David Michael Jackson August
This afternoon
The day lily’s
Abundant blooms
Of canary and crimson,
Leave me mute and unmoved,
And the hammock
Hanging weightless
Between greenness of grass
And blueness of sky
Lulls me to silence,
And in the night,
In the darkness, under the trees,
Where the branches
Of the ash meet the maple,
I sit quiet,
For the night sky
On summer nights
Glowing purple in the West,
Translucent and backlit,
Leaves me wordless.
***
FOR WILLIE
who am I to say musician
to say poet
who am I
to say artist
every human needs to say
these
these are the only hands
these are the supreme hands
I am the only man who ever lived
a mammal in a lair
snarling when cornered
like Dylan’s wolverine
gasping for the last breath
for the last word ever uttered by
mankind itself
***
Texture
A textured ceiling
with the shadows intact,
like the moment of
the mason,
the
craft,
the
art,
unnoticed in the
sale of
cotton canvas in
the department store,
in
the moment of
submission,
that moment.
The textures demand it,
they demand it.
They demand the painting,
the undefined expression of
what?
Only the moment
suspended in
what?
A suspension bridge to
truth,
to
you.
***
What Did It Matter by David Jackson
And what did it matter
after my last poem was read,
after the last painting,
painted in red,
and what did it matter
after the last bet was lost,
lost in the roll of the dice,
lost in God’s conquest or
man’s wisdom or
folly.,
lost as surely as the
fundamentalist target is
lost,
lost as surely as the last
child of war is
lost,
lost as you,
or
I
***
There are no favorites.
There is no victory,
only gladness that I have no
child
to sacrifice
to the masses,
calling themselves this or
that,
the masses,
of which
I am one,
tumbling
without
control to
eternity,
with only this,
merely a comma in the dialogue,
a simple request,
let’s have a spot of tea with our war.
King George always likes a spot
of
tea.
***