Kalukalukalu

Winter is here and I think I am dying.
I am standing out on my back porch,
Shivering and robed, bathed in sweat,
Blankly staring with two rheumy eyes
At a gray, graveyard sky mottled and
Colorless as day old humus. Oh God.
Influenza, feverish ague, body aches,
The depressing sight of barren limbs
Disrobed now down to the harsh bark,
All of the decorative foliage long gone,
And all pretense of some personality
Departed to divulge the arthritic limbs,
Disclosed and vulnerable tender joints,
The weary appendages all froze stiff.
I raise up my throbbing head to these
Bleak, broken spokes of beat timber,
And the hard line and diagonal slants
Of the phone lines and garage peaks
Somehow remind me of this picture
My uncle once showed me when he
Was very much alive in Manhattan,
And I was young and in good health.
LOOKING EAST ON 4TH AND C
CHULA VISTA, CALIF.
By John Baldessari, 1967,
Photo transfer, an acrylic on canvas,
A bland, disturbing black and white
Portrait of a dismal American vista,
Windshield passenger point of view,
Thick, black, vertical poles, slant of
Electric lines and smog choke of sky.
Odd to think of that now because
It left little impression on me then,
And it was, face it, a long time ago.
But you explained it as a reaction
To the usual slick packaging of life
We are all too commonly exposed to,
Also known as the American Dream.
Then when you took me to see Hair,
It all burst into fruition, and I knew
That the relevant response was only
To rebel against all of the ridiculous.
I got that right away. I was full and
alive and awash in color and I knew
We weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Only you somehow knew the poems
Locked inside my inquisitive soul, and
When you died I took the inheritance
And became a teacher just like you,
But you never knew, you never knew,
And then the poems started coming.
Too late for me to thank you, now
Dizzy, diseased, contaminated eyes
Staring down my own defeated vista.
I am stripped, nude, and vulnerable,
Inflame joint creak, body rattle cough,
Bracing against the sudden discharge
Of winter windgust, the frigid blast
Invading sharp around house corner,
Shivering against the sheltering wall,
Delirious with fever and hallucinating
The sweet sounds of tropical islands
In germ-infested ears. Kalukaluka.
I can hear the bamboo wind chimes
Rocking and a knocking, kalukaluka,
Bought in Moorea, now on front porch,
Hitching a ride atop this bitter breeze
Reminding me warmer days will come,
Light song, life song of love and living.
Through this dismal, freezing sickness,
Half dead like the trees and the sky,
I cringe in the chilled air and I know
That soon it will be blue again and
Filled with the warmth of sunshine as
The trees will spring full of life, and
I will not be so easily defeated either.
As I go inside and retreat to my bed,
I remember I have children to teach
And a woman I do not want to leave,
Love to share and songs still to sing,
And vow to rise again to ride the wind,
Kalukaluka, kalukaluka, kalukalukalu.