Tag: Kyla Houbolt

Bless This Discomfort

No.
I am tired of almost everything.
Letting in what light there is.
Strange dolls lined up against
a mystery. It’s just a stone wall.
We all see how insane it is,
our world, that normal.
Time to sing louder
reset the clocks to no digits
slow cook all plans
dance on the head of a pin
watch yourself spin
widdershins then
sunwise then
both at once.
Banish masks. Breathe free.
After all, home is only
a temporary location
among the great wheeling stars
and the only real question
is who you are.

Water Hole

I’ve never seen a lion
but look at them, gathering at the water hole,
how thirsty they are, how they lap
up the brown water with huge raspy tongues.
Can you be satisfied with a picture? Say,
a picture of food? You can nearly smell
the spicy juices, but lions need
a real drink. Chasing down prey,
gnawing bloody joints — it’s thirsty work.
Once the lions are all gone,
we can imagine the water hole,
its loneliness, one lame
antelope drinking,
a breeze carrying dust.
We remember
not to inhale.

Mapless

How much of a life
is a long walk in the wrong direction
and who’s to say anyway
wrong or right because always
alongside the edge of any trail
there are all the things: small bits
of glass, occasional flowers, torn nests —
even once in a while a whole
book might be stumbled across
possibly a boring book of
formulas for calculating the girth
of fasteners but it’s equally possible
you’d find a book of your very own ancestors’
secret stories, and say you find
such a book but it is in a language
you do not recognize and it is
musty, besmirched, has missing pages
and say you pass it by
or even carry it to a trash bin
and toss it in and then
your ancestors begin
finding your dreams?
Who’s to say that was a wrong
direction? Maybe they just want
to say thank you, our stories
belong in the trash, we never
should have told them, allowed
them to be written, we will grant you
three wishes now. And then, as always
it’s up to you, how sweetly you’ll
make a mess of your life
this time.

—

The Elvis impersonator sings to the jungle. It is the only place he can go to practice undisturbed because neighbors, also family. The jungle does not provide feedback, instead it swallows the music in great wet silent gulps. It also makes him sweat through his costume, but this is a dress rehearsal so he must soldier on. He must get really good because he craves that applause. Here is a rehearsal for hecklers. The monkeys and birds threaten to drown him out so forget crooning. The trees continue to drip on him and fill his eyes with alien water. Not his, not his at all. Come on, he tells himself, sing the next number. A snake slides along a tree limb above. He does not see it, already thinking of chemical relief, his personal porcelain ending.

—

Kyla Houbolt writes, mostly poetry, though she is old enough to know better. She has a micro chap coming from @IceFloe Press and is Best of the Net nominee 2019. You can find her work in Mojave He[art] Journal, Barren Magazine, Burning House/The Arsonista, Neologism, The Hellebore, and elsewhere. Most of her published work can be found via her Linktree, here: @luaz_poet | Linktree and she is on Twitter @luaz_poet.