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Don Kingfisher Campbell
THE EARTH
Here, a black box in the ground, freshly laden flower plot.
A group of dark-suited mourners walk measuredly away;
Slowly, not thinking, they repeat what they have been
taught:
To serve the unseen master of more than a day.
Eternity: inconceivable; for the lowered corpse that lies
Is the sole evidence available. Death was solo flashes
Sown again; the white light before the failing eyes
Known, as always, to the mute and peaceful ashes.
Still, the big question remains: remains remain the plea
Unsolvable. The closest we come to knowledge is in dreams,
Where subconscious connection to crying family
Members floats in the airy night space of high word means.
Now, the only certainty is uncertainty; but hope lives
In the reincarnation of the past the present gives.
THE RECTANGULAR SKY
walking out the front door I look up
at the sky framed by our college letter
"O" shaped building and feel like I live
in a manmade museum for appreciation of
nature I have developed a reverence for
the view above each day a different
painting by Force the best days when
puffy mashed potato cotton ball clouds
float in a flat blue sea of air and
the most awakening nights the moon is
brilliantly suspended with little venus
playmate teasing the corners of the sky
disappearing to remind me whimsy dwells
in afternoons where an occasional plane
putters from one side of the frame to
the other a helicopter whirls birds
silently flap and I walk below with
my daughter my wife my moon my venus
on the earth below the sight of this
a guy looking at relative positions as
we breathe out apartment double doors
I wonder why cars fly so fast down
the street and ask are they as lucky as
me to stop notice we construct imitate
the constant constellation over all
EL PLANETA DE LOS OREOS
so delightful this black oceaned and white continented world
the round black framed white bellied people enjoy eating
black crusted pizza covered with creamy white topping
as they sit at their white tableclothed black tables and
wear black and white dresses and suits and ties simply to
exit their white windowed black houses and walk on
white stone walkways around black bladed grass to go in
to their black cars sporting white rims which roll down
black (white lines down the middle) highway arrive at
circular black concrete plaza and lounge on raised white
platform
dark and light mouths open in delight at the joy of living
on a delicious planet with black sky and white clouds except
for the fact their teeth are white with black spots all over
which they try to clean by taking milk river baths while
standing on black stones as the white sun shines in the
night
but mostly their poetry is ours...which we can experience by
turning our video screens to the black and white setting
Here, a black box in the ground, freshly laden flower plot.
A group of dark-suited mourners walk measuredly away;
Slowly, not thinking, they repeat what they have been
taught:
To serve the unseen master of more than a day.
Eternity: inconceivable; for the lowered corpse that lies
Is the sole evidence available. Death was solo flashes
Sown again; the white light before the failing eyes
Known, as always, to the mute and peaceful ashes.
Still, the big question remains: remains remain the plea
Unsolvable. The closest we come to knowledge is in dreams,
Where subconscious connection to crying family
Members floats in the airy night space of high word means.
Now, the only certainty is uncertainty; but hope lives
In the reincarnation of the past the present gives.
THE RECTANGULAR SKY
walking out the front door I look up
at the sky framed by our college letter
"O" shaped building and feel like I live
in a manmade museum for appreciation of
nature I have developed a reverence for
the view above each day a different
painting by Force the best days when
puffy mashed potato cotton ball clouds
float in a flat blue sea of air and
the most awakening nights the moon is
brilliantly suspended with little venus
playmate teasing the corners of the sky
disappearing to remind me whimsy dwells
in afternoons where an occasional plane
putters from one side of the frame to
the other a helicopter whirls birds
silently flap and I walk below with
my daughter my wife my moon my venus
on the earth below the sight of this
a guy looking at relative positions as
we breathe out apartment double doors
I wonder why cars fly so fast down
the street and ask are they as lucky as
me to stop notice we construct imitate
the constant constellation over all
EL PLANETA DE LOS OREOS
so delightful this black oceaned and white continented world
the round black framed white bellied people enjoy eating
black crusted pizza covered with creamy white topping
as they sit at their white tableclothed black tables and
wear black and white dresses and suits and ties simply to
exit their white windowed black houses and walk on
white stone walkways around black bladed grass to go in
to their black cars sporting white rims which roll down
black (white lines down the middle) highway arrive at
circular black concrete plaza and lounge on raised white
platform
dark and light mouths open in delight at the joy of living
on a delicious planet with black sky and white clouds except
for the fact their teeth are white with black spots all over
which they try to clean by taking milk river baths while
standing on black stones as the white sun shines in the
night
but mostly their poetry is ours...which we can experience by
turning our video screens to the black and white setting
DON KINGFISHER CAMPBELL, listed on Poets
& Writers, is the founder of POETRYpeople
youth writing workshops, publisher of the San
Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, leader of the
Emerging Urban Poets writing and Pure Poetry
critique workshops, and host of Saturday
Afternoon Poetry in Pasadena, California. Mr.
Campbell has taught Creative Writing in the
Upward Bound program at Occidental College
and been a Guest Teacher for the Los Angeles
Unified School District for 24 years. Don is the
recipient of an Honorable Mention in The
League Of Laboring Poets March 2007
contest, the National Writers Association's Los
Angeles Chapter Author Of The Month
Certificate, the Artists For A Better World
Spirit Of Youth Award, an Honorable Mention
in the Pathetic.org 9/11 poetry contest, the
Pennsylvania State Poetry Society's Charles
Ferguson Prize, and an Arroyo Arts
Collective's Poetry In The Windows Prize.
Kingfisher’s poetry has been recently
published in the anthologies Vox Journal,
Behold The Pirate Pig, Hudson View Poetry
Digest, Mudpuppy, Looking Out Of Pasadena,
Prism Review, Looking Out Of Alhambra, Free-
Wheeling, Prism Quarterly, Open Windows,
Poetry And Cookies, Dirt, Cosmic Brownies,
Three Chord Poems, Midnight Mind Number
Five, So Luminous The Wildflowers, and One
Drop To Be The Color Black; and is also
viewable on the internet at the University of
La Verne’s Poetry Sleepover, Poets Lane,
Poets Express, The League Of Laboring Poets,
The Stone Table Review, Six Little Things,
Turbula, The Barricade, Tattoo Highway, Poetry
Midwest, River Walk, New Verse News, Poets
Against The War, Hiss Quarterly, Poetic
Diversity, Edifice Wrecked, Call To Arts,
Lunarosity, Writer's Hood, Poetic Voices,
MindFire Renewed, Poetry Super Highway,
Wilmington Blues, Bonfire, Wired Art From
Wired Hearts, and Poetz websites. His first
book of poetry "Enter", reviewed as "pithy,
trenchant, raw with life", was published by
iUniverse Press and is available on Amazon.
com, Barnes & Noble.com, etc. You can even
find him interviewed on Litrave.com and
Poetix.net! And now, a video on YouTube by
going to Poetry.LA!! Want a poet in your
classroom, library, bookstore, coffeehouse, or
event? Please email: poetrypeople@charter.
net
& Writers, is the founder of POETRYpeople
youth writing workshops, publisher of the San
Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, leader of the
Emerging Urban Poets writing and Pure Poetry
critique workshops, and host of Saturday
Afternoon Poetry in Pasadena, California. Mr.
Campbell has taught Creative Writing in the
Upward Bound program at Occidental College
and been a Guest Teacher for the Los Angeles
Unified School District for 24 years. Don is the
recipient of an Honorable Mention in The
League Of Laboring Poets March 2007
contest, the National Writers Association's Los
Angeles Chapter Author Of The Month
Certificate, the Artists For A Better World
Spirit Of Youth Award, an Honorable Mention
in the Pathetic.org 9/11 poetry contest, the
Pennsylvania State Poetry Society's Charles
Ferguson Prize, and an Arroyo Arts
Collective's Poetry In The Windows Prize.
Kingfisher’s poetry has been recently
published in the anthologies Vox Journal,
Behold The Pirate Pig, Hudson View Poetry
Digest, Mudpuppy, Looking Out Of Pasadena,
Prism Review, Looking Out Of Alhambra, Free-
Wheeling, Prism Quarterly, Open Windows,
Poetry And Cookies, Dirt, Cosmic Brownies,
Three Chord Poems, Midnight Mind Number
Five, So Luminous The Wildflowers, and One
Drop To Be The Color Black; and is also
viewable on the internet at the University of
La Verne’s Poetry Sleepover, Poets Lane,
Poets Express, The League Of Laboring Poets,
The Stone Table Review, Six Little Things,
Turbula, The Barricade, Tattoo Highway, Poetry
Midwest, River Walk, New Verse News, Poets
Against The War, Hiss Quarterly, Poetic
Diversity, Edifice Wrecked, Call To Arts,
Lunarosity, Writer's Hood, Poetic Voices,
MindFire Renewed, Poetry Super Highway,
Wilmington Blues, Bonfire, Wired Art From
Wired Hearts, and Poetz websites. His first
book of poetry "Enter", reviewed as "pithy,
trenchant, raw with life", was published by
iUniverse Press and is available on Amazon.
com, Barnes & Noble.com, etc. You can even
find him interviewed on Litrave.com and
Poetix.net! And now, a video on YouTube by
going to Poetry.LA!! Want a poet in your
classroom, library, bookstore, coffeehouse, or
event? Please email: poetrypeople@charter.
net
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