David Michael Jackson

End of Summer Ant Poem

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I am an ant pushing a stick
at the end of summer.
I carry a parcel of leaf
to deliver wherever
the scent takes me.
I have no leader
and still move mountains.
My cousin, the butterfly,has no brains but can fly to Peru.
Can you?
I am an ant pushing a stick and
all of your philosophy
can’t move that stick
or find an explanation
for me.
We are both tied to the end of summer,
lashed to the season’s,
of this one mooned earth.
like flowers we open to the light
and close our eyes at night
and we look to the sky,
the late summer sky,
and return to pushing our stick.

david michael jackson

I knew nothing of the war by David Michael Jackson

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I knew nothing of the war
except what they told me,
that it was for freedom.
All I really remember is the boy
lying on a concrete slab.
I remember the dried blood on his cheeks.
I can’t make out the race so well,
he’s a brownish boy
just lying there with his
bullet wounds,
staring that stare.
His arms are at his side in
the photo
and he’s lying on his back
on this grey slab.
That’s all I remember, really,
just the boy.
No soccer matches for him,
Mom won’t take him in the SUV.
He’s lying on his back on that concrete slab
No one called the police.
It won’t be on the news.
They won’t interview the parents and
seek our help to
find
the
killer.
There will be more
at
ten.

Joe Clark Folk Song by David Michael Jackson

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I’m not all that political. I have no record. I could not have lived my life as a mechanical engineer with one. The records we are creating with our outrageous number of people in corporate run prisons in the U.S. is racist . It is the sharecropping shanty shack of our times.. It is excluding large segments of our population.
When we create so many casual “felons”, mostly black and hispanic, we lose the ability to tell who is indeed dangerous and too many of our citizens end up living outside of our system.
I wrote this song and have assigned a Creative Commons license.

Joe Clark

Oh I can’t get a job cause
I sold that weed
to that cop in
ninety three
On the piece of paper they always ask me
have you had a felony
I was fighting my war on poverty
when the war on drugs got me
now there’s no work at all for me
no Social Security

Oh they threw my tail in the company jail
and threw away the key
so I told her to find her someone else
and forget about me

So I work at outside in hot and in cold
and we live in this trailer park
and when people ask me who I am
I say I’m….I’m Joe Clark

So I’ll build you a fence
and work in your yard
if ever there was a worker
that was Joe Clark
so if you’ll give me a chance
I won’t be a slob
I’m Joe Clark
and I need a job

Oh they threw my tail in the company jail
and they threw away the key
so I told her to find her someone else
and forget about me

by david michael jackson

USA Collage a Painting by David Michael Jackson

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USA Collage
USA Collage
2015
by David Michael Jackson

Artist Statement:
Recycled art
1. Painted a large painting during Gulf War 1, 36″ x 24″
2. Somewhere during Gulf War 2 it gets big hole in the middle of it.
2. So I cut pieces out of it and glued them onto a panel 16″ x 20″
3. One more Gulf War and we can get this painting down to 8″ x 10″

Make it go out of date.

editors@artvilla.com

The Dream Poem and…

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He Looked Around

He looked around
as if in a dream
knowing insignificance
and feeling it.
The water still runs
and the sky is still blue but
all of the people in all of the cars in all of the cities
are in his dream,
driving,
waiting in line,
dreaming, looking out, walking, running, being.

He throws these words on this page.
These words are dreaming words
on a dreaming page.

On the street in the rain.
The water falls and rushes noisily.

The poet floats like a forgotten leaf
toward the drain.