Jim Krusoe: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Jim Krusoe

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Jim Krusoe

Four Poems

We Had

We had big ideas.

We were going to make the earth a paradise

(Though mostly for us, it’s true).

But still, we said the lion was going to lie down with the lamb,

the deserts were going to bloom,

and also we were going to visit Mars,

maybe even other galaxies--

Oh, and in addition, we were going to conquer all disease.

Remember those days?

And how, in the end, we couldn’t even save ourselves

from who we turned out to be all along.

Yesterday

Yesterday morning, the Uber driver

told me how his daughter

had been shot to death

as she attended a party

celebrating her graduation from college.

All that money wasted,

he said.

Sonnet: Los Angeles

One sleeps better

knowing that here

the emptiness of the soul

is the emptiness

of the soul:

mirrored perfectly

and without the distractions

other places

throw

along one’s path.

An open hand with

nothing in it.

Island, 2016

— after Wang-Wei

In the capital monsters beget monsters.

At the end of my street is the same island

that has been there for five million years.

Sometimes it disappears in fog.

Sometimes it’s back again.

Right now, for example,

it’s light purple with a line of gold fog

along its base, above the poisoned sea.

Author Bio:

Jim Krusoe has published five books of poems, six novels, and two books of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions. His first novel, Iceland, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2002. Since then, Tin House Books has published five other novels: Girl Factory, Erased, Toward You, Parsifal, and The Sleep Garden.