it’s all a game to them, Kid, to land on the end goal:
we all weave a loom in time forever, of truth and pain.
drifters in the barroom,  we go up this road forever.
fame only tells of atomic hell.
and on Sunday, something different.

On Thanksgiving, Grandma told us about her life, about our Polish heritage. For the first time she delved into the pain of moving nineteen homes in nineteen years. She talked about her father working on the A-Bomb during WWII.  She talked about how her mother fed everybody that came to their ever-changing houses.  She talked about love and acceptance and isolation. We ate cheesecake. We laughed. My heart is full. And if you ever feel lonesome or want to hang out, I can make you the best pierogies.

oak ridge blues

i missed the lilies of the valley
outside my city window
where my snow-white spitz died.
always kept in the dark, always moving.
picking tulips where graves were dug.

daddy was only home on weekends.
silent soldiers followed him to the farm.
mama’s beer and chicken dinners
deferred the weight of their atomic secrets:
they did what had to be done.

i was disowned, once,
for marrying a methodist.
whispered in radioactive horror,
throttled like cancer in pink lace gloves.
they did what had to be done.

i know they were right and wrong.
the greatest flaw in humanity
is pretending to know christian love.
but mama always fed the drifters
oh, mama really fed the strays.