Kurt Lipschutz: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Kurt Lipschutz

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Kurt Lipschutz

Four Poems

WINDY NIGHT IN EDEN

It was a windy night in Eden

And the rain came pouring down

Eve was packing up for Sweden

Adam lay there on the ground

The storm tore loose his fig leaf

The wine flowed through his veins

For a man just been evicted

He wasn’t feeling too much pain

Crazed buzzards made their patterns

Around the inside of his head

The very birds of prey he’d taught to fly

Demanding to be fed

The woman’s skin was golden

The tears rolled down her cheeks

She’d had enough of knowing

And feeling like a freak

The voice inside the burning bush

Had shut the gate for good

Now all blue eyes and blonde hair

All day she dreamed of Hollywood

It was a windy night in Eden

As they went their separate ways

He to live the life of conquest

She to cry and count the days

The bush was cold wet ashes 

The Tree of Knowledge swayed

A flaming sword lit up the sky

Three figures turned away

It was a windy night in Eden

The snake drank his hard cider

And asked a trucker who’d just stopped to piss

Going east? Can you take a rider?

TIPPI HEDREN SITS AND SMOKES A CIGARETTE

cross-leggèd and cool

in the still afternoon

behind her, the jungle gym

growing black with bird

one dark shape at a time

COMMON GROUND 

Has he ever listened to

Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts,

all nine minutes of it, and absorbed

the coherent if circuitous tale it has to tell?

Doubtful, though odds are

he hasn’t been able to avoid it piecemeal

in a boardroom or a sky box or a penthouse,

in a jet limo town car on the links.

Has he ever said Dylan’s name out loud?

Granted, I’ve seen too much Law & Order—

all those episodes multiple times half asleep,

and leaving aside that on tv cops

are brave and photogenic and painstaking,

and follow up on leads and (mostly) follow the law,

as opposed to street cops, many of whom

call to mind high school bullies handed badges

(and often drawn, disturbingly, to him)—

but, then again, the desire to see perps collared,

crimes punished, justice done, is reliably satisfied

in Dick Wolf’s goldmine of a fiefdom.

Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts

similarly unspools a narrative

of plunder, deceit and murder, with

Big Jim’s “body guards and silver cane”

ultimately useless against the outlaw antihero

in the Decisive Moment, Bresson stepping

from the shadows with his trusty Leica rangefinder

with all but silent shutter at the ready.

Were he to actually listen to the song

and slowly grasp the story line,

would he recognize himself as Big Jim

rather than the Jack of Hearts?

Could he imagine a scenario

where Melania literally knifes him in the back?

Wouldn’t it be nice, The Beach Boys sang.

It would be pretty to think so, Hemingway replied.

Or is a song, even that song, just a song,

like Law & Order is a show,

and there is no Superman or Batman or Lone Ranger,

only comic books and tv series and blockbuster franchises.

Had he written it, the defendant would pronounce

this a perfect poem, But he didn’t and it’s not,

and today he squatted in a courtroom

posing with that jaw about to crack determination,

probably releasing copious effluvia

for his ringside handlers to breathe deep of

cartoon steam coming out of his ears

visions of revenge doing eye-level kicks in his head.

And I suppose there’s little chance

he too is rereading The Dream Songs

after so many years and with great pleasure.

Common ground can be hard to find.

MOTION PICTURE

Nighthawks at the lounge car

(the diner’s closed)

roll west through Arizona, darkety darkety dark,

the second feature blaring, Mel Gibson

on one screen, Mel Gibson on the other.

9:00 p.m., Union Station or bust.

Downstairs, the smokers, sequestered,

share third- and fourth-hand toxins

freely in the aging democratic air,

with their own hazy screenful of Mel.

Come Chatterbox, Budsucker, Goldenyears, Navywife,

Lonely for, Lucky in, Runaway Heart,

gather round for some government-subsidized fun,

as scatters of loud white and butterscotch light

tag along then fall back and are gone.

“We used to play out by the old lighthouse

when we were kids,” emotes Mel.

Plot travels, train rocks, night fears subside. . .

There is one of us from Anywhere and God Knows Where

            and East Nowhere,

with a few fastfood-orange seats left

in this overlit rolling stock Bijou,

the only theater in town.

GOLDEN STATE MEDITATION

In the crisp fluorescent dusk

the bus pulls out of Bakersfield,

leaving the yellow seashell,

the inevitable arches,

a turquoise flickering arrow

and so much more behind.

A Nissan sign beams down

upon its shining charges,

greenblack hedges line the murk,

traffic lights play referee

to the rising tide of reflux

gassed up to the rim

and good to go.

The wheels on the bus go round and round

Fields of whatnot. Bursts of nothing.

Four- and 18-wheelers eat our dust.

Night falls in a fingersnap,

painting all the windows black.

The kid with wheat-blond hair

who just signed up

says they asked if he could kill.

The wheels on the bus. . .

I close my eyes to look inside.

Kill who? By Riverside,

his head was nowhere to be seen.

I’d never been so happy

to see a Coke machine.

The wheels. . .

Author Bio:

K.Lipschutz (formerly klipschutz) is the pen name of Kurt Lipschutz. First fruits: The Erection of Scaffolding for the Re-Painting of Heaven by the Lowest Bidder (o.p.). Upon publication of Premeditations, he was shocked to discover that he has seven collections. He has co-written approximately 100 songs released by Chuck Prophet, including eight tunes on Wake the Dead (2024). Between 2014 and 2017, along with Jeremy Gaulke, he edited the collectible minimag Four by Two. (A complete set of twelve issues resides in the Special Collections Library at U.C. Berkeley.) K.Lipschutz lives in downtown S.F. with Colette Jappy, two cats, and the new kid in town, Dante the Inferno.