from Quarantina
by Kit Robinson
GET OUT
Get out, Death!
Get the fuck off my front porch!
Is evil an enormous Asian hornet?
Or is it a thief not wearing a mask?
The hours weigh heavy
Who does not love a tangerine?
Joy is volitional
It comes to you courtesy of hard practice
What did the violin say to the flute?
Climb up on my shoulders and reach for the stars!
5/2/20
WEIRD NEW WORLD
Hollywood Squares
Where am I?
Oh, there I am
Where are you?
Where are any of us?
A liminal space
Between self and other
A neither/nor
Without physical sense
A universal nolo me tangere
I want a hug so bad
Water running underground
Time now in Kazakhstan
The other side of the whirl
Dark planet moment
If I’m awake
You must be asleep
And vice versa
Yet here we chat
An amalgam of voices
In a deck of faces
Shuffle and deal
Easy for you to say
Sitting still
In the easy chair
The Easy Rawlins Chair of Detective Fiction
Do I detect an unwillingness
To be tied down?
Get up and take a walk
Errands and herbs yet await you
5/5/20
VERTIGO
Same day delivery
Different day same old same old
Same pain in hip
No hip new duds
Looking up from under brim of old hat
Survey the field
Enter land of no subject
Not subject to local ordinance
Noise above certain decibels
Level-headed scansion of nebulous horizon
Hunker down in critical zone
Bugs weigh more than we do
“We” being humans & elephants
The big biology
All according to race & class
Unnumbered, sweet & mild
The smile behind the mask
Light at the end of the funnel
Evening slips our mind
A wayward ship in heavy weather
A swinging bridge
7/19/20
THE LAST TIME
This could be the last time
Takes on a whole new meaning
Every day an exercise in weightlifting
The weight of the world
A world we no longer know
Alienation effect HC-163
Chelsea Gray against Bavarian Forest
The green mountains are always walking
And when they don’t your goose is cooked
Somewhere south of San Pedro
A lifetime of flubs
Catches up with a jarring sensation
As times goes out of joint
The flipping on of our respective lights
Now that you are wide awake
I have something to tell you
And now that I am fast asleep
Can you hear me crying
Like writing in pencil on clean sheets?
In this period of dislocation
The silence is deafening
We have nothing to lose but our supply chains
The way a chainsaw starts up outside
Interrupting your train of thought
The one you were supposed to catch
8/14/20
THE TEST
This is the test
To see if you can take it
Absorb the shocks
Make it or break it
Keep your story straight
Don’t blow your cover
You can still have fun
When all this is over
You elected a man
Who would be king
Your health to him
Doesn’t mean a thing
When voted out
He won’t step down
Democracy now
The tears of a clown
Along came a man
By the name of Obama
Who killed the man
They called Osama
When history jumps
A track like that
Nothing to do but
Hit the road, Jack
Thus poetry offers
A refuge of sorts
Like basketball, tennis
And other sports
All the while
The time goes by
Until one day
You up and die
This is the test
There is no other
Peace be with you
My sister, my brother
11/11/20
Kit Robinson is a Bay Area poet, writer and musician. He is the author of Thought Balloon (Roof, 2019), Leaves of Class (Chax, 2017) and Marine Layer (BlazeVOX, 2015), and 20 other books of poetry. His essays on poetics, art, travel and music appear online at Jacket2, Open Space and Nowhere. Robinson has received fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, as well as an award from the Fund for Poetry. He plays Cuban tres guitar in the charanga band Calle Ocho.