David Michael Jackson – Page 3

A Glitter of Gold

March 11, 2015 by David Jackson

glitter of Gold poem

I’ve been durned and crittered
s-o-beed and quartered like a pig
I’ve been hung up, hung down
like a worn out wizzy wig.
I’ve been appraised like art
and thrown away like a rug.
I’ve been a scarab in a crown and a bug.
It seems that life will always be
that way for you, for me,
for we are
the wonderful imperfections
we were meant to be,
and there are those who
through the dust that was you,
that was me,
a glitter of gold will see

……………………………………2015 david michael jackson

Poem for Farmers For My Grandfather by David Michael Jackson

February 21, 2015 by David Jackson

For my grandfather:

You said on that porch,
“I just can’t work no more.”
“I just can’t work no more.”
that’s what you lived for.

the porch is gone
the swing is gone
the well is gone
the chicken house
the smoke house,
the barn,
are gone.

the house is gone.
the cherry tree,
the apple trees,
the cows are gone

and the family moved to town.

Your tractor is gone
and the wire with which
you held it together.

That field is there
I stood in it again
it was empty and bare
without you there.

Yes that field is there.

You planted tobacco and
at the end of each row,
watermelon.

You worked me hard for a boy
but I know work
and having to stay
until its done.

The bell is gone,
to call the farmer to the house.

It was the house and the field.

the house and the field…

and town on Saturday.

The Modern Shanty Shack

January 25, 2015January 13, 2015 by David Jackson

shanty shack

When the U.S. decides to get tough on crime, when the U.S. decides in a right wing fervor to fight a war on drugs, the black man can’t hide. The war on drugs is a war on race and our marijuana laws have put another generation of young black men aside. The war has been waged by the political right who holds the young black man in total disrespect.
Too easy is it for the white man to drive his shiny car beside a young black man who is walking and wave this dreadlock generation off with the back of a hand as lazy and unwilling to work. Too easy is it for the police to find the easy drug on the easy suspect. Too easy is it for the white man to buy his guns at his white only gun show and too easy is it for the black man to have a felony for the same gun.
More prisons than colleges has created an easy industry around imprisoning minorities and poor whites because of a relatively harmless weed. This industry now extends it’s tendrils to the new “Probation Industry” as municipalities learn to profit from outsourced probation and sale of seized property. When police profit from arrests it creates an atmosphere based on profit, not service.
Easy police profiteering from the poor increases the probability that a young black man will have a record. In black communities it is common for black men to “be away on vacation”. The targeting of blacks has insured that many young black men can’t get that job that the white man in the shiny car thinks he’s too lazy for.
This leaves another generation of young black men disenfranchised and basically left out. The national shame is that good intentions led to sad and racist results which are denied by those with the good intentions.
The poor white is a Joe Clark also. The one thing the poor white has been given by the political right is the notion of superiority over minorities. This “gift” has caused the poor white folks to vote against their interest.

The modern shanty shack is a prison cell.