POEM TO MINDY
and there she is
my cat
she demands that my hands
touch her fur and
she demands my
total
attention
she knows she’s the only cat
that matters
that ever mattered.
She knows the cats of Egypt
I sometimes think she was there herself and added that
unknown quality to
the reliefs in the temple walls, for
she is the only cat that ever mattered as she wimpers that
demanding little
raorw
***
HISTORIES ARE NOT MY STORIES
You read me histories I say
histories that don’t exist for me.
I say
I am all there is
there are no histories but my
history
there is no story but my
story
and when I die
all
is gone
When I die there will be no more
sunday matinee’s smell of the theater
when I die the roses will not bloom
and you can tell each
other then
of your histories and how the
world went on without
me
but you will never
convince
me
***
Get off your ass
and tell these people
something,
anything you fool,
say the dust has collected
in the corners and
the leaves are lining the gutters
and the birds don’t care for your poetry
Say that your brain has
holes in it and cannot,
could not hold the water.
Say it, fool!
I know you want to.
Squeeze it out
of the dirty rag
and wipe
your brow with your angst
until
the birds sing again.
david michael jackson August 5, 2012
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!
***