The Gardener’s Fern book
was filled with clutter.
A program from a flower show
at the Mattatuck Museum,
with a special thanks from Judge Gray.
Mom’s ‘hide and seek’ exhibit
was judged,
too sophisticated for the masses,
or so they say.
There was a Father’s Day card
and
A Valentine for Someone Special.
Imagine going through this book
after she was gone?
With all her belongings
calling; falling,
as leaves from a tree.
This is about as dark as I got in 1997. It has been the internet’s nobody cares poem since then and thousands have read it. It’s sad how many have asked for it over the years. I should not make excuses for it…It is to be noted that tha author of this Nobody poem still writes and paints…..write your despair down….publish it….and don’t shoot yourself in a corn field over your art or anything else……david michael jackson
Nobody reads poems, pal
books neither
nobody is going to read this crapola, buddy
why don’t you just open a gas station
or get a good factory job
they pay fourteen an hour at western polycom
nobody looks at art, bozo
why are you wasting your life on that
how much did you spend on all this canvas and paint
you need shoes
can you wear these paintings,
nobody cares
only assholes like you
you stupid bonehead
who gives a damn what T.S. Eliot said
when you boil it down it comes out to a big “beats the shit out of me” anyway
so why even say it, I mean why not just chase some tail, instead.
Ya know?
Now maybe you should read a recent poem by David, his beautiful flower poem
Beyond Meaning
There’s a seeming realness of grounded thought
and an awkward fit of another human
in our dream.
We can share space and agree
to be tolerate of illusion.
We can agree to share some meaning in our lives.
Meaning is the weight in our heads.
It could be excessive rumination,
the looped reels of life
or the invisible force behind our acting out,
the dream that makes us crazy or calm
or sure of what could never be but is.
Meaning is the assignment of the soul.
We long for the fire of illusion
that does not contradict
our earth bound reality
but rides along on a higher plane,
something that sparks the aura,
tingles the essence and
sends vibrations through the cosmos.
We long for the embodiment of love,
torn between blissful numbness
and the excitement of too much stimulation
and weighted expectations
all for reasons we do not realize
are substitutes for what we can not know.
Beyond Meaning poem by Belinda Subraman
You may also like Belinda Subraman’s Nurse Appreciation Poem
Mercury
Janet Kuypers
from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series
Loving astronomy,
I’ve always looked for images
from outer space.
My computer desktop background
and screen saver images
are NASA and Hubble telescope images.
Near my desk I keep a poster
of the planets,
and I’ve tried to find miniature globes
all all of the planets
for my living room.
Saturn. Jupiter, and four of it’s moons.
Mars. Our moon.
Too many globes of Earth.
The weather patterns of Venus.
Even a W-map of the universe
just after the Big Bang.
But planets like Neptune,
the farthest from the sun,
and Mercury,
the closest to the sun,
(speeding at over one and a half times
the speed of Earth’s orbit),
those globes are hard to find.
Mercury’s eccentric orbital speed
changes throughout it’s fast orbit,
with the fitting, fast-moving name
of the Roman messenger god.
They equated the planet with the Greek Hermes,
because it moves across the sky
faster than any other planet.
Mercury’s astronomical symbol
as a stylized version of Hermes’ caduceus.
The symbol for the planet Mercury
is even used to represent the element…
We can’t land anything on Mercury
because of it’s hostile environment,
like the volatility of the liquid element
(the only liquid element considered a mineral).
People shy away from using Mercury
in thermometers any longer
because the toxic mercury can leak.
Historically they tried to use mercury
for mirrors (they use silver now),
and ancient cultures used cosmetics
containing the poisonous mercury
that often disfigured women’s faces.
Ah, the ways women hurt themselves
to make themselves beautiful —
you can still find mercury
(you know, because it stays liquid)
in eyelash mascara.
Putting a toxic element so close to your eyes,
that sounds like a good idea…
Then again, someone just told me
that doctors used to give mercury
antibiotic eye drops to babies
just after birth,
to prevent eye infections
from Gonorrhea / Chlamydia bacteria.
Ah, the many ways
we can use toxins
to supposedly help us.
We want to learn about the planet Mercury?
We send unmanned ships through space
to photograph Mercury as much as we can,
remotely check the atmosphere levels,
the temperature, the speed.
We use mercury in our make-up,
mercury is used in dental amalgams.
Mercury has also been used
in traditional Chinese medicine,
and we used mercury in thermometers
to regulate our temperature,
and used it in blood pressure devices.
Because, we want to learn,
and we want to do anything,
to use anything to our own ends,
no matter how toxic.
