Life Was Easier Then

It was so much easier
when we just had Elvis
and Walter Cronkite
we knew who could sing
and we got the news right

Yes life was better back then
we had a dining room and a den
and we didn’t have a garage full of stuff
and we threw our trash off a bluff

and our sink holes were full of cars
and it never made the news
and we didn’t give a damn about Mars
and fancy shoes

And Aunt Marie fixed
potatoes and pinto beans
and there were these new things called
blue jeans

Oh all the fields are big now and the farmers are gone

Oh what price we paid for our fancy homes

and they took our trash with a big giant hand
when the suburbs swallowed the sons of the land

 

 

Jackson

She Left Me all Alone Poem by Harvey Blasnik

angst

 

She left me all alone

 

She left me all alone

with these old bones

which I rattle together like

stones, like

tablets and memories of God

who,

leaving  bones,

left me alone

with words

so I curse Him with words,

You don’t exist and

that’s the end of it,

Buster you are so out of here,

So get your robes and books and

make like a tree and

leave

and take your Bang with you

It wasn’t so Big

and there were other Bangs around

they say

in fact

They

have gone as crazy

as you.

 

 

Imperfect Camera | Poem | David Michael Jackson

imperfect camera

imperfect camera

We are such
an imperfect camera
we keep so few images
and our lens
is always fogged
our data is stored so imperfectly
that surely God
went digital a long time ago
We have no backup
for our images
and don’t record sound very well
except for the music of our voices
which we use to try to
save some data in the newer storage units
I can write things down but I cannot
cannot
cannot
make you see that look in my father’s eyes

Summer Solace by Linda Straub

Summer solace painting

Summer solace painting

Summer Solace

I sit on our cottage porch

and listen to the undulation

of waves lapping against

the concrete seawall.

A family of mallards bob

around and under

the planked boat dock,

their air of perfect serenity

belying the driving motion

of webbed feet below

a calm and watery surface.

In the distance,

a pair of loons

call out to each other,

their haunting wails

echo in the wilderness.

I am hypnotized

by their conversation–

the universal language of the lake.

 

 

Linda Straub

Copyright May 2014

Art by David Michael Jackson