Selected Work by Kenneth P. Gurney

Hot Bread Uncorked from the Oven

One flower grows still, fat,
without blood--my eyes
absorb this new light, this turning
away from myself into her seed.

A songbird sits upon her nest,
hymns of pain and ecstacy
fall from her mouth, her wings
crave flight again.

Harjo and Nye ride her breath,
the cusp of the moon, the midnight
milkings, the urban chorus
of a subsidized apartment complex.

Love, you are the river: twists
and turns, the pull of gravity,
head spinning whorls, eddies,
a longer bed than I ever imagined.

Dead Face does not Die

Or how the train is a bruise
turning purple, blue, black,
with shades of yellow green.

We all guess the significance
of her bleached hair
and joke about the dumb
and deserving, but we are wrong,
as usual, as always.

It is not who are we losing
that matters most this day,
but who we choose to find.
It is as simple as the pronouns
used inside the flock
that the Christ risks
to find his one lost sheep.

New Dawn

He first feels the emptiness in the sheets,
then the house, then his breath.

The child god's pointed promise breaks
on the empty coffee pot, in the blank farewell card.

And with it his morning disappears, vanishes.
The spiral darkness descends to blot the sun.

He retains the power of money, but her departure
depletes the laughter that made his largesse filling.

He keens--lost as a butterfly stripped of wings,
there is no more flutter, no more tumbling on the wind.

It is perfect, her escape, somewhere, west of twilight,
north of the crows. She invites the moon into her sleep.

Her trucks starts, the dog barks as her fire ignites.
A new light breaks the dark, illuminates all her visions.

Actions

It's the same chill she feels
on January mornings
in those moments just out of bed,
before the long-johns pass her ankles
while the cast-iron woodstove
radiates the cold.

Ordering coffee is as simple as breaking ground
somewhere in Oklahoma
two months past the last rain storm.

The hippy-girl behind the counter
thinks the owl is so cool for Ellie, some shaman sign,
Change, not death you heard, a mystery.
But the hippy-girl can't spot salt from sugar
when they are out of their dispensers.

Somewhere on her ride to work
a red-box of Marlboros opens on the bus
and a city ordinance goes up in smoke.

Two puffs into bus driver negligence
and the harsh stares of twenty silent riders,
Ellie walks forward three seats and,
without a word, yanks the cigarette
from the offenders mouth,
crushes it, tosses it out the window
and plops her owlish attitude down
next to this inconsiderate twit.

Sometimes I dance for hours

There are two white doves
burning on the mantle.
If you look close
on one is scribed Palestine
the other Israel. But
they both complain
about the cast of shadows
and blame each other
for the scary tricks of light.

I must still be the man
who found the sandy path back
to himself, after long years
tossed about by the neon tide.

When you arrive
from your long journey
through the holy land,
you will find the candles lit
and set to be seen from the door.
Open it and come in,
as it is unlocked. I am
on the west hill, dancing
with the forked light of heaven
which returned me to the night.

Distant Friend Close

Worms work their way
through that which once
contained his soul, but
I do not see him that way
and his voice is the voice
he had three years ago,
before the cancer
erupted in his throat.

I never developed the habits
of smoke, beer, booze,
grass, drugs or sex
as a means of hiding
from that which is gone.
Though, I am not
where I stand from time
to time. It puzzles me,
but I always come back.

Sometimes, I think of his mouth,
the cigarette and the scotch. How
he couldn't stop laughing at my life
and how, not once, did I feel
he made fun of me.

The postman arrives. I know this
because my neighbor's dog
barks in that way Lassie barked
to warn Timmy of danger.

No matter what my age in numbers,
I know that I am old
because the count of friends buried
is too many for my fingers and toes.
It's not suppose to be that way --
or, maybe, it is when you are the last
as Chingachgook would know.

My hat's location
remains a mystery
and I need it for the mile walk
up to Starbucks
in the Albuquerque sun.

The fact that my body
is cold under the covers
on June nights worries me.

It could be a sign that I
will be early to the grave,
but I fear it is a sign
that the heavenly spark
is withdrawn from making fire
inside my heart.

My friend from the grave
watches my mouth form
the word love, sees how
my lips contort, twist,
how anguish strips
my eyes of any light
and how the knot of muscles
constricts my breath.

Seeing me, now, through God's eyes,
he knows it is not love that scars me,
nor the word, nor sharing its effects
as gentle kindness. But having
lost so much, the pain that is there
is having no one left
with whom to share the grief.

Yet, as I hear his ghost laugh at my life,
the wonderful, lovable silliness of my humanity,
I feel again that friendship we shared
and the room is not so empty
and my hat suddenly appears
on the counter next to the clock radio.

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM. He produces the poetry website Origami Condom. If you plan to offer him chocolate, please make sure it is dark chocolate, preferably Belgian, as he can be a snob about this sort of thing. His latest discovery is that mixing lemonade with ginger ale (half each) is a marvelous drink. If you ever meet him face to face, you will notice that he is tall, but not NBA tall. In his free time, he hikes the foothills & desert trails, attends baseball games, reads, and participates in the local poetry scene. (August 2007, February & August 2008)