Porch swing life in
some other place
moon humming happy
bugs playing fiddles
pies cooling
by the window

Down the road awhile
in smokey midnight bars
torchy songs low and thick
red lipstick eyes closed
songs for someone gone
a long long time

Outside slow motion
saxaphone
wakes the blood
sends foggy feet
to the magic house
yellow glow windows
Strong souls there,
souls so big
they never die.

Dreamstreet Man
drew that door
then walked through it.
You don’t know
he said
who’s the dream
and who’s the dreamer.

The air’s the same
The air’s the same.
It’s the same good
honeysuckle air.

What I’m looking for

They always say

they hope I find

what I am

looking for,

and then I laugh

and walk away.

I look for nothing

everything

I look for those

who soar and wander,

through the hidden doors

and down the paths

that don’t exist

I look

for weeds on

pampered lawns

I look

for dandelions

unhindered,

even loved.

Dandelion de la Rue  May 29, 2012

What is your dream?
You have to follow that.
That is what is important,
it’s not education,
it’s not job,
it’s the dream.
It’s something to fall asleep with
every night of your life.
A life which matters
only through love and dreams.
My dream is this.
Today I did this toward my dream.
Now I can sleep
a poet’s sleep

COLLECTING THE RENT
Devil himself along the red clay unpaved road
comes in a red suit bright as the sun of March
up onto the porch to ask directions; so many lost souls
in some parts obscure the reasons for being
in the first place there–accidents of birth, some say;
others claim that fate or destiny will work that way

Work is what it is. Lost souls damned to the mornings
of waking to it and condemned to the long hot middays
of it returning at night to curse the momentum of days
of it sleep resting from it day-to-day unchanged works
on the soul ’til Sunday frenzy of loafing on a frontporch.
Then the devil himself in his damned red suit asks after
so-and-so or his son, the woman or her daughter never,
or almost never, for some reason. He comes asking
directions and they never know where nor heard tell
of him except he might be up the road a piece might well
have died in his sleep a year ago alone in his shack; hell,
aint it a mite late to come for collecting when a man’s bone
that ought to be in the ground by now fretting the worms
just goes to dust in his bed, the meaning of dead-tired.
But come to think on it, not that fellow you want but Jack.
I do think ’tis Jack. Jack you want. Fellow with all yellow
hair comes round the field to count bushel-at-a-dollar;
Old dollar-bushel Jack, he’s who you oughts go after.
They laugh up their sleeves as the sun goes down on the fellow
along the red clay unpaved road walking then they go to their
beds with their dark faces wrinkled in dark thought:  who’s next.
They wake surprised to bright red sun of the morning next
to the women who will send that devil in the red suit
along the road back to their shack. Lord, I aint next.
But will be soon. And each knows it:  Work’s what it is.

– John Horváth Jr

Have we excluded these animals

from our cruelty laws,

the cow

the pig

the chicken?

When did we excluded these animals

from our laws?

Is it okay to be cruel to these animals if

it’s

business?

Is it okay to be cruel to these animals

since we

eat them?

This poem cries for chickens

crowded together like

products,

on a line.

This poem cries for cows

crowded together like

merchandise.

This poem cries for pigs

crowded together in

concentration camps.

This poem cries for man

an aside…..when the “aliens” did the same thing to humans, we called it a “horror movie”. When we treat our fellow creatures horribly by making them live elbow to elbow their whole lives until they bite each other’s tails, then we lose.  When did we lose our humanity? Was it when we became “business people.” or just urban enough to only see a chicken in the grocery store?

david michael jackson   May 10, 2012  editors@artvilla.com

More David Michael Jackson Poetry

Spring Is

brilliant & tender
intelligent & humble
heavenly music brought to earth
by mozarts & such
davids & elfkins
a young man
declaring his love for an old woman
an old woman
wid ol’ woman smile
remembering
Spring