Don Kingfisher Campbell

Rock Dogs*

This stone pack don't go for walks

Happy to measure the distance

Between piles and free way

With two Joshua Trees beside

No danger of getting urinated upon

We've got all time to experience

The changing of days every day

From light sky to heavy air

We're content to let life happen

And feel the aging process slowly

Transform us into each other

Through eons of interchange

*inspired by a photo taken by Alexis Rhone Fancher

1975 – 2007

 

The teenager in me died

when I put on Pink Floyd

in my cobalt blue bedroom

I left the door open

so my mother could hear

grown men exercise my soul

A repeated jazzy growl

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

saxophone mellow poetry

Poured from a black vinyl

anti-sun on a 12” turntable

spinning fidelity high

She walked over, peered in

calmly inquired, “Don,

I like that music, who is it?”

Inside my angsty heart

I felt an uncomfortable cracking

of acceptance I’d never felt before

Thirty two years later

my daughter leaves

a song on my computer

It makes her laugh

“Take a look at my girlfriend,

she’s the only one I got”

Which she thinks is poppin’ fresh

as newfound as a teen kiss

but I inform her, “It’s from 1979”

As I break out a silver 5” CD

place it in the midnight plastic drawer

press betray, I mean, play

“It’s a Supertramp ditty,” I say

Kyla exhorts “Let me sync a copy

of that slow version for my cell,

It’ll shock my friends”

I may be an old baby boomer but

I feel like I’ve just made a friend

THE FREE WAY

 

we were in the '63 brown Buick

I bought from my uncle for 350 dollars

blazing down the 210 Freeway to Ontario

for Cal Jam 2, the rock'n'roll concert

where we teens would light up

freedom from our parents

in a crowd of 300,000 at the speedway

we walked through the tunnel

to the infield where sleeping bags dotted the grass

(we made tracks on the grass in just an hour

it was 4am, I had been doing '78

trying to drive the year)

everyone was sleeping below the stars

waiting to be awakened by hundred thousand watt speakers

and reborn into rocking festival lyrics

to hear our cultural leaders--Aerosmith, Santana, Foreigner, Mahogany Rush

and when it was over, after our fists pumped into the air

thick with smoke and spilled beer and trampled dust

we shuffled out, media fed cattle, mooing with happy tiredness

for the 2am drive home, I drove in the dark highway space

weaving with ears buzzing, we had to stop

to piss on the walls of a closed gas station

spraying yellow sparks of independence in the night

the liberation of being on our own--with friends

hours of deep high to always remember