To See a Dog about a Man

I know how my day will go by the people I meet

When I walk first thing in the morning on the street.

I can tell by their reactions the sort of day

I can expect. The healthy ones running are best,

Often friendly, always focused and moving so

I know my day will be like that if only

I can avoid the others, the scowling neighbors,

The pajama people pushing their trash cans

To the curb like stoic, somnambulant slaves in hell.

The dog people are worse because they move like zombies

Possessed by their pets and let their dogs off leash,

Unleashing them in the park, the dog days of summer

Are upon us, and I know my day will be just so.

I turn and cross to evade but my fate is sealed.

The dog people want to encounter others walking

And want people to admire their dogs, no doubt

Because they have no lives without their dogs.

When I was younger I used to go along

And pretend to adore the dogs, but now I ignore

The dogs and their persons, and I do not let

Them sniff my hand because dogs smell dislike

And yet they like me even from a distance.

I can see in their eyes and the way they hesitate

Not wanting to go with their persons, thinking I

Am a better human, but they are wrong as surely

As I know when I see them gazing longingly

My day will be like the life they want to live

With a love I know I can never have or give.

KLK

7/26/17

A Love Poem for LW

I had no notion I could fall in love

With you so fast it happened by surprise.

I hardly noticed and, not thinking of

You, felt more than now I realize.

It wasn’t your behavior I focused on.

It wasn’t what you said, and yet it was.

More feeling when you’re near, though when you’re gone

A happiness which shouldn’t hurt, but does.

It isn’t how you look and, yes, it is:

The way you look at me that makes me melt.

This wasn’t there one day and now it is,

Strange, stronger feelings than I’ve ever felt.

This cannot end well, that I know as sure

As wounds will fester without a healing salve:

My feelings for you one more failure, your

Love something I can never hope to have.

Still I cannot help myself and stop this

Desire which will not stop at just one kiss.

KLK

11/6/15

Familiar Objects in a New Light

fragment


From New York I returned, my balcony
Neither as large nor high as that at the hotel;
The metal railing dusty though I never
Noticed before; the bolted rectangles
That fix the railing in its place appear
Peculiar in this new light of my return.
There I saw new an old friend's other face
So sadly different in that different place,
Indifferent to simple pleasures which fix
Railings to balconies and make views safe.
The subtleties of different light expose
New aspects always present, overlooked,
As we watched near and far the city on high,
Or gentle clouds against a deep night sky,
But borne out by the history of events
Experienced at once an ignorance
In a new light revisiting new places,
Old friends grow unfamiliar in common spaces.
Both here and there, cigars remain the same:
These moments come, remind me why I came.

KLK
5/31/05

The Oval Wheel

The language of liars is lies: To speak

To them in an idiom they understand,

The vocabulary of image over substance,

The rationalized ends beyond the means,

And what is meant is indirection; so

How can they know when you talk differently?

Even if you speak the truth, they hear a lie,

Suspect you misdirect when you state fact,

That you are merely trying to distract

From something more important to your motive.

But even liars think truth orients

Their way, the same way we all think our lives

Normal although most of us deviate.

Unless you are a liar you know this,

That liars don’t know they are liars. True,

Yet even great liars respond to needs

Emotionally and may envy you

That poise they sense beyond their inner noise,

Turning again to hear despite their fear.

KLK

10/10/14

Time Enough to Listen

When I hear your voice, serious or laughing,

Something in me responds beyond the years

We have known, more than days, beyond the hours,

A simple pleasure in your presence, having

Nothing more than that moment is enough.

To watch your eyes and follow your clear words,

To hear that you mean what you say, and care

What I think, how I feel about your stuff,

Gives me more satisfaction than if we

Were more than friends, more than those loves long gone

Neither of us know now. For I can see

Trust in your eyes in that moment alone.

To love each other like that is enough

And more than time for us to listen and laugh.

KLK

3/3/05

Chuck Wanted a Window

Baudelaire
Had the air

Of a man who 
Wasn't there

Of a man who
Didn't care

Of a man who
Needed more

A savoir faire
So debonair

Je ne sais quoi
à tout à l’heure

KLK
10/17/14

My With

Even without me you are with it, and
When I'm with you, we are together, so
Together by yourself, my Sappho, my
Emily, family, so happily
Your own, I say, when I'm alone, I see
If only you be with me certainly I,
With it with you, whatever we do, know,
If you are my with, I can want for nothing.

KLK
10/18/14

Window in the Envelope

Culture is an illusion we buy into and, by belief, make it something to reckon with, a bargain, a way of seeing, a way of living, a state of being.

Still, it is illusion. Why?

Nature is an illusion of the senses and, further, of technological and scientific extensions of the senses within the mind.

Still, it is illusion. Why?

With all our tools and toy ideas we never quite reach escape from the planet of which we are a part.

Planet on my table, on my shelves, and online, planet of my life now only a memory, help me extrapolate beyond this illusion of identity which prevents me from doing all I can before the final frontier.

No question. Amen.

KLK 

10/21/14 - 

for Jeff, whose birthday it is today or tomorrow, Catch Me If You Can!

THE SECRET ORDER OF THE TIP OF THE SPEAR

Was Van Gogh
Shot by children
Or did he turn
His own gun upon
Himself and make
It a window?

A wound can become
A door
If wide enough
If deep enough
A way to leave or

A means to life

If nothing else nothing more

KLK
10/21/14

A Woman's Touch

You may not know the sanctuary of
A library in an unknown town but I
Learned to take refuge for the sake of love,
Did even with young children, and still try,
With children grown and gone, remembering
Familiar feelings in strange places much
The same through changes, elements to cling
To, reference points consistently in touch
Among the stacks and pages turning. See,
What I believed in changed against me but
The changes less around and more in me.
Now I retrace from place to place less what
I tried for love consistently to fit
Beyond belief now changed thus changing it.


KLK
9/21/14

Exorcise of Prudence

The first response tells all you need to know
About the character in front of you,
If she believes you are like all men she
Has met before or may be different.
In that first minute you know whether she
leads with her baggage or has mastered life,
Contact too brief for it be just me
Who gave a glorious rise to dynasty
Beyond mere baggage I am often startled by
The instant empires open in a phrase,
Her edifice of ancient origin,
Tumultuous acculturation so deep
As to defy an Alexander's skill.
Such women have religion, worshiping
Their demons every minute of their lives
And only a dark priest from the past can reach them.


KLK
11/02/14

From an earlier note 06/04/05 - notebooks

Blind Date

The moment I saw her
As I walked in the restaurant
And scanned the patrons searching for
The face I knew she was not what I want.

There sitting in the booth
She seemed both old and undesired
Beyond a lack of grace or youth,
In herself wholly lone and uninspired.

A single photo viewed
Revealed some similar effects
But the results now were construed
As lack of interest from the male sex.

For so she had confessed
Her online dating, never meeting,
Was virtual with no-shows at best;
Yet she continues with this no-date dating,

Concluding it is all
About LA, and nothing she
Has shown or left undone, too small
Of mind, not her size, which she fails to see.

I know why I am single.
My choices make me how I look
And live outside of Match and Mingle,
Or women's preference in how they look.

Without my seeing I
Am seen outside my wants, and dream,
As those unseen looks capture why
For others I am only how I seem.

Hear what my eyes have seen,
Here following what these words mean:
Looking is both how we seem and what we
Make of this world with looks we do not see.



KLK
5/8/15

A Narrow Margin

I fall asleep in bed with
what I've been reading within
reach and in hand

a posture shift
speaks volumes as the
books hit the

wooden floor and the
downstairs neighbors
pound the ceiling

cursing and pulling me
back from a distant
place I had barely

reached a moment before

KLK

Sorcerer Seeking Source

Blessed are the meek
For we shall inherit them.

What I lack
I want.

I am unhappy in myself and
See other people's happiness

Their satisfaction
Their contentment.

I envy these things.
I rationalize on selfishness.

I am a good
Deserving person and

Yet I do not have these things.
Therefore I am justified

In seeking them for myself and
Taking them where I can find them.

So runs the rationalization.
It is a prayer I do not share

Sharing here
For any who can hear.

KLK

List Monday Meeting Feb 9 2015

Sales meetings in small conference rooms

Women with dogs

Men who talk without reason

People with kids

Aggressive drivers

Noisy neighbors

Entitled behavior of any kind

Food storage containers without or mismatched lids

Clogged plumbing

Loud fans

Indecisive drivers

Disorganized things of all stripes

The way all human inventions are a form of control

Any gathering in which people talk over each other

Persons who try to take control by claiming you interrupted them

The way most people have no clue about what the hell they are really doing

Soft beds

Hard heads

Fat women who want you to be in better shape

Skinny women

Women who expect to be entertained

Fat men generally

Loud persons in a quiet place

Poems that don’t rhyme enough

Poems that rhyme too much

Women who believe they deserve better than they get from their own decisions

Men who believe they deserve better than they get from their own decisions

Work of all kinds

Being without the means

The fact that in “pork and beans” pork

Is listed first and yet

It contains less pork than beans

For Whom II

When I leave my job for the last time, whether
fired or quitting triumphant for a moment, either
looking forward to a new job until the same
disappointment there sets in or
going away forever from work altogether,
more on that later, I wonder whether
anyone will remark or recall how I
rapped a knuckle on the metal
tubes and rails in the elevators
to create a sound not unlike a train bell or the bell on a buoy offshore,
a distant faint resonating ringing,
far-off forlorn resonance in a closed space.

KLK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5A3U4SaFrw

POP QUIZ

Needle in a
Haystack:

Metal detector
Or
Send a thread.

What's your
Answer?


KLK
01/02/2015

Shopping for Meaning

Parking is always a problem
Even here in the middle of nowhere
A place we make as we go along

Having locked the doors
Walking away without looking back
We come to the crowds

Some going this way others that
And I remember when this place was different
And I was different too

All the stores now something other than they were
Some having changed several times
Except this door

The smell of popcorn
As I pass the movie house
You will find your own direction here

Even in the empty space you see
No one and nothing but your keys
Surrounded by a throng in a full lot

All trying to remember where they are
Going and where they parked
The smell of rancid butter

And stale memories moving
All along the old renewed
Cards activated ready for use

KLK
01/26/15