Two poems by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Uditha Wickramanayaka


​Unlike Stars


I can only imagine
The past in my head
I visualize you at night
Bounding happily the marble
Sidewalk in your red Music
Center work dress uniform

And you near the Echo
Park lily pads wearing
A delectably low-cut tee
With curve hugging jeans
A vendor taking a $2 summer
Polaroid of us on the bridge

And you in your frilly
Filled white blouse
Atop black leather skirt
Perfectly made-up to co-judge
A morning elementary school
Halloween costume contest

And you every day donning
A monochromatic medical
Assistant top with matching
Pants looking like a cheerful
Teenager as I drop you off
Pick you up at the clinic

You all seem as real to me
As twinkles in the sky
Brain synapses of coupled
Constellations that drifted
Apart in the gradual entropies
Of light and dark years





My Seventies
 
I look at the orderly collage of record
Album sleeves on my home office wall
 
I realize I’ve subconsciously posted the many
Facets of my own personality confirmed by music:
 
Paul McCartney and his Wings in Africa because
This white boy also effortlessly dug black rhythms
 
George Harrison had Krishna on a four horse chariot,
I too felt sadness at the follies of the material world
 
Elton John peered out of his pink tinted glasses, and I
Introspectively gaze at society thru manufactured lenses
 
ELO, seven scraggily-haired men in t-shirts and jeans, you
Could have put me in the picture as number eight
 
And ELO jolted classical music with rock, like everyone
Else I eventually discovered what came before matters
 
Jon Anderson, my favorite mystic, with one foot in ancient
Times while drawing inspiration from childhood noir films
 
The Runaways, teenage girls in black with long straight
Hair gave this teen a whore moan shot in the pants
 
So did Linda Ronstadt’s big dark ojos and sexy bare
Shoulder imprint a vision of a future wife in my genes
 
I was another Bob Welch, cupping my hands to form
Googly finger specs for the girl with Ebony Eyes
 
Tried to be tough like Bob Seger sporting Fu Manchu
Mustache and leather jacket under the full moon
 
Faded a la Steely Dan slipping shades and splitting
In two over the dichotomies of being alive
 
Carly Simon, tall and slim in her loose blouse
And black slacks made me want to become
 
James Taylor, the perfect husband, singing
His love for her, embodying all man kind
 
John Lennon was my real role model, pissed
And creatively loving his partner as an other half
 
Shortly after that though, the Ramones delivered
A young man’s life in the cities angsty laughs
 
Su Tissue of Suburban Lawns became the arty
Hipster woman I longed to meet in college
 
But exotic Hiroshima’s mellow jazz taught me
To chill out around the ladies and smile
 
And jazzman Lenny White and Twennynine
Had me grooving again to Peanut Butter soul
 
So, guess I’m the above, with a helping of Genesis,
Using elemental colors to present pure feeling

Bio: Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, multi-award-winning poet listed on the Poets and Writers website, has been a coach and judge for Poetry Out Loud, a performing poet/teacher for Red Hen Press Youth Writing Workshops, Los Angeles Area Coordinator and Board Member of California Poets In The Schools, poetry editor of the Angel City Review, publisher of Spectrum and the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, leader of the Emerging Urban Poets writing and Deep Critique workshops, organizer of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival, and host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading series in Pasadena, California. For publication credits, please go to: http://dkc1031.blogspot.com

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