Author: ranneycampbell
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End with Past Tense
Last time I saw Goldman, we eatingsammin’ sammiches on Venice
Boulevard, as we do regular
he was talking about how hot it was
that I was a dock worker
when I described what I do, building walls
out of cardboard boxes in semi-trailers. Said he used to
work at the dock in his youth in NYC.
“But not what you do,” he said, “I know what you do.
You couldn’t fit an envelope in there,
they would say of those walls,
when men built them,
men who knew what they were doing,” he said and I said,
“Yes. That’s me.”
Recently, on top of a ladder jamming a particularly difficult
squishy into a tight spot over my head, I thought of one night
on the phone listening to you list again all of the reasons
you could not be with me long-haul.
You cuss like a dock worker.
Not so much anymore, now that I work ship dock
and eat sammin’ sammiches on Venice
or piled high with shrimp ones
on Abbot Kinney with mango
relish
and am so much happier
since I don’t have to struggle
with those supposedly more fitting similars you preferred.
Originally published by Storm Cellar.Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2024.
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It Came Very Slowly for Her
Photo credit: Artem Podrez.
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Don’t Try That Tusk of Narwhal on Me
I know that’s just an overgrownwhale canine
not a unicorn horn
not a hiking buddy
whose sweat I cannot resist the smell of
backcountry man who knows what is required
and how to carry, bone
and tall and understands
that we is the only status that matters
to spoon my cooking in, to spoon his in me
finds that just so
acoustic trio scheduled to play an afternoon
neighborhood bar in L.A., wakes me
with a throaty
come share Greek pizza on the boardwalk with me
whom I never cease to stagger,
simpatico,
evolving as I wait patiently and patiently
waiting for me while we climb into higher
and higher
vibration
under pine trees
whose protection leaves me
in the enchantment
of willing submission
my best friend, my favorite person
who thinks.
the same.
of me.
one day, could,
from behind a boulder
in the Angeles Forest
milk-white flecked flamingo
diamond and lime
with an aura you can just feel is silver
– – I been on enough dusty bay horsesonce a slick gunmetal dun with striped legs
even a green broke red roan Egyptian stallion
with a no-shit strawberry blonde spiraled mane
so what over it
conjure me up some for-real
bliss-on-tap, stuff-of-myth magic, but please,
don’t swing a twisted fang dripping seaweed
and tell me
it’s a legend
Originally published by Misfit Magazine.Photo credit: Brett Sayles.
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Plant the Habit of Loving
During all the time we continue to exist in this particular universe we will bathe in the far too cold for our eyes to see glow leftover from the Big Bang that was accidentally discovered by radio astronomers in the dark spaces between stars and galaxies in 1965 that was perhaps the black I saw and cold I felt when I floated away off that gurney in a San Bernardino emergency room in 1983 after suffering a by all evidence of medical science fatal head injury as result of the missed hairpin turn somewhere above Crestline and all these years later when I put some plastic into my trash can I try to remember this happening even if the thought just hovers vaguely omnipresent like the microwave background remains of our primeval fireball with no point of origin occurring everywhere at once rather than project more invented stress into the universe with perturbed thoughts as I did for so long, because if I learned anything in those seventy-seven seconds it was that the words love and nonjudgement don’t quite cover it and since not enough of my fellows ever would follow advice to recycle nor would they change opinions when I told them if you separate according to color any eight-year-old could tell you it is called “division” and that healing blooms best in conditions of unity, I eventually was forced into the compassion that the only thing I have to contribute is what is created within me and it cannot be expressed most effectively through bodily experiences but in higher energies because the force of loving without self-seeking attachment creates irrepressible exchanges and is the only chance we have to disrupt the temporal order enough to set free whatever futures are possible including one wherein maybe we can find a way to send enough carbon dioxide to Mars to create an atmosphere there and in the doing save what we can of what is left of our so delicately interdependent biodiversity here.
Originally published by Silver Birch Press.Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2024.
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Take Mercy
Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2025.
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Still the Butterflies
tummy half a dozenblack swallowtail, three
silvery blue, a mixed flutter
galvanism fizzle a yellow in my head
and orange and black kaleidoscope
painted ladies clap-and-fling
grey hairstreak
flittered back to life
surprised to find a smile
each time the swarm
white checkered skipper lift
eights circle titillated
wide wings
seek a place
to alight
some treasure, some
rotting gnat-laden lemons
discovered under mother’s thin
Photo credit: Fidel Hajj.
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Habit
bad for me, they say
should give it up
and I say, but my eyes
swell
and hands reach again
my clear coat
is coming off
under this vigorous sun
and send
a photo
and light a smoke
Originally published by HOOT ReviewPhoto credit: Mark Thomas.
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Wonderwork Conducting
Photo credit: Leonardo Luncasu.
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Aggravating Factors
Photo credit: Erik Mclean.
The Life You Could Have: a memoir 