Mirror Mirror on the Wall

August 24, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Lori ran a finger over the snow white surface of her skin
She detected the slackness of expression
and paw prints and scratch marks of wild animals.

The light was not bright enough
to illuminate every pock mark, blemish and stain
or the lush who closed a thousand bars.

There was a sheen that vanished under inspection
like ice under spinning tires as they created steam.
She slapped herself and felt her crucifix jingle on a silvery chain.

Her mouth watered—wolfish, wildly casting about
nose to the ground for a scent just located.
A growl was hunger expressing its dissatisfaction with the status quo.

She regimented the rank and file
whose eyes strayed from hers down to her breasts
and silently ordered them about face—march.

It was slow—her thumping heart.
How she felt the blood-pump push upon her ribs
that swore to protect it, not cage it.

Soft needles of snow fell and shagged the pines.
A curl of sage smoke commenced
from a ceramic bowl and match to precious leaves.

No November witch wind to blame
for a shudder up the spine and out the shoulders
that shattered her metric stiffness.

Thunder

June 16, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Paul was struck
by his lack of desire for the Abrahamic God
or any of the thousands of interpretations
of the Word perpetrated on the day.

He decided as a child
he had not failed Sunday school
but it failed him
as it tried to indoctrinate his behavior.

He admitted some of the stories
were good to know in a vague way
like knowing where one hill is
among thousands of nameless hills.

Paul pulled water up from the well.
He knew no matter
what he believed
the water would be the same.

Celestial Object Cloaked in Flesh

January 17, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ 2 Comments

Paul stood in the middle.
He did not define the middle of what.

He knew he was in the middle
if all measurements started where he stood.

His tapping foot did not change this.
The position of the sun did not change this.

Paul understood
this made himself self-centered.

Self-help books told him
being centered is a good thing.

He decided it was not the starting point
of his measurements

but the radius of the circle he drew
from the starting point of self that mattered.

And whether the drawn circle
was inclusive or exclusive.

Paul noticed his circle’s interior
was brighter than the area outside the perimeter.

Voice I No Longer Remember

December 30, 2021 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Practice spirit speech.
Wander through night doors.

Salt food with sweat.
Rise at first light.

Place a hand on a friend’s shoulder.
Walk invisibly through forests.

Inhale wet leaf aroma.
Tread paths with no destination.

Accept advice from songbirds.
Give foolishness a home.

Define success for yourself.
Overwrite old memories.

How Afraid They Must Have Been of My Superpowers

August 20, 2021 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Now that
I am older
I realize
that school
was designed
to teach things
out of me
as well as
teach things
into me.

Same
with religion.

It took me
decades
to unlearn
my way
back into
myself.

Central

April 4, 2021April 6, 2021 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Paul located his boundaries.
He pushed on them.
They moved.

He noticed that pushing
one boundary forward
changed the shape

of all of his boundaries
that were out of sight
and momentarily out of mind.

When a boundary moved
his inner landscape
altered as well.

This was neither
a good nor a bad thing
but a true thing.

His inner landscaper
did not like his inner forests
dying off in one place

to instantly regrow
on what had once
been an inner grassland.

His inner buffalo
in a confused and hungry state
head butted his inner dreams

into a reoccurring guilt trip
where his moral compass
played spin the dial.

Sweep

March 29, 2021 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Poetry shapes words into daggers
to penetrate the listener.

To say the unsayable
form the wrong words into a mine detector

then glide it over
the vocabulary hidden under your skin

until the beeps quicken
then carefully dig and defuse the proper word.

So much of the poetry I hear at open mic
is the violent loss of virginity before puberty

and the cascading damage
shame perpetrates upon the victim.

Unabashedly revealing that truth
creates beauty from deformity.

Bend a spoon with poetry.
There is no spoon.

Bend yourself with poetry
into the shape of the you to come.

Trying To Explain

November 6, 2020 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

I’ll try anything once.
Well. I use to.
Age diminished
my adventurous spirit.
As in, I do not like
things that cause trouble.
Especially if trouble feels
like a kick in the shins.

Even if you double dare me
I will not stop in Indiana—
only pass through
on my way to somewhere else
never leaving the highway,
always waiting until Ohio
or the return to Chicago
to fuel the car.

Remaining warm is important.
As the fires of passion burned out,
so did the internal furnace.
Or, maybe, it was my ability
to ignore the cold
that subsided.

I feel fear more easily, now.
It is not that I have less courage.
It is that I have less ignorance.
I have seen too many cattle bones
from a highway stretched
over a drought dry grassland.

Butcher Paper

July 11, 2020 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

I keep dreaming my graduation.
I am a window with no sky.

I am part of a room.
A child in the room jingles keys.

The child then jangles a chain.
It is too dark for the child to unlock itself.

The child asks me, the window,
to cease being opaque

and let the sunlight filter through
the dirt and water stained glass.

The disenfranchised sun
taps me on the frame

to remind me my faded paint
peels and flakes to the ground below.

It suggests I open my eyes
and attend to my appearance.

A silence follows.
I realize I have no hands.