David Michael Jackson Poems

That Car Song

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My mom died last year. She and I kinda wrote this song. We were talking on the phone and I wrote down some things she said. She spoke of a car of course and the conversation shifted to others in my family. In writing the song I threw in my wife’s green eyes.

The words so sound like my mother as I read them tonight. I have re-mixed this song to emphasize Andy Derryberry on guitar and bass. I rocked it up as best as my music can be rocked. For me the song is certainly American and sounds like a mother talking about her children. I can’t do my songs justice so they will be lost. It’s a shame on this one.

An artist cannot share the feelings for the art. Whether the world thinks its good or not, the artist feels like a father and mother to the art. It’s an intense feeling that no object deserves but it’s there. It’s there. An artist wants the art to survive, to not end up rotting in some garage or, in the case of music, disappearing completely. It’s not a small feeling.

I think of a place where all the lost objects are, an entropy collection place for all the lost pens, screws and things that disappear. In that giant pile of lost things is art.

Ah poems and songs. Songs don’t come easily for anybody. With poems you can roll your angst into a ball and throw it at the wall. Songs on the other hand only seem to come along occasionally like a drunk that demands liquor right then. They appear and they have to get out and then they are gone. I don’t know if there is another song because I have to wait for the train again. It’s not like a poem. These boxes constantly demand a poem and I deliver them like milk. With a song I have to wait for the train as I swear to never write another.

That Car

More from David

 
He really loves that car
He admired it from afar
He went down one day
and drove it away.
Oh he really smiled that day.
And he really loves that girl.
It’s a romance for all of the world.
They met one sunny afternoon
when the shadows were scattered just right.
She wore green to match her eyes
on that very very first night.
Yes he really loves that girl.
You can see them everywhere.
Cruising around town
having fun.
You can’t get them down
because they’re like one.
Oh they really love life.
They sip it like fine wine.
They are a shining star.
And they really love that car
They go everywhere.
yes they really love that car.
It’s red.
yes they really love that car.
I sure love them
and they really love that car.

david michael jackson july 20, 2012 editors@artvilla.com send origami

Fiddler Man

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Yesterday we received 1768 “requests” for our mp3 files. 100 of those were for Fiddler Man. Our “free” mp3s are streamed to play buttons on many file sharing sites. Some get a few listens per day, some get many plays each day. The people who play our songs don’t actually visit our site.

Fiddler Man was played 100 times yesterday. If you put 100 people in a room it would seem to be a lot but on the internet it’s a number. You might make someone applaud in Sri Lanka but you cannot hear it, or maybe they played it and went to the bathroom. You never quite know. Maybe they downloaded it and your song will be saved in Sri Lanka or Sao Paulo or Duluth. The compulsion of unknown artists to give their art away is unstoppable.

That person in Puerto Rico or China may have found me in a search for Michael Jackson or David Michael Jones.

I can’t even thank those 100 people for listening to me because none of them are reading these words. I can’t thank them so I’ll  thank you.

Thanks for listening.

They lead Dave quietly out of the room. They place a coat around his shoulders. He casts it off…he returns to the mic….

we miss you James Brown

Here is a younger me in a tree:

From the Album You Boys Ain’t Hopin’ Me None

Buy on Google Play

 

 

david michael jackson  july 18 2012 editors@artvilla.com    send a cool day it’s hot!

 

Them Rebs That Gold Poem

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Music by Andy Derryberrry

Sugar Camp Hollow
by David Jackson
We were raised in Sugar Camp Hollow
on Passenger Creek
where them reb soldiers camped it is
said
and the confederate gold is buried there
or so the story goes

and I knew you there
and you and I both knew
to leave those grounds
where the small creek meets Passenger.
We both knew to leave
those grounds
before dark
You and I
shared the secrets of Sugar Camp Hollow,
them rebs,
that gold.

The neighbor Simpson
told the tale,
his skinny fingers
waving, pointing to that
spot where the springs
flow to create that
small
creek
that place
where dreams are
formed.

A poem for you
tonight
Sugar Camp Hollow
Passenger Creek,
them rebs,
that gold,

and I pause beside this spring
of remembrance

this moment is
a thin stream of water
flowing
from a tiny spring
somewhere

The Chicken House Gazette

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My cousin Ruthie and I founded the Chicken House Gazette in the chicken house. The chickens were gone by then. Somewhere in my life the chickens disappeared. We gathered paper, the kind with the wide lines, the grade school paper which had that smell of new school supplies, that once a year smell. We gathered paper. We cut articles out of magazines. We cut pictures. We glued and pasted our way to the first issue. We created two issues, one copy each. We sold out the first day, to my mother and to the neighbor Simpson across the creek.

Those were not the last issues of The Chicken House Gazette. Since those days my audience has grown slightly but I am still cutting and pasting the latest issues of my little Chicken House Gazette. My audience are still neighbors and friends across the creek which has turned into an ocean. It’s still the same small world!

Thank you neighbor.

 

 

david michael jackson   july 15,2012   editors@artvilla.com    send _____________