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Ron Kempton Poem
Through embouchure practiced in timeless jam blowing reeds of turning wheat,bellowing fingers, smokey streets. The timbre of darkness soloing for morning through laughing streams of willow like Mr. Parker flying.Turnaround souls bargain with triplets, as trees shout call and response,two then five down the street to one until the the clouds are gone. Midnight serves up shivering blues, last call rhythm time bell tolls,as silver rivers bend and pull, mountains sing valleys roll,the U-shaped bow a canyon pass the holy bell testifies at last, from fields of cotton to night club church, the one who was last has now become first,every perfect tone easy on its own joins melodic cast, too bad pennyless drifter 'cause you're deaf to the night you'll never hear... God play Jazz.
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2017
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Ron Kempton Poem
Last Train Runnin’
For Bob Dylan
The nickel-plated moon howled outside my window like a bullet missing from its sleeve
A lyric tore through the autumn wind on a smokestack through the trees
Like a ghost that whispers metaphors and won’t tell you what they mean
It fades into a whisper while you’re stuck with what you’ve seen
It was a song about a storyteller with a verse about the past
Hung long inside my restless mind and hid in shadows cast
The metal grinding six-string guitar like wheels on the tracks
A songster told of flights and journeys playin’ down the facts
I rose so slow from my humid sleep sat stone still on the bed
I just let that smokestack lightning ring inside my head
That blues harp whistle horizon deep, rumbled, then it rolled
Like that midnight hour at crossroads’ edge Robert Johnson lost his soul
I heard union men and the coal-black din of ******* on the road
Capos working a child to death, and never payin’ what they owed
I heard a folksinger storyteller whisper dreams inside his sleep
Hand out lighting from a whisky bottle with lyrics meant to keep
Its melody was awful sweet as that train rode through the dark
And the music from that locomotive left these visions on my heart
I saw lonesome hobos warm their hands saw travelin’ roads-men too
Saw Mississippi John leaving home before his song was through
Now that singing storyteller made me rise and through my window peer
I loved the sound that whistle made, the music I could hear
I looked through the high lonesome sound that made that whistle cry
I saw a train on the edge of midnight, I saw Woody Guthrie wave goodbye
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2017
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Ron Kempton Poem
Morning hung on the wet city, Nashville’s electric streets rolled as we made haste. North to Kentucky, weary with the long silence of a life ending, just as the gray skies laid heavy, like fingers of deaf women singing for hope, a little hope where there was none.
Harvest is over, the morning settled over hearts waiting, turning, spinning the ripe sun into a long after thought. The peel falls of the fruit one by one the other earth is waiting. Did we see or hear all the gates as they opened to the end of this season? Life’s moist earth readies herself for the new crop, some remain as some go, they sleep forever longing for a song from the bitter soil. Once I could have told you what awaits the sleeping night. Now I wonder if she can’t have her dreams the way she wants them, a place of peace and rest. Ready the land with furrows dark and rich for seeds of thought, sprouts of living spiritual meaning raining new dreams on the now long past streets of the big city in the south.
Before we got through Kentucky she had died. The rain still washed the green, pounded the afternoon into slow evening. Memories lie drowning in afterthought, yesterday thrown from the windshield while the fertile earth turned.
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2017
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Ron Kempton Poem
Tea Party
RSVP The windy hostess cloud and purple sun,
Leaves of melting seasons, every fern and poplar,
Make room in your turning calendar days of Whispers
And secrets poised for a prince far beyond the silent sea.
Oh dancer in such a palace as this, table set and china readied
waiting for the guests to arrive, maddening the invisible chattering
as her soiree takes on the afternoon, muddled Cirrus, curious wren,
silent mist and queen of spades all subject to direction,
waiting for her there.
Ron Kempton
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2018
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Ron Kempton Poem
Used Book
My ragged spirit couples with cities lit in blue. Mission Drive lined in trees peddles herself. Well adorned lighting addressing the shop windows. We walked past with such abandon I forgot to look at the naked mannequin blushing in shame, surrounded by her stylish girlfriends plush with the newest fashions. Could we really be two old people? That certainly is not my reflection. Darling, I’m still twenty-five, ready to conquer avenues and noise jangled clubs. My boyish heart leans to city streets brushed with neon tinted shadows. I look at you, I see a sexy girl, could I have won this heart? Wood floors lay like silent clocks dusty with age in a book store along the way. With an air telling the rumors of long since, I felt at home. I wanted to help the old man moving along in silent pain. I saw him in every store window. I see him in his place, on the shelves lined with used books.
Ron Kempton 3/7/18
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2018
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Ron Kempton Poem
WET
Moist Opal Bloosom
Wet… baring cycles
Gentle for man’s insistence
Strong for the earth
Harboring seed electric
Taste of Woman
Fruit of the vine
Her water a river
open sea
his rain to
moist opal blossom…
Blooming
Ron Kempton
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2017
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Ron Kempton Poem
Finally by the blood of swordsmen
They reach the mystic shore
Torn by battle each parched tongue
Corrupts it’s enemy once more
Flesh and spirit torn then stained
In legend myth and tale
Blew them, this final war
Llyr upon his sail
Bleached bones, sinew, hungry fists
Baying for a fight
Women to there long lost lovers
Avenged by firelight
No god of light ever brings
The blood of there’s back home
To the shores of Avalon
Once the soldiers gone
Then finally by there longboats
They reach the mystic shore
Fighting Norsemen cross the Styx
To battle ever more.
Ron Kempton
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2019
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Ron Kempton Poem
November in a teacup
Looking up at your face
Our set of changes
Our own autumn
Pizzicato motion feels
Pleasure inside my sound
When Love lies above me
Leaves on the ground
Ron Kempton
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2019
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Ron Kempton Poem
For Roseto Valfortore
Thousands of miles in silver rain
Brushing over your colors again.
Each stop still knows I’ve seen
So many lives your hues change.
Dragons blood runs on mountains and
Viridian meadows lie so green.
In a while, I dream…
Stained mosaic vineyards, deep as stars
a thousand miles away
Ron Kempton 1/23/18
Thousands of miles in silver rain
Brushing over your colors again.
Each stop still knows I’ve seen
So many lives your hues change.
Dragons blood runs on mountains and
Viridian meadows lie so green.
In a while, I dream…
Stained mosaic vineyards, deep as stars
a thousand miles away
Ron Kempton 1/23/18
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2019
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Ron Kempton Poem
The distance of light
Embryonic earth weaned from breasts wet with moonlight
gorged with the milk of stars the after birth of distance.
Eastern eyes peering from her circle gone as far as the wind
as far from home to shake her to the wild ground. Burning with the
longing that pounds fertile sands dressed in unfamiliar attire.
She doesn’t recognize her hands or hear the heart of tides rising.
She only knows that same moon peers into windows deep with
bedding once her own, now stained with memories of a little girl
watching the starlit pastels adorn her window.
Looking now at the moist land wet with the gentle timber of morning
she lets herself dance with each dream and every moment the earth
comes to her rescue. Reminiscing, taking years away and letting her
go home again.
Ron Kempton 2/22/18
Copyright © Ron Kempton | Year Posted 2018
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