David Michael Jackson

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