"kickstand" poems
Don't knock what you've never tried
Lock box with a heart inside
Six shots from a forty five
Punk rock makes you come alive
Black-hawks in the clear blue sky
It's ad hoc but you can just get by
On Poprocks and cyanide
Tick-tock time to decide
What made you think that you could take me down?
The method's flawed, but the strategies sound.
What made you try to hold me back?
I hope you're ready for the counter-attack.
Backhand and you feel the heat
Grandstand 'till you take a seat
Kickstand just to keep your feet
Firsthand watch you admit defeat
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 5:01 PM UTC
The bicycles were a forged parent-permission slip
But well-forged.
I lifted myself over the tear in the truck's seat cover, not sliding
Not perforating further for today.
The road was short, short enough to have ridden the bicycles from first start to real start.
But that would not have been exotic
Connection is exotic, and channels must be followed through an antfarm
Proper etiquette must be observed with touch-me-nots
The bicycles were easier to lift from the bed with two
I gave him that, passing a front end, and jammed the wheelspokes with a jabbed finger
So that the damp spinning would not flick his face with groundwater
I expected it to hurt. My expectation tapped lightly.
That narrow pock-marked blacktop was my windtunnel
The air stroked its thumbs over my eyelids and I ached to push, breathe, push further
He held me back with his slow handlebars,
His slow kickstand clicking.
Pedaling slowly is more difficult than flying.
One finds gladness in choosing leaves to crunch with an inch-wide tire
And high-fiving low-hanging branches is socially satisfying.
He smiles behind the white mustache, and I don't mind.
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC
(for my daughter, Mary Ann, soon fourteen)
I was eleven years old when I first had something taken from me. My parents were still married and my two younger brothers had not yet chosen to choose differently which one they’d live with. My dog had not yet been made lame by a falling fat man who’d taken the gift of my father’s strange rage square on the nose. And my older sister had yet to misjudge her jump from a moving train. No, none of these things, whether they happened or not how I’ve remembered, had happened.
I was eleven years old and in love with an old red bike. It had a license plate that obnoxiously read Go Now Mega which I’d scratched at with a fork and so became Gnome. I would fail my whole life to accomplish a thing greater. Before school, I’d walk the bike carefully to the end of our short drive and then seat myself on it and be still. I would often be so perfect in my stillness that I’d forego riding it and just listen for the bus and at the last possible moment walk the bike, still carefully, back into the garage and cringe at the sound the kickstand made when lowered. If ever school didn’t go my way I’d think of the bike, alone, in the garage and be calmed. When I did ride the bike, I did so slowly and deliberately that I could feel my soul get a bit ahead of me. On the best mornings, I would have for company a bed sheet of fog which made me want to fake being asleep on the couch while my mother and father milled back and forth about who would carry me to bed.
The bike had come with the rental house we moved into just shy of my tenth birthday. The house was a three bedroom one floor with one bathroom and what felt like two kitchens. I was too close to my hands and feet to now recall any vision that might tell me how these rooms were mapped though I’ve always held aloft the word blueprint. I should tell you that what I previously called a garage was actually our backyard and that our backyard was really the backyard of those living in the house behind ours. I didn’t want you to know right away who took the bike. Who’ve no imagination.
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 1:25 AM UTC
A Thanksgiving poem for all.
Morning wood
Morning wood my inconvenient friend,
Morning wood you woke me up again,
Morning wood fronting like a kickstand,
Morning wood oft held by groggy hand,
Morning wood I steady for a wee.
on the floor. on the bowl. please don't land on me!
Morning wood born from a bladder full,
Morning wood my friend, my favorite tool.
By John Kirby
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 5:48 PM UTC
My precious, captive swan
Don't do this.
And your wingspan is no more?
I was his first!
And you'll be mine last!
He stripped the skin, the kickstand was made of meat and bones. Kicked with words and meaning. But the fawn of the day would come for me.
Love, let the water guide you!
And let this rake violate you?
Let the her amber wings fly!
Not before you let her cry!
The forest queen, shall be no more!
And so? Your heart is now sore."
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC
A long red light
Kick the kickstand down
Lift up your legs
Form into a lotus pose
Palms out to the sun
Meditate
Green light
Kick up the kickstand
Quick turn left
Quick turn right
Into the lane
Graced by a handpainted sign:
Welcome
Noon
AA Meeting
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 10:20 AM UTC
I was somewhere deep in Kansas,
on a Triumph 69’
When your song came on the jukebox,
and hit me from behind
I was headed for a bad place,
and cared for nothing much
When I heard the song ‘Melissa,’
my heart and soul were struck
Entranced, your lyrics captured me,
like nothing had before
When you sang about ‘The Gypsy,’
I headed for the door
But something made me turn around,
and grab another dime
Ten more times in that diner's booth,
still lost within your rhyme
Now back inside the bus station,
and sleeping on the bench
I scratch your words into the wood,
last dollar gone and spent
My bike outside against the wall,
the kickstand now long gone
And out of gas, my hopes have dashed,
that unrelenting song
Waking up at ten unsettled,
across the street I pushed
The sign said Triumph-BSA,
the owner Mister Cush
He asked, “What’s with your motor,”
I said “nothing—out of gas,
But worse I’m out of money,
can I sell the bike for cash
Would you please just buy my Triumph,
I know it’s old and worn
It got me here through seven states,
runs great both cold and warm”
“I’ll pay three hundred on the spot,
on that can we agree?”
We walked back up inside his shop,
three bills he handed me
I thought about a bus ride home,
my thumb looked more in line
Facing East on old route #50,
my heart in deep decline
The first big rig that came along,
was bound for York Pa.
The driver said “If you like dogs,”
I’ll take you on your way”
In York I caught a fast ride out,
two ‘dodgers’ going North
And got back home with hat in hand,
your song to guide me forth
Two years then passed, I met my wife,
four more and our first child
And we named her ‘Sweet Melissa,’
her dad back from the wilds
Now forty years have come and gone,
my beard and hair both gray
I owe you Gregg, and always will,
your song, her name—that day
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2017)
For Gregg Allmans- ‘Melissa’
Mar 4, 2017
Mar 4, 2017 at 7:44 PM UTC
I was somewhere deep in Kansas,
on a Triumph 69’
When your song came on the jukebox,
and hit me from behind
I was headed for a bad place,
and cared for nothing much
When I heard the song ‘Melissa,’
my heart and soul were struck
Entranced, your lyrics captured me,
like nothing had before
When you sang about ‘The Gypsy,’
I headed for the door
But something made me turn around,
and grab another dime
Ten more times in that diner’s booth,
still lost within your rhyme
Now back inside the bus station,
and sleeping on the bench
I scratch your words into the wood,
last dollar gone and spent
My bike outside against the wall,
the kickstand now long gone
And out of gas, my hopes have dashed,
that unrelenting song
Waking up at ten unsettled,
across the street I pushed
The sign said Triumph-BSA,
the owner Mister Cush
He asked, “What’s with your motor,”
I said “nothing—out of gas,
“But worse I’m out of money,
can I sell the bike for cash
“Would you please just buy my Triumph,
I know it’s old and worn
“It got me here through seven states,
runs great both cold and warm”
“I’ll pay three hundred on the spot,
on that can we agree?”
We walked back up inside his shop,
three bills he handed me
I thought about a bus ride home,
my thumb looked more in line
Facing East on old route #50,
my heart in deep decline
The first big rig that came along,
was bound for York Pa.
The driver said “If you like dogs,
I’ll take you on your way”
In York I caught a fast ride out,
two ‘dodgers’ going North
And got back home with hat in hand,
your song to guide me forth
Two years then passed, I met my wife,
four more and our first child
And we named her ‘Sweet Melissa,’
her dad back from the wilds
Now forty years have come and gone,
my beard and hair both gray
I owe you Gregg, and always will,
your song, her name—that day
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2017)
For Gregg Allman
I Sent This To Gregg Last March,
It's on His Website. We Spent Two
Days Together In Richmond Va. In A Blizzard In 1982
May 27, 2017
May 27, 2017 at 10:37 PM UTC
My BMX was department store,
black and yellow
like a bumblebee,
and weighed a ton
compared to their
alloy framed bikes.
They made fun of the kickstand
and the chain guard.
I was the class runt
and wore hand me downs
and rolled up jeans
sometimes with patches,
more fodder for jokes.
In the summer we camped
in the Adirondacks,
and in the fall
at the bus stop
or in school
they talked about trips
to France or Spain.
I had a fist fight
with an older kid
down the block
who lived in a house
with a swimming pool
when he said my house
looked like a barn.
I think I still see the world
through the tint
of those dollar green glasses
they made me wear.
And I shout down
the echoes of those voices
that condemn others with less,
and me with them.
But I got tough taking beatings
from bigger older boys.
And my legs got strong
pedaling that heavy bike uphill.
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 12:26 AM UTC