Tag: Poetry

slouching toward bethlehem

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Crone, Crone Consciousness, Didion, Joan Didion, Life, Life and Death, liminal, liminality, Poem, poet, poetry, Samsara, threshold, time, YeatsLeave a comment

i resist stirring, opening my eyes, or thinking

as the dog wakes, and waits

i am in the center of another dawn-dream,
on the precipice of
experiencing some thing, of understanding some thing

but it cannot hold,

evaporating
with every
slouch toward consciousness

i open my eyes to
the grey of the room, to the dark white gyre of the sky through these generous windows
i open my ears
to the beat
of crystals pummeling these generous windows,
once and again, realizing
i possess slow thighs,
heavy lungs, a heavier heart,
an entire weighted mass,
and a mind — less than half-known / half-known

i want to re-bury myself in the warm sands of sleep, the enveloping weightless numb
and drift back to
the liminal/

this must be the
feeling
of the fully-gestated
unborn fetus, warm,
quiet, still
waiting to be born
yet resisting being known, moving on

Continue reading “slouching toward bethlehem” →

Poetry vs. Poems

On By ©️K.T. 2025In April, Poem, poeme, poemo, poet, poetry, U.S. National Poetry MonthLeave a comment 
for [US] National Poetry Month 
April 2024

many people write poems,
maybe even some good ones, maybe even a great one

but others,

they

speak in poetry
cry in poetry
illuminate in poetry
lust in poetry
revere in poetry
rage in poetry
survive in poetry
mother in poetry
love in poetry
critique in poetry
dance in poetry
inform in poetry
grieve in poetry
wonder in poetry
assassinate in poetry
expose in poetry
imagine in poetry
rebuke in poetry
teach in poetry
confess in poetry
resist in poetry
observe in poetry
exalt in poetry
mock in poetry
grow in poetry
die in poetry

&

live, and live, and live in poetry

these latter are the poets,

metaphor, verse, and prose
entangled
in every thought, in every experience, in every act, in every feeling, in every expression,
inseparable as breath and air,

whether ever read
whether ever recognized
whether ever published
whether ever paid
whether they ever write one poem deemed good by anyone — even themself

poetry
is
the breath
and blood
and milk
and spit
and piss
and cum
and tears
and wine
and water
and ink
and words

in which

poets

swim

not casually,

but as habitat.

Continue reading “Poetry vs. Poems” →

poetry

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Poem, Poetree, poetry, PoettreeLeave a comment

World Poetry Day

an outdoor poetry post
in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
The World

may poetry posts and little free food pantries become as common as little free libraries — all three are such inspiring forms of praxes

a displayed poem:
“Brushing Teeth with my Sister after the Wake”
a wonderfully eccentric,
outdoor little [free] library & bench
in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
The World
Continue reading “poetry” →

goldilocks’ zone

On By ©️K.T. 2025In climate, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, Hospice, Near Term Human Extinction, Poem, poetry, Sixth Mass Extinction, symbiosityLeave a comment

the widespread muck,
usual to late March
now spoils the January, the December, February too

there are no more
seasons,

only drownt
or parched

what use
is axial tilt, solar distance
while these men
lock-up the thermostat and disarrange the elements

Continue reading “goldilocks’ zone” →

kill the coyote v.2

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Alpenglow, Lament, land, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

i won’t warn you with
my voice, anymore

tell me,
how do you calmly
tell someone to
“look, brake, stop, now, please”
in a nano-second?
calm but with desperate urgency?
without amplification?
without proselytizing?
without the infusion or projection of panic?
without the prescience of the future unfolding in the very moment?

tell me,
i’ll wait,

while you kill the coyote

crossing the road

that crosses razed forest

clear-cut for runs and Aprés-ski,
for lumber to build the 3-day-stay mansions – which they unironically call, “cabins,”
a settlement of a pop-up-Bavaria™️ for them in the valley of the mountains of

the Sangre de Cristo?

the lifeblood of the Red Willows.

the very same road

to access the trailhead
to the pristine glacial lake
with views of Taos Peak

a profanity of epithets

“williams” lake

“wheeler” peak

where you go, unironically,

to briefly escape

this World,
the violence of this World,
your World

the one constructed in your image,

and in your favor

Continue reading “kill the coyote v.2” →

free palestine: “SHALOM not [A] napalm BOMB”

On By ©️K.T. 2025In anti-zionism, Chicago, Free Palestine, Joffre Stewart, outsider poet, Poem, poet, poetry, Politics, street poetLeave a comment

“SHALOM not [A] napalm BOMB”

– Joffre Stewart

Joffre Stewart,
Chicago
poet, outsider artist,
street philosopher & pamphleteer,
anti-political theorist & activist,
anti-zionist,
war-and-tax-resister
&
pacifist-anarchist
June 1994

“No state exists by right, they come to exist by force, and then justify their existence after the fact.”

- Geo Maher
Continue reading “free palestine: “SHALOM not [A] napalm BOMB”” →

“Forever You”: an ode to friendship at the horizon of loss

On By ©️K.T. 2025In childhood, Death, friends, friendship, Gold, illuminated text, Lajuana Lampkins, Life and Death, Ode, Poem, poet, poetry, Roses, Terminal IllnessLeave a comment
gifted handwritten poem art from one of my newest and dearest friends, Lajuana Lampkins
as my longest and dearest friend,
Jill Johnston Hayes
neared death

an illuminated scroll
drawn on gold metallic cardstock
with pen, marker, paint and crayon
Lajuana Lampkins
September 2023
FOREVER “you”… 
My childhood friend, and through the years, we've grown together, shared joy and tears, were bonded like the day and night, our hearts forever will unite, you've given me, a chance to be, a friend forever, most definitely, I am forever, there is no end, you'll always be, my most best friend, each day and night, I keep you near, always know, that I am here. Thank you for, the love you've shared, nothing else can compare, So much we've grown, and been all through, forever is forever you. 

Poem by Lajuana Lampkins
©️copyright Lajuana Lampkins
September 2023
Continue reading ““Forever You”: an ode to friendship at the horizon of loss” →

conspiracy to kill the creator

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Gnosis, Gnostic, Kenoma, liminal, liminality, limineen, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

she sips a glass
of wine
and admits, agrees
she too, doesn’t want to be

on this prison planet
under these archons,
guided and insulated by sadistic angels,
both, in servitude to the demiurge

no escaping it, Them

even in Bucolia

she’s still plagued by the 24-hour news cycle,
contemplation that often veers off into nihilism,

and, by bouts of suicidal ideation
— but to go back around, back to another false birth in this Samsara, to start over? — no thanks //

perhaps crying in the wilderness, then.

where is that, exactly?
the mountains, buttes and canyons also betray us — those ancient Watchers, the petroglyphs warned us of
— and of shapeshifters cloaked in feathers, fur and scales ///

she knows she can’t save her Self, preserve her Pneuma and reunite with her Daimon,
solely with an Earth-based practice of resistance

and, so begins the invocation, the genesis of her mission,

she supposes the element of surprise may be compromised by Their so-called omniscience

but who knows – what They actually know

even gods have blindspots
even gods sleep and fuck — or mindlessly scroll and binge

we, Their creation, create Their content, after all

yes.

she will go to Them

traversing the liminal terrain

to find and kill Them in their confident repose in the Kenoma

“The crew compartment’s breaking up”

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Crone Consciousness, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, exposition, Funerary, Hospice, Lament, Lamentations, Life and Death, music, planetary hospice, Song, Songs, Space Shuttle ColumbiaLeave a comment

John Roderick wrote the above line and repeats it seven times(!) in his song, “The Commander Thinks Aloud”— about the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster that happened February 1, 2003

and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry during the first verse


The Commander Thinks Aloud

Boys and girls in cars
Dogs and birds on lawns
From here I can touch the sun


Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born
The Tropic of Capricorn is below


We stall above the pole
Still your face is young
As we feel our weight return


A trail of shooting stars
The horses call the storm
Because the air contains the Charge


The radio is on
And Houston knows the score
Can you feel it, we're almost home

The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
This is all I wanted to bring home to you

Songwriter: John Roderick, The Long Winters


The Commander Thinks Aloud lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Rough Trade Publishing

this song — since the very first time i (belatedly) heard and learned about it on the Song Exploder podcast in 2016 — became an instant melancholic metaphor-lamentation for me, even while retaining it’s very visceral and intended meaning —

at first, for the climate chaos we face on our communal spaceship — Spaceship Earth,

as in, “hey, do you realize we’re floating in space?” — then, why are we [deliberately] destroying the crew compartment?

and

for our lives — for the simplicity that is both stolen and lost

in the daily struggle — of and against exploitation, repression and oppression; in the daily drama of our dis/mis/mal contentment; in the daily, unnecessary grasping, striving, amassing and hoarding — whether for – or of, wealth, land, power, influence, reputation, career, fame, control or privilege —

or, in orbiting the Earth in a shuttle or space station or landing on the Moon in a spacecraft — when we could’ve just been human beings caretaking of this Eden and of each other.

and personally,

Continue reading ““The crew compartment’s breaking up”” →

premeditated mourning

On By ©️K.T. 2025In cancer, Death, dreaming, dreams, dying, Hospice, Life and Death, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

i am in premeditative mourning

desperate to get it
over and done with
before she’s dead

i choke on the dream scene, the prognosis and the grand scheme / ever-present in my throat /
and weep
then, a memory of us wedges in
i cry a smile, and smile a cry

i think
this, is all, too much
i can’t do this.

she is the one doing it
with her dignity, her calm, her reserve, she’s had too much practice, she’s well-traveled on this terrain

these consecutive life sentences, handed out

i am in retroactive outrage
over these injured bodies, injured, not failing,
precision is imperative /
i am in proactive rage
against these failing systems within this failed system in this injured, not failing, closed system /
precision is imperative

does anyone else want to know
the cause/s of death/s
these expendable, collateral clusters — of families, neighborhoods, workers, of an implausible deniability
one after another at four, five or six decades — dead

did he bring home the syndrome
in silica tucked in the creases
of his work clothes
of his brow,
he built the skyline! the Hancock even
my god, did he carry it in his semen

or was it the apartment on wabansia?
on karlov? on keystone?
all zoned mixed-use residential-commercial-industrial — industrial!
when they all walked from home
to work at the factory down the block,
on the next block, or across the alley
a metal plater
a powder coater
a dry-cleaner
tool and die

i don’t want these precognitions anymore!
let me dream her as a grandmother
with her grandchildren, all, all pristine!

i know the outcome
of walking forward in waking fantasy, in empty, unheard prayer, instead of trusting the retrograde revelations of my sleep

Continue reading “premeditated mourning” →

the mourning doves

On By ©️K.T. 2025In earthlings, human non-beings, hunters, hunting, ki, kin, Poem, poetry, wildlifeLeave a comment

i still surprise them
even after nearly six years of quiet-yet-unstealthy,
devotion to them

they’ve never once held their roost or kept their forage
upon my careful intrusion, my neutral presence
to maybe know of me
to maybe trust of me

their survival instinct is so strong
but i still take umbrage,
playful, but umbrage, nonetheless

then i remember Nemerov’s words about their feathers
in our caps, our pillows, our coats
“The Distances They Keep,”
then i remember Kimmerer’s words about
the aweing ubiquity and incredible extinction of the Omimi,
Martha the Last, died 109 years ago come September,
then i read how happy fields of sunflowers are cultivated to serve as bait traps for dove hunters at my beloved Starved Rock – after all the lovely fall engagement and high school photo shoots wind down,
and of those who cruelly suggest their flesh is quite delicious

there is no honorable harvest among the descendants of thieves, of colonizers, of settlers, of “homesteaders” — i know this.

so, my god, yes,

stay shy, stay distant, dear doves,

there are many reasons, that i stay shy, stay distant, and in mourning too, but none as good as theirs

addendum poem:

“dove,”
what a lovely name for a gentle bird
what a lovely name for a newly-born girl
what a terrible name for a woman in this world

Continue reading “the mourning doves” →

beach OBE

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Alchemy, crone chronicles, grandmother, liminal, metaphysical, out-of-body experience, Poem, poetry, waterLeave a comment

i Am revisiting the significance of this poem — first published on my former Tumblr site [kimtn.tumblr.com] in August 2012 and one of the first poems i ever composed

this poem is derived from my near-drowning and out-of-body experience [OBE] when i was about three years old at a beach near Waukegan, Illinois while under the brief watch of my Finnish-American paternal grandmother, Dolores “Babe” Laine (shortened from Kumpulainen) who was often drunk

i am actually lucky that this near-drowning happened to me — and at such a tender age; my out-of-body experience imprinted on me and left me with the capacity to be open to, recognize and receive other metaphysical and liminal experiences throughout my life, and is absolutely part of the origin story for The Limineen and its previous incarnation as the “Accidental Seeker & Intentional Opiner”

beach obe

I open my eyes and ochre water’s all around

I’m underneath, but I’m not scared,

I still see golden sunlight too

I see your legs; you’ve let me go

and I think I’m down here all alone

I hear voices, but I can’t breathe

So I leave, I’m off to explore

But wait, there’s me! – that’s my face!

Can you see, that somehow now, there’s two of me?!

you finally see — the first me
you slowly raise her up

She coughs and breathes;

and the other me, She goes, She floats away

But, which one Am i?

now, i’m not sure

Am i real, or was it She?

Continue reading “beach OBE” →

fulcrums

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Poem, poetry, summer, WyomingLeave a comment

pinpoint the moment,
the fulcrum,
where verdant green life
slips into hot summer crackle,
Sun-steeped leaves
aromatic, chamomile-like
parched beneath our feet
all those places a hose will never reach,
a scent in your nose
reminiscent of a birthday hike
on switchbacks
to stand properly on, and in shadow of,
“The Grand”,
a surprise, teal, alpine lake.
was that the time he dove from the rock like a young god, an Adonis?
all those trips to Wyoming in August, in June,

begin to merge into one core memory,
a hunk of young granite
carried down in rock slide
then, carried all the way down to the valley in my pocket
for him, to give to him, on his birthday.
i ran down that mountain like a gazelle, ahead of them
it was the fastest and freest i have ever felt in all my life, truly
and, i astounded them, all, — and myself.


then, a long, quiet drive back to
a newly dog-less house
how did this all happen in one June, one August, or — was it two?
then,
the first time i felt a chill in months,
a different kind of crunch underfoot
the wind rained down
a carpet of leaves all about, in an instant

just as they appeared at birth,
all golden again,
but different, wiser,

a frost sets in.

Continue reading “fulcrums” →