Let Go

Let Go

there are times when wisdom 
is no better than sagebrush
tumbleweed propelled by random winds
tossing over a lonely road of dust 
sand covered Tao to nowhere
times when all the lovers and promises
fantasies of everlasting embraces
become shimmer mirages
and solitude is the lasting truth
wisdom as the  philosophy of sages 
makes me laugh knowing like the
throbbing blood in my veins that
Dylan got it right
when you got nothing
you got nothing to lose
when you are ready to pull the trigger
ready to shoot the pain in your
broken heart it is the exact moment
to have your epiphany 
let go
let go of the illusion of love
let go of the demons 
wedded to yourself
go away into your life
go where you can dance again
sing be forgiven
forgive absolve everyone you think
caused you despair
let go
like the prince of India who let go
of his palace his wife his child
let go and found joy in a beggars bowl
that went upstream
let go and dance like Shiva
go to the Golden Pavilion
of yourself until you can
toss with the tumbleweed

Jack Jameson 2-20-13

Jake

This is the day I have to write to you
A day that like our lost love
Is gray and stark as ash
Not like the day thirty-seven
Years ago when we met
Knowing an adventure would unfold
Sensing from a word found in your
Unabridged dictionary
That we would head out together
For destinations recondite

What became of our enterprise of
Great pitch and moment as you named it
Hamlet's speech caught in your head
We let go of each other in stages
Like turning down the volume of a
Song decibel by decibel until
We could hear nothing
We made the slow descent from Parry Peak
Where we had touched each other's
Loneliness and yearning forever

You chose to leave Fat Tuesday
A wife son friends family
As once I was eager to do
Then when you did not come
That stark gray October day
There was no alternative but to betray
Our pacts and promises our unbound
Tie to let unravel rarely requited
Passion like smashing a fist
Into a Nineteenth Century brick wall

Now your spirit if there is such a
Thing slithers toward James our host
Who met and shaped us both the poet
Whose murder suffocated  us 
Whose grim Oklahoma Halloween
Burial took place on that exact same day
For me stark and gray of your wedding
I witnessed like a zombie among
Revelers knowing death so intimately
Realizing how death and love are twins

Where hang those lips that I have kissed
Whose final words you gave to me  
Mere months ago  " Love you, Jack" 
Lips to say goodbye as you take away
On this day stark gray
A broken stem of the wormwood 
Wild  in my mad heart


Jack Jameson, Ash Wednesday, 2/13/13

Fat Tuesday

Fat Tuesday

Lucky Dogs under the Red and Yellow

Umbrella stoned pirate standing still in the

Sea of multicolored beings coursing

Coarsely down Bourbon with beads swaying

Drinks in hand clandestine blunts and

Boners joker’s caps feather plumes

Screams of delight from bar to bar

Raising cups of joy into the sprinkled air

This time we are the music

The furry brown dog on the cell phone

Waving beside lovers in rainbow tutus

Stop action as she shows her tits

Togas crowns and bare buttocks

And despite smudged signs of warning

There is Jesus sandals and thorns smiling

The most stoned and blissed-out  grin of all

 Jack Jameson 2-12-13

Green Dragon

Green Dragon

Wasn't it here yesterday
The jade dragon green
There by the window
Who would have moved it
Where would he have put it
Another room the basement
Storage
No one else has been here
Where the jade dragon sits
All these years guarding
Our lovemaking our joys
Our yelling and breaking 
Things
Our trysts with all those
Others we embraced 
Together and separately
Only a rare few ever noticed
Her there by the window
Green and smoother than any skin
Supplanted now by a glass vase
Full of Sunflowers

Jameson 1-27-13

Ranch (for DHL)

Ranch (for DHL)

For a time we three slept up on
Wolf Mountain Bert Frieda and I
We took the trail past Susan the Cow
And the field of black-eyed susans
Waiting til the sun set over New Mexico
Til we could take off our clothes
Keep warm together with friction
Bert loved my alabaster buttocks
Or so I felt as his broad hand pressed
There when Frieda and I missionaried
On the hard bed til it was Bertie's turn
They swore me to secrecy hell it was
1923  the year my Mom was born
Menage wasn't even a word well
Not one to go in an English writer's bio
No way so we smoked weed and laughed
Instead until we drove to Lake Chapala
Which Bert said looked milky with sperm
All the way down in Mexico


A tribute to D. H. Lawrence
Jack, Xmas '12

Merry Xmas Dad

Merry Xmas Dad

You might have lived to be a century
Smiling at balloons sucking candy
Stroking your yellow cats
Filled with patriotism and not even
Missing the holidays of your past
Not even knowing Christmas Eve
From the Day of the Dead
You struggle up the stairs to your bed
Are you preparing for your eternity
Fetal position how many hours each
Day curled up in oblivion
Your wife hates you resents
Your long life and if you know
Anything through the haze that is it
She accuses you of making a Hell
Of her disappointing life
Do you recall in your dementia
That we are estranged that not since
We played chess half a century ago
Has there been anything but false pleasantry
Between us no understanding
No communication no rapport 
Instead silly jokes over fish
We sat in a swing on Tybee beach
And compared biceps whatever summer
You ambled over the sand as your wife
Let the sea breeze give her a shining
Moment in the sun
What has our life meant to you
The failed law practice
The failed first marriage of twenty years
What women still emerge in the mist 
Of your mind what joys recalling
My brother and me wrestling with you
On hardwood floors
Dad I remember your beard
Like sandpaper when you held me as a child
How proud I once was of you
Standing in your officer's uniform
Taking my mother out
Swiveling in your Colonial office chair
Under a gold clock ticking away
Your life of pretense
Why don't I love you old man
Was it your dishonesty your politics
Your doting on your second wife
Whose dreams never came to be
Who came to find emptiness and burden 
In your existence no matter your devotion
Who grew disillusioned as I did
With who you pretended to be
Your dying days bring me sadness
Though you jerk from childish joy
To belligerence over a simple word
You are alien to me though you
Conjure images from my youth
Confused like driving a car for the
First time unable to make the machine
Go where I want that is how my feelings
For you are off the path
For something of you must be mine
At best I forgive you for the alienation
Were you clear of mind I'd ask yours
For me for my inattention and lack
Of concern for you for you are now
A man without love from anyone
Unwashed unfed frail skeleton of a man
Loved only if at all by my kind brother
Ever friend to the downtrodden
Farewell Dad this Xmas Eve
We shall not meet again mind to mind
This Lifetime 

Almost Anger

Write about anger you said

You who are always 

Almost my lover

Almost aroused by an image

On your Laptop

Almost a singer in nightclubs

Of your dark moods

Almost a man almost

Almost wanting me

Almost wanting me to leave you

As my emotions overflow and ebb

Almost like the sea

Flowing unlike my desire

That night we bathed ourselves

Almost together in a baptism

Of holy Beat holiness

Almost Ginsberg and Cassady

Almost a monkey and a pig 

In a house that was almost yours

The best I can muster my love is 

Almost Anger because Anger is 

Only possible when it is possible

To give you unadulterated joy

Jack 12-17-12

Milkyway Haiku

Stars blaze winter sky
White Milky Way shimmering
Shines like holy jizz

Orion

Orion

Will you be old friend the last
Name I recall as I stare at the dark
Ascending night in the winter sky
You were with me when my child's
Eye first looked for constellations
You have seen me through all the
Constellations of my life my loves
My one night one year one decade
Lifetime loves a phantasmagoria
Of couplings and sexual surrender
Of hands held and legs spread 
Embraces with fingers through my hair
Mine through theirs your sword piercing 
Consciousness in a cluster of
Mindfulness
In the outback sky of Australia
Before the glaciers of Patagonia
In Copenhagen and the black sands
Of Hawaii in the little round park
Where I climbed trees and waited for
The Milky Way to appear glistening
Sperm of Heaven filling the sky
Flowing to be shared 
With all the dazzling planets of my
Arching firmament


--Jack,  on the eve of the 2012 Solstice 

Come Faithful

Come Faithful

What did it count in your
Existential equation that orgasm
Porn inspired mouth fucking
Shoving your penis with fury
Until the sperm spurted into
Her throat until your jizz
Flowed right out of her nose
Did you bend and kiss her
Come glistening on her lips
Tasting yourself there hold her
In your sweat glistening arms
Console her laugh with her
Laugh at her facefull of come
Tell her you loved her not
Just her mouth or body
Loved her as you loved me
When you held my body
Stroked me ever so gently
And for the first time in your life
Made someone else come

Jack Jameson 11/21/12

Holiday

A Half moon shines midnight
Unevenly through the grove of oaks
Not yet bare holding on to autumn
The way we hold on to expectations
Of holiday cheer at the approach of
Winter Solstice and of all those special
Days we've invented for the pretense
Of warmth and transcendence.

--Jameson 11/20/12

November

Resplendence of November
Fading sunlight highlights
Gold and crimson treetops
As an unexplained mellowness
Transforms fatigue from last night's
Revelries and reveries
Into beatitude

From Whitman

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veiled and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,
The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it....

Song of Myself

By Walt Whitman

http://www.daypoems.net/plainpoems/1900.html

Monju Bosatsu

Monju Bosatsu

In Asia the god of Wisdom is
Monju who brought to Japan
Buddhism and same sex love

Watching the blue blood in my
Vein course its way from my finger
Up my wrist to my arm I think

What wisdom has same sex love
Given me from those who have loved
My mind enough to hold my flesh

Easy enough when I shared youth
The swagger and vim the elan vital
When I married mind and body

Now yet attracted to myself my blood filled
Hand my loins my penis still erect I am
Loved by others for mind alone not flesh

What has a Buddhist deity to offer me
Bodhisattva will you reach out and hold me
As I have come to need or must I relinquish

All Desire even my own love of self
Let go of otherness let go of all the lovers
Who'd have my spirit alone until my breath

Is gone

Storm

How long the sea remains calm
The ocean breeze soothes and cools
Sunlight streams upon us on our beach
Our lives are joys of hours shared
The autumn moon shimmers over our 
Nights
We think we shall be like this forever

Unperceived the ripple begins
Clouds gather quietly darken
As we rest until the waves unresting grow
Until some word some meaningless gesture 
Mistook some glance or pulling away
Some leave-taking brings a rise
In heat as eddies swirl into the pressure

So suddenly grows the storm from peacefulness
We cannot see reality the turbulence the war
Rising in a tempest of emotion of fear
Panic as we fight to find its end only to be
Struck dumb and blown apart as if we never 
Were embraced secure in love
Forces of nature rip us asunder

An autumn storm awes us it leaves us cold
As unexpected damage and brutality unfold

Jack
10/28/12

Pepper Haiku

like cayenne pepper
dashes of  intimacy
nourish our friendship

Naked

Naked

How many nights have you and I wandered these hills
Steep streets that over time grew steeper for you
Talking in the beginning of our love of Neal 
Of Jack of Allen explicating for ourselves the underlying
Meanings of nakedness and trust
Until the dawn when we stripped and began knowing
Nakedness rather than philosophizing it

We partook of existential angst and the loneliness
Simone and Jean Paul knew but managed so well
We too brazenly compared ourselves to our heroes
And loved ourselves for it 
After our walks we championed us to our
Friends our respective worlds taking in plays about
Oscar Wilde and seeing exhibitions of Pablo and Egon 

We came home growing more intimate taking in our
Nakedness in ever deeper ways each day approaching
In a spiral of activities and nights out Leonard Cohen
Gigs and poetry and travel baring more than our bodies 
Our being our psyches our Tao our dreams our souls
Our  spirits our conscious and unconscious our energy
Our song

Until we like Ginsberg at a reading of Howl
Until you commanded and we took off our pants
Until sexuality gave way to something more
A nakedness of two humans merging for a moment
Of no expectations in an embrace that was as radiant
As the dawn we watched together over the ocean
Planet Stars crescent moon and sun aligned as we were

Was it not so were we truly no more than
An old man and a youth lost for a time in our
Own dreams thinking we could create our own 
Reality contrary to that of the society we inhabit
Contrary to our lusts and our limitations
Perhaps so yet whatever that nakedness was
It will continue to connect us no less 

Jack Jameson 10/25/12

Haiku Choke

Mouthing loud complaint
Epileptic squirrel chokes 
As I eat ripe pear

Going

Going

The rain pouring down today
Conjures Hiroshige's bridge
Straight hard lines of water
Bearing down on villagers crossing
Burdened with their stuff of life

What bridge shall I cross
In the spring in Japan
A Zen bridge to my final years
Bridge to caring or indifference
To the vicissitudes of existence

The water washes my memory
Those violent passions past drown
In the rain that falls on my mind
Massaging me like the face of my
Lover pressed against my chest

So many paths pictured woodcuts
Offer me a Tao of my own
For now as I imagine passing
Through forests along lakes
With Shinto shrines to ancestors 

There the spirit world the so-called
Hallucinations of Shamans no less
Perceptions than mine of this rain soaked
Day as I wait out the time to my
Next embrace to my next journey

Jack
10-1-12

Intangible

Intangible

Always it has struck me as so
That time and space are not
Real though they be mindful constructs
Of our imagination as our
Perception is all there is I think
So that when I recall my loves
Lost in the recesses of unreality
Like almost remembered dreams
They exist like mist from the sea
Are no less than robed and sandaled
Genderless people of the past
Walking the streets of Athens and Nara
No less the music of Faure and Satie no less
The Haiku of Dogen and Basho
Not lost in the bulldozing that the contemporary
World does to nature and to humanity
As greed and profit and progress so called
Sweep away the sweet and the sweetbitter
In the quest for material success and
Work that is void of meaning
Like the empty spaces in the ruins
Of the Parthenon the empty space of
Shinto shrines
Time and space are hard illusions
The loves intangible that penetrated us 
Are not