David Jackson
Why I Should Poem
Why I Should
Because I still breathe
because I have something to say
even
if it is only me
Even if it’s only me
saying it to
me
Because the sun came up and the rivers flowed
and if feels good to say so
because it’s the end of a year
a new year and
and it felt good to say so
because I’m a crazy fool
who will spend his last penny
making something he likes
even if others throw it away
even if it rots in the back of an unknown book
even if it is forever an unknown song
even if it rots in a basement
so I will grab another handful
of colored sand
for whose works
are not
swept
away?
Why Should I Poem
Why Should I
There are two points in every life
that is in the artist life
the point where the painting and words and music
and the person
are asking why
with a fire unlike any fire
and a point
where the artist or writer or musician
and person
is asking
why should I?
why should I?
I beat my primordial head
on this stone in this cave
why am I not hunting the elk
instead of scratching with this
blunt burnt stick
until my hands are worn
and I beat on this stone with these hands
and this stick.
“Oh you have drawn the elk
we saw him this morning
but wasn’t his leg longer
and his horn had more points.”
what I saw
what I saw
what I saw
I do not understand
I cannot understand
Why should I?
david michael jackson
Maybe if you just express those moments they won’t stand in the way of the bigger why. Maybe. We’ll see.
WordPress Getting Started
The first part of this video is concerned with the installation of a new WordPress Blog. If you wish to review the basics of making posts at Artvilla and would like to be one of the total idiots who work for free for something called art or poetry or music and you feel journalistic in a moment of weakness or whatever just contact us.
Egret Poem by Michael Estabrook
Egret
Tall gray bird, an egret I think, standing
in the shallows of a small pond over in
the fields behind the high school,
poised, quiet, elegant, intensely
focused, his head with its long beak
snapping suddenly like a whip
into the water, stabbing at one
of the innumerable, plump, brown
tadpoles beginning to kick their frog
legs. But he misses, comes up dry,
his beady eyes staring down
into the dark water, incredulous
at having missed and,
if I didn’t know better, a little
bit embarrassed about it too.
Egret © Michael Estabrook 2012