David Michael Jackson Poems

Ultimate Game of Cards
by David Michael Jackson
The wind in the willows
whispers,
waits not for this poet whose
words are frozen,
and yet as restless
as the limbs which sway
carelessly like
youth which is
lost,
squandered in the ultimate
game of cards.
Aces and eights,
the dead man’s hand.
We are all holding aces and eights
and the wind in the willows
cannot help us.
I deal
a joker here
a queen there.
I am a lonely duece who
cannot sleep so I listen to the wind
in vain waiting for the
whisper.

***

To state the obvious
to send a prayer
“protect her”
to think of it floating
upwards

to think I’m not
a mouse in a hole

that bird looks so like
the bird of my youth

is it the same bird

a mouse in a cave
pretending divinity

I can see the bird
flying with
my
prayer.

david michael jackson June 5, 2012 editors@artvilla.com

To Ernest Sylvia and Vincent

 

You make me write this poem,

you with art in your hands.

Was it because no one cared Vincent?

Was it because they cared Ernest?

Was it your stated goal Sylvia?

Was it the pain of life,

or the meaningless shuffle to chaos,

the eons that can overcome your work?

 

Ah it was that fish

that fish that turned to bones.

 

Your greatest

is no greater than the single flower

blooming and fading.

 

I must kick your bones.

My worth is  tiny beside your greatness

as your greatness is tiny beside the eons.

I must kick your bones.

 

Life will kill you soon enough.

 

When I see the momentary flower

I am carried by it

to bliss.

 

When I see your flower

I cry.

 

david michael jackson     June 1, 2012   editors@artvilla.com

 

 

 

She

When she whispers
like the sounds a skirt makes,
the sounds the leaves make,
the sounds the wind makes
early, when the birds sing like
the peaceful sound of the brook
when she speaks
like the rain itself
on the roof,
it’s the sound the sunshine makes
in the yard,
the sound the moonlight makes,
the sound of a kind thought,
the sounds the clouds make,
and the sounds the sun makes
setting and rising

***

 

 

david michael jackson   Nov 29 2004  editors@artvilla.com

A TINY BIT OF GRASS
I saw this bird today.
It was just a brief instant
I was in a parking lot headed to
a job.
He was at the edge of the lot in a tiny bit of grass we had left him.
There was this instant that I knew
for certain,
for absolute certain,
that this bird was important.
So important that I would remember the motion of his body as he
paused for an instant to
look at me.
So important that I would remember
how he moved,
as important as a red wheelbarrow,
or a player on a stage,
he raised his wings
and made that poking motion at the ground and
he was important,
not just another bird,
noticed by just another person
because there is no such thing as
just another bird
or just another person.
There is only one bird
only one
person.

and yet I pause in this twilight moment to ponder

was this the same bird
let loose above the streets of paris
in ’45

or the same bird who called to chopin
there is only one bird,
one person

and we paused, that bird and I

we paused to
notice each other and then, like good soldiers
we continued on to
our
jobs

bird poem- David Michael Jackson  2005  editors@artvilla.com

You may also like my shoes poem

***