Category Archives: POET

A MEMORY OF YOU


Here I stand in the light of an early Indian summer sun
Look through my eyes where it’s just peaking up over distant hills
While you and I stand searching for lions, tigers, sharks, and dragons
Of my imagination where we as children used to run
When you and I were just 8 years old and were addicted to having fun
Running barefoot with stubbed toes across lawns and dirt roads
When life itself was easy and at the end of the day
It always ended on pillows where our curly haired sleepy heads would lay
No one ever warned of changes or the future foretold
Where we met so long ago before fantasy windmills and rainswept windowsills
Blocked the view and destroyed the fun
When we didn’t own a car
But from where we stood we needn’t and didn’t go far
There was no need to feed the adventure
For it was just you and me
And we were completely free
With love enough in our hearts for any 8-year-old to share
When life passed around us without any care
Without any conjecture and life left no scar
Lions, tigers, sharks, and dragons did not mar
The landscape that we ourselves made
In our memories, as we were running unafraid
But now the game has changed
And I look now, searching through the mists of memory for you
Back in the years when all was said to be true
And wonder where the time went, and life was rearranged
Then life changed, and I stand alone now with just a memory of you

Copyright 2018 Gordon Kuhn, all rights reserved 10/26/18

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AWAKENING


I woke this morning to a different world
Everything had sudden changed overnight
When the rains came, fell, and the grass uncurled
Where I had walked during the heat of the day before
And there was nothing for me to do
There was nothing I could or would say
The world changed when I turned and looked away
For a moment, a second, a sliver of time
When I thought all was safe and secure
And so I woke with a bloody nose
I woke and I found what I thought was false
And came to realize that there was no longer within the fight
There was little desire within me to travel much further
And yet I have to move along this path
And stay on the lane wherein it is true
That life is such and nothing can be undone.

Copyright 2018 All rights reserved: Gordon Kuhn

BACKWASH


BACKWASH
Walking backwards in my mind slowly thru time
I find myself stranded, just another body standing in line
A pathetic piece of flesh and bone
Left alive to review all the scrapings my handmade in stone
Until the carving knife broke from all the writing
And I found that my life was not so exciting
As I had envisioned it
But drinking made it seem to fit
The surrounding air and places I had the train boarded
Without thought of where the trip was going or how sorted
It would be
But I would soon see
The bridge left broken and bloody near that meadow in years past
Where death took a friend and then came the revenge that failed to last
In my heart, that day as the vomit filled my mouth with backwash
And life about me began to sway and I felt the sting of a lash

Copyright 2018 Gordon Kuhn: written 9.9.18 first draft

A Long Time Ago in the Great Faraway


It was a long time ago in the great faraway
When I came to the understanding that I could no longer stay
We looked the other way as I stepped out from her front door
Harsh words spoken, then silence, nothing left to say, so I guess we settled the score
The tale had been said, actions set, and there was nothing more
We turned away, not wanting our eyes to meet again on that terribly sad night
When anger made us say things that later didn’t seem so right
Emptiness then lay where once love for each other had been so tight
But we said our all — then silence fell — and we knew there was nothing more
So we looked the other way as I stepped out from her front door
The porch light turned dark behind me as I walked alone in the rain
To where my car sat, my anger melting — and then I began to feel the numbing pain
The key in the ignition, the engine hesitated, coughed, stumbled, and then sudden died
And I sat alone in the long faraway and in that sad silence, I softly cried. 9/1/18

A Soft Tapping in Darkness Came


A Soft Tapping in Darkness Came
Last night I was wakened from a deep and troubled sleeping
Sleeping deep, blanket wrapped, and restless in the dark
When there came a soft tapping, a gentle and easy rapping
Gently placed upon the cold glass window near my bed
And from that slight sound, that gentle tap, I was drowsy led
Led from my sleeping deep and blanket wrapped, restless in the dark
To peer with no slight concern and wonder and seek the sight
That lay hidden, perhaps in death, in the rain filled night
Death in memories with ghosts that leave the living in fright
While hoping and thinking it must be a branch from my tree
One close to the side of the window that I could plainly see
That in the wind and rain that storm filled restless night
Could rap and tap and do its best to cause me no common fright
Should I but simply stare off to where there was no light
And then sudden appear some phantom in my sight
Some ghost of man or men who walked last night
Whose shadows live and come from the past
While haunting now their sad memories are cast
They that walk their walks restless always every night
So close and far they live and walk within my sight
From memories best dealt with in the light
Memories best left alone during a restless, sleepless night
Apparitions real perhaps that haunt my every thought
While in a restless sleep just peace is sought
Simple peace of mind that cannot for any price be bought.

© 2018 Gordon Kuhn, All Rights Reserved 6/30/2018

TIMES


There are times at night when I find myself in deep sleeping
And then in ghostly form, I catch myself somehow strangely competing
With memories compressed, forgotten, somehow caught in the whirl of haunted strife
While dealing with the ups and downs of a confused and struggling life
And discover that I am lying in a pool of emotional blood caused by too much thinking
While somehow fighting my way to the surface from the depths of dreaming
Trying to understand the grouping and the linking
That raced just moments before in a strangely disturbed streaming
Where questions come forward in a rush of issues all claiming
The time I cannot afford to relinquish and so I stand there alone and straining
Against the will of memory over logic denying a peaceful desire for a simple life
Forgetting the errors of my life so fervently causing pain in their haunting.

Yesterday’s Child


The following poem will be in Standoff. The book, Standoff is a group of poems and short stories

 

Yesterday’s Child

Yesterday’s child was born with a patchwork brain
Filled with paintings that would never be brought to view
For a painter, a drawer, he simply could not be
Overrun with songs that would never be sung
For they melted or collapsed before being born
Adrift with poetry that would struggle to be heard
But some broke through to live a day
Yesterday’s child was born to others to view
While about him his life slowly colored with stain
His sense of security and being loved flung
To the woods where sense lived in the leaves
That surrounded and filed the world with color

Copyright 2018 Gordon Kuhn

SHE HAD FAME


SHE HAD FAME
No one knew her name
This simple woman who walked alone
In the rain and sun, she walked alone
On Sarasota’s streets, she walked alone
And no one knew her name
She walked in light and in the dark
She walked in sun and in the rain
But one knew her name, but she had fame
As she walked barefoot and alone
She had local fame as she walked alone
This woman who had no name
In a dress that was a hand-down
From a local church charity store
Where they didn’t know her name
In the rain and sun on Sarasota’s streets
She walked until death closed her eyes
One night when the rain fell along her way
And the wind drove others off the streets
She was there when death claimed no name
And no one was there as she fell on her path
And there she lay until the break of day
This woman without a name
But death came, found her with its cold hand
A wet bundle in the rain found with a cold hand
And claimed her without knowing her name
This woman who walked alone without a  name.

NIGHTFALL, THE LOVERS’ DANCE


NIGHTFALL, THE LOVERS’ DANCE
I recall the night when the rain came
And settled in bringing a coolness to the room
Where two lovers met and never were the same
In an apartment in downtown Sarasota
Where they danced to a scratchy record on a player
While drinking stale beer in a dim light
From the only bulb left working
And somewhere in the world a wall was being torn down
Somewhere a child was being born
Water dripping from pipes to the foundation two floors below
Somehow they found each other and in a simple embrace
Shared the last cigarette in a crushed pack tossed to the floor
While singing a song neither knew.

© 2018 Poet in the Rain: Gordon Kuhn