These songs were written by David Michael Jackson at Artvilla. These two sites were started together in 1998. Motherbird was founded by Summer Breeze and Artvilla by David. This release is on the Artvilla.com label and has been remastered and we are proud of the result.
poems of peace and love
The Aroma of Lilac…A Poem | The Vietnam Effect | Jennifer Schoch
The Vietnam Effect
by Jennifer Schoch
The aroma of lilac drew me
away from my son
quiet as a crystal bowl in his stroller,
the early curious mosquitos almost kept us home.
Am I able to appreciate
this lilac,
her symmetrical perfection, without conjuring your pain?
I am fearful of this flower
I am panicked by her swift impermanence,
of my inability to hold her comforting fragrance
for those mostly marshmallowed mugs of hot chocolate days,
sequestered from the dirty New Jersey snow
where the radiators’ imbalance
from room to room
would make you yell when we opened the windows just a crack
“Goddamn waste of money!”
And the belts sang in their choir on the back of the closet door,
because the boys were fighting over remote controls again
And then, after my downward gaze had watched your darkness dissipate into the cracks
between the hardwood floors,
You would read me Shakespeare:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Is this
why I ran away?
To places where there are no seasons
to the endless
summer days,
where flowers never seem to die.
Your toes were stained with cigarette ash the last time I kissed you goodbye.
Did I
even kiss you?
You hadn’t showered for weeks
and I was scared.
Scared of your skin
scared of your scents
scared of my
shame.
The blue of your eyes was bright
against the rivers of bloodshot.
Mom says your eyes were green
It’s like she never knew you.Sad and lonely, you asked me to stay
“Live here.”
You said.
“I hate LA.”
Like my brothers also bound to plastic liters?
They were small like my boy,
like you were once.
I am fearful in the face of this flower and her reminders.
Your grandson screams now like a broken dish
and
I wonder if you are there
silently crying
out into the black jungle for God to spare you
for your mother
for a future with mom
for a future with me
with a grandson you will never meet.
How could you have known this jungle
it would never leave?
Dying on the old hardwood floor in May
did you make it to the yard that Spring?
The worst death you died is not your final fall
it is the tree outside our window
cowering with dainty, dusty stars
you could not notice.
Did you glance outside that morning
and think to tell me of the lilacs that had bloomed?
Was your fall swift?
A small, unopened purple “bud of May”
gently shaken free?
The pain you healed, my father,
by noticing the lilacs
reading Shakespeare in Irish accents.
The unfolding damage it has caused,
in the tiniest creations
this unreconciled war from long ago.
Jennifer Schoch is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California where she received a master’s degree in Social Work. She is currently staying home with her young son while contributing as a writer for a book on social work and the arts. She has written, performed and directed for the screen and stage.
The Vietnam Effect Copyright 2021 by Jennifer Schoch. All Rights Reserved.
Originally published at Artvilla The Vietnam Effect Poem
Robin Hislop reads Amparo Arróspide´s Poem Can´t All Poets. Arrangement by Dave Jackson. Guitar Andy Derryberry
* A poem by Amparo Arróspide, from “En el oído del viento” (Baile del Sol, 2016). Hers and Robin Ouzman´s translation. *** Can't all poets get a PhD in synesthesia by the University of Columba in New York? Can´t they harvest medallions under the moon? Can´t they work as professors of Punic Sciences? As kindergarten teachers, can´t they work? Can´t they translate their 14th century Chinese concubine colleagues? Can´t they afford to pay for their third self-published volume? Can´t all poets live on air? Can't they rummage, deconstruct , snoop build for themselves a submerged house inhabit a crystal palace? Can´t they repeat over and over the unsaid incite questions of ethical and aesthetic weight dismantle and fragment reality? Can´t they receive writing from a yearning and swift void? From a primordial nothingness? Can´t they mortgage their crystal palace their submerged house? Can´t they rebelliously peddle little stars? Can´t all poor poets steal books? Can´t they read so the complete works by Samuel and Ezra and John by Juana Inés, Alejandra and Gabriela by Anne and Margaret and Stevie by Wallace and Edgar and Charles by Arthur and Paul and Vladimir by Dulce and Marina and Marosa? And etcetera and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera? Can´t all poets add more beauty to beauty and more horror to horror? Can´t they draw maps and routes of the invisible, futuristic city foretold by their dreams? Can´t they pursue the intangible Move towards permanence so that a poem becomes a closed and completed vehicle to treasure a present without behind or beyond? Can't they unfold and transmigrate can't they achieve mindfulness Can´t they stammer forever into everlasting silence?
**
This is a Blog and This is a Post Poem
This is a blog
and this is a post
and this is a poem about a post
stuck in the ground
without roots
to hold a wire
that sends this poem
to be a post
in this
blog.
Time is woven with words
about planets
and suns
and is stretched across this canvas with
paint made of light.
This post
this poem
this blog
must
move
like that temporary sun
in that temporary sky
and this explosion of a single
fire cracker
called the universe.
And You and I | A Poem for Heroes
and you and I
we kicked Mussolini out
on his ass
on his fat rotten keister, mister!
We rose up one at a time and said that’s enough Buster Brown
Get outta town.
In one glorious moment we rose up
one at a time
and got in line.
Remember the heroes of that day,
you and me.
….david michael jackson
Righteous Speech. A Poem by Gary Beck. Excerpt from Learning Curve Collected Poems
We removed Saddam Hussein
because he was an evil man
gassing his people,
developing nuclear weapons,
a threat to world peace.
So elected leaders
of the good old U.S.A.,
self-appointed
international policeman,
decided arbitrarily,
against some sensible advice
that state building
replacing tyranny
with democracy
is a difficult task
in an alien land
without due process,
or civil rights,
and a fanatic clergy
opposed to Western ways.
But our elected leaders
ignored warning signs
and decided.
Saddam must go.
So we invaded Iraq,
crushed feeble resistance,
a super power
flexing its military,
and we excavated Saddam
from his hiding hole
and swift justice followed.
So we helped install
a new government
that didn’t know how to govern,
in a land divided
by race, religion, tribe.
And we proclaimed to the world
democracy was born.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 26 poetry collections, 10 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 1 collection of one-act plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions and Desperate Seeker (Winter Goose Publishing. Forthcoming: Learning Curve and Ignition Point). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value and Fractional Disorder (Cyberwit Publishing). His novels include a series ‘Stand to Arms, Marines’: Call to Valor, Crumbling Ramparts and Raise High the Walls (Gnome on Pig Productions) and Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). Wavelength (Cyberwit Publishing). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing) and Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). The Republic of Dreams and other essays (Gnome on Pig Productions). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck). Gary lives in New York City. https://www.facebook.com/AuthorGaryBeck
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Virus on the Brain Poem
I got virus on my hands
virus on my clothes
virus on my feet
virus on my toes
Did I touch that doorknob
did I get too close
I can’t touch my face
I can’t scratch my nose
Oh baby my baby
close the door and come in
we’ve been quarantined
by Covid nineteen.
Oh I went to the sink and put the virus on the handle as I turned on the water on the water with the virus on my hands. So I lathered up the hands and I lathered up the handle. I lathered up the doorknob and I
lathered up my n o s e. Oops.
Cause
I got virus on my hands
virus on my clothes
virus on my feet
virus on my toes
Oh it’s no use in runnin’
We can’t take the train
We’re all stuck at home
with virus on the brain.
david michael jackson
