Resident Poets

What Is This Poem

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The if only poem
and the why me poem
always lead to the nobody cares poem
so I’ll just put on my shoes and
play some music,
look out the window at the clouds.

We have discouraged our last poet.

What is this?

Is it a cloud?

Is it a waterfall?

Is it a dream of holding her again?

I started to write this poem,

it was so clever

then memory

crept in

and held me silent

in her arms.

 

What is there?

 

A golden sunlit day

quietly

waiting for me to

peek

outside.

 

What is stopping me?

 

If only,

why me,

and nobody cares.

 

 

 

david michael jackson   july 1, 2012    send rain

The Bet

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The Bet
by Seymour Shubin

I guarantee you, he said
At the end of his mother’s funeral,
That the dead will meet,
That they will look in full health
To each other,
Just as they were.
Oh yeah, I thought , and where
Do I collect if you are wrong?
But that was then and this is now
And oh how I miss her
And how I want to give
His money back.

Originally Publihed as The Bet Poem

Seymour ShubinSeymour Shubin-02Seymour Shubin Witness To Myself

Memories of Paris Poem

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paris poem

memories of paris poem

 

 

 

We fought over an apple on the
train to Paris
and you kicked at me as
we crossed through the gate
onto the cobblestones,
two young Americans in Paris
having a lover’s spat and
making up.
We checked into that hotel
with the tiny balcony
and the red bed with the red curtains.
We were sprouts in a garden
that year.
We never imagined that
it couldn’t last, that time
would grow vines which would crawl up
us like it crawls up everyone
and hold us in factories and
houses and familiar streets.
Every cell in my body is different now and
you are gone,
as gone as Paris of that year.
The train
rolls again across
the French countryside,
rolls into Paris
on
tracks of memory
and we get the same
room and hitch hike across France again
speaking no French,
young Americans with our
thumbs out.

david michael jackson  June 10, 2012  editors@artvilla.com

Last One Standing Poem

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i wuz the last one standing
told off
hornswangled,
befittched,
narry a narnstitch to chamfer,
stalwrited agin,
the final blartly
last one standing I wuz,
barnsnorted right into thye cornswaint
petroclusive
blottled and confused
left there to think I was
left there to think
and think I did

 

 

david michael jackson  sometime in the past   editors@artvilla.com   send caramel corn

Fear Poem by David Michael Jackson

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We blacklisted those who
made us fear ourselves

It was us, not them.

We were there

We were there
John Brown.

We were there.

We were there in Berlin.

It’s is not they
it is we.

We stood by
millions were burned.
We were fearful.

We stood by while
the talk infested our
neighbors,

the talk of fear

for communism
for drugs
for 19 guys with box cutters
for Mexicans.

We climbed out of the sewer of our
collective fear
into the sunshine of truth
once, a long time ago
in a place called Congress
and we told a man called McCarthy
where to stick his fear
and if we have to
by God
we’ll do it again.

david michael jackson june 28 2012 editors@artvilla.com send peace