David Michael Jackson

What’s the use he says.
What’s the point.
Who says there
has to be a point.
A point to get stuck on?
Wasting your life is an alternative to
driving yourself into
cramped molds,
bread molds
medicine molds
molds which paychecks fit into
molds which success fits into
I have been hammered into these molds
by the pressure of the years. I lie like putty
in every intended and required shape
and yet
I still
I find this poem lying
gracefully along
the red mahogany
table

David Michael Jackson

Befits me I guess this
serving of poems in the night.
You read the poem and leave me
silently.
I put my name on it but you do not remember me
tomorrow.
My fifteen minutes is ten seconds of your time,
ten seconds of hers, of his.
I have ten seconds, ten seconds.
My father, my father,
oh how his eyes did shine!

***

These Moments
by David Michael Jackson

These moments lead to other slow,
oh so slow, moments leading to endless
eternities.
If the universe exploded once,
it will explode again leaving us with
that question,
floating over the horizon like
simple dew drops,
waiting for the hot summer sun to leave them
seemingly
gone,
seemingly vanished into the noontime
of a hot day with a hoe in my hand in
the field,
the hot field of a farmer’s son.