Local Lyrics hosted by Amber Renee appears on the 3rd Monday of each month. In it, Amber features the work and musings of a local poet.
Teacher
By Chris Kaiser
With a grizzled face and flat feet, you punctured my world.
We sipped brandy on your back porch while cursing the Zodiac for its capricious whims.
We punctuated our speech with peerless precision until our brains bled like hemorrhagic suns.
That day, when our brains splattered on the walls and ceilings and down our faces, I watered the garden with my tears.
I wept for my family, yet cocooned, and for yours, long gone.
The horizon floated for hundreds of miles in each direction.
Our feet sparkled as if they got tangled in the live wire that connected the somnambulant community.
You saw my future but couldn't heal the rift.
The knife drawer hung open like the lips of a pubescent boy eyeing cleavage.
We might have had too much to drink that night, or maybe just enough.
You said my virgin birth was a memorable phenomenon, especially when the torrent of dead leaves funneled into a dry rage.
Gravity and history were the only two things keeping me down.
You taught me well, but it was time to move on.
I sliced off your face and planted it in the garden next to the Buddha.
It was like being beaten to death with my own dream.
Q and A
Give us 1 poet you'd want to sit and talk to.
Shakespeare. I don’t believe the mostly illiterate man from Stratford wrote the Shakespeare canon. My research suggests the poet was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. His biography fits nicely into the events of the plays and sonnets. I remember as an undergrad asking a teacher the meaning of something in a Shakespeare play. She said, “We don’t know. There are lots of things we don’t know about the plays.” I remember being flabbergasted because I just felt that the poet bled his life all over the page, that his plays and poems were directly related to his life experiences. But the academic thinking is that Shakespeare wrote most of his stuff as literary exercises, not necessarily as biographical minutia. I don’t accept that line of reasoning. Right now there is no smoking gun that proves or disproves Shakespeare authorship. The case for de Vere is circumstantial, but the accumulation of evidence is overwhelming from my perspective. So I’d really like to sit and talk with Edward de Vere to hear his story. I feel for any artist who was essentially divorced from his work and erased from history.
Philosophy has a big impact on your work. Are there any specific philosophies or philosophers that inspire your work more than others?
I like the existentialists and the absurdists. Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre are the three biggest influences on my thinking, although Nietzsche really is in a separate category. I’ve always been an atheist, but the belief in a higher power (and thus in meaning) has become even more absurd as I age and experience the injustices and indignities of living. I like to think we are better human beings when we recognize the brutality of nature and accept our role in the community to soften those harsh effects. I like to think that art and poetry can make personal what is in effect highly impersonal.
What about theater? You have a background in theater. Does that affect your work in any way?
I like to tell a story, and I like using dialogue, or at least thinking in dialogue. Often my poetry is like putting together a puzzle, much like directing a play. I have various different parts of a poem scattered about and I have to bring them all together in a way that makes sense. Writing a poem often seems like a hopeless enterprise until I rearrange the various pieces in a way that makes sense. I remember many plays that just seemed like we weren’t going to open, but something magical happens at the last second and it all comes together. My writing seems to mimic that process.
A lot of your work is darkly funny. How important is comedy to you as a writer?
I wish I was funnier than I am. I love to laugh and make people laugh, but my sense of humor doesn’t always come through in my poetry. Probably hanging out too much with Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre.
Where do you think poetry fits into our world?
I wish the reach of poetry were more pervasive than it is in today’s world. It seems that poet laureates are more symbolic than anything else. I think many excellent writers move into TV and movies. When I’m watching a really good TV show or movie, I often hear poetry in the dialogue or monologues. Two recent examples include season one of True Detective and season two of Mr. Robot. There was some stunning writing in those two series. Also, the reach of theatre has diminished as TV and movies have risen in popularity. But there are some playwrights who write beautiful poetic dialogue, such as Sam Shepard, Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, and Tony Kushner. I often wonder why I write poetry because of its limited effect in our society. But I continue to write because when you hit the mark, it’s a beautiful thing.
If someone was coming out to hear you read, what is one thing you would want them to know about you?
My poetry isn’t always accessible. It doesn’t always follow a traditional narrative form. So be prepared to crease your eyebrows and tilt your head in bewilderment
Chris Kaiser’s poetry is featured in Action Moves People United, a music and spoken word album in partnership with the United Nations. The Sebastopol Center for the Arts in California also awarded him a prize for erotic writing. He is retired from medical writing and has won several awards in journalism. He has written, directed, and performed for the stage. He lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, USA.
AMBER RENEE, she/her, 26, writes from her home in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A fool hopelessly in love with the pursuit of psychic knowledge, she often writes autobiographically; though without sacrificing her distinctive off-rhythm canter. 'Thoughts on This Most Recent Episode' was her 2016 full length collection of self-published poetry ruminating on her thoughts & illnesses. Currently she is working on a musical album of poetry.