This attempt was actually assembled from a scrap heap of images I recorded at the beach last week. Send me an email and let me know if u think it works:
The Clouds Build Mountains
The clouds build mountains
Over the sea
Ominous purples and billowing grays.
When will it rain?
Over the sea
A lobster boat struggles.
When will it rain?
I am responsible.
A lobster boat struggles
Through the swells.
I am responsible.
I have seen her crying.
Through the swells
I see her face.
I have seen her crying
Reading my words.
She feels
Ominous purples and billowing grays
Rising inside her.
The clouds build mountains.
Just in case you're in the Southern California area, come by my reading tomorrow night at the Oceanside Barnes & Noble at 7 pm. If you mention you read my BLOG, I'll give you a free signed copy of BEFORE THE CITY. We need to conduct the free copy transaction out in the parking lot after the reading, where I'll have xtra copies in my trunk!
Besides reading poetry, I'll be lecturing a bit on how the poetic voice can be unleashed on a chapter in a novel or a short story. Check out the Feb. 2004 issue of LIBERTY and you'll see how I unleashed it on memoir-type material.
There's also an interesting piece by Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, who recently left their Beach City of Southern California for Lonerville, Nevada.
A hui hou until tomorrow!
I've been getting a swarm of emails and calls and letters from people who think I am dead. Is there another KIRBY WRIGHT out there who just kicked the bucket?! Well, it's NOT me. I mean, my fingers seem to be typing on the keys tonite ok and I can feel my lungs fill with air and the release the carbon dioxide. There's something I must admit. I knew this girl. She was infatuated. So much so that she found out where I lived and parked across the street and watched my upstairs window. I would have never known except one night Queenie the Cat got out and ran right over to her car. Yep, she was in there, still watching my lit window from the driver's seat of her Volvo. I'm thinking she's spreading this rumor. Oh. And she did break into my old apartment in Palo Alto and steal my list of emails. So, if you're on that list, please forgive me for this, I'm really still alive!
I wrote the following at Kahala Beach in January of this year. It had been a year since I last wrote something on/at this beach and I think the months of being away made everything fresh again, as if I was on the beach for the first time in my life. Sometimes being away from a place and then returning has its advantages. This poem has already been accepted for publication!
Kahala Beach 2004
The waves are furious.
They show no mercy,
Angry faces crashing white.
The beach responds by shrinking.
Stones, partially exposed,
Hide their bottoms.
The clouds relinquish their patrols.
The sky shifts from blue to cobalt.
A jet descends,
Roaring like ocean.
Who rests in the deep water
Where the waves are built?
This vanishing strand
Knew Kamehameha’s footsteps.
A chunk of lime-colored glass
Maroons on the sand.
I just finished reading CROWS IN OUR HANDS by John Paul Barrett, a great book about the care and raising of wild crows and then releasing them back into the wild. I actually traded for this book with BEFORE THE CITY, a great deal for me. What I liked about it was John and his wife felt when they took in sick/hurt crow, loved it back to health, and then were faced with the inevitable--releasing the bird back into the wild and never seeing it again. I think when we lose people, when we lose those we love, we are releasing them into the wild too and our memories of them, if they are good, make us weep. You can get a hold of John at gaffpres@pacifier.com.
Tell him Kirby sent you.
a hui hou,
-K
Wow. None of you showed up for the reading at Kahala Mall on January 10th! Was watching the St. Louis Rams lose to the Carolina Panthers really worth it?
You missed out because I showed how the poetic voice can be unleashed on memoir/autobiographical material. And there were also local publishers in the audience that you could have met. And my sister was there giving free psychic readings right there in the heart of Barnes & Noble.
Do this--show your support and go buy my book at either Bestsellers Downtown or B&N Kahala Mall. That book will be a collector's item someday, I promise. Also, if you want to read some of my prose, go to UH-Manoa and pick up a copy of the latest Hawai'i Review; I've got a story in it set on Molokai.
a hui hou,
-K