Rain

Have you ever watched the sky
turn into water watched it thicken
like a plot first mist then droplets
until wetness is all the reality
you know as the story of your life
confuses soddenness with nourishment
baptism with drowning as you recall
the pool beneath the waterfall where
once you sank in cold and damp death
almost as you grasped for nothing there
flailing about over your head gasping for air
filling your lungs with choking water
somehow gaining enough leverage to 
raise your head up into the waterfall
droplets having gathered into water walls
warm walls you might embrace but cold
you flee as if your life would wash away


Jack 2-1-15

Tidal Wave

Tidal Wave

Loving the sea I have always delighted in waves
washing over the shore washing my field of vision
in so far as light consists of waves
altering the land with night and day
as waves of seasons shift from heat waves
to cold waves as the bitterness of waves
of social change alters the politics
of inhabiting the Earth lying so
susceptible to waves of climate shift
waves of change that lull us into illusions
thinking revision will naturally go back
and forth all patterns dissolving returning
restoring peace joy prosperity love
for we think and feel life will get better
that waves of nausea waves of despair always
become waves of pleasure waves of joy
Only now the waves are dark plastic
trash-filled waves of political change
darkening as we who were confident
discover our delusion that democracy works
that good wins if we are spiritual enough
educated enough needy enough with waves of
desire strong enough
until with shock and horror
we realize increasing unrelenting waves
of greed cruelty ignorance will not be cleansed
by waves of sparkling enlightenment

Jack 11-14, revised 2-16

In a Cocoon of Egyptian Cotton

Wrapped in a cocoon of Egyptian cotton
Blue and golden patterned threads 
You bought for me on a side street
In Cairo I watch the clouds condense
Into a dark late afternoon knowing
It will not snow though there on Starr's
Mountain it will as we shiver 
This Eve of the Day of the Dead

A piano leads the orchestra through
Prokofiev's Third as I wrap the cover
Tighter smiling at the exuberance the elan 
As I recall every path through woods
Snow falling bleaching out the worldwide
Woes I have always crunched with joy
For the cold warms my soul and brings me
Relief from all-consuming nescience

Jack 10-31-14

presence (with interactive verb)

presence 

what are you to me but my perceptions
of you or what am I to you but yours of me
knowing yours of me would I recognize
recoil or embrace them would you embrace
mine or turn into perceptions of anger 
disappointment astonishment admonition
for not only are we only our perceptions
we are only this present nexus  
perceptions existing in a moment's encounter
disappearing in a differential re-emerging
in the integral of intensity of percipience
birth death passion emitting memories 
keen clairvoyance erupting cry as we
seek a lift a breeze a flash a powwow
to make your perception of me mine of you
blaze*

(Please replace the last word with your own verb of the moment.) 


Jack 9/22/14

What Need

What need do we have for poetry
Spew of words to retell passion
This person's love for that one
That person's bitter turning away
Poems of brook babble nattering nature 
Petted or tortured feline fluff canine
Howls vistas of forests mountains sea
Spread out to entice like a lover's legs
What need have we for any of it when
Knobs remotes and keystrokes fill our
Eyes with porn with Ebola with war
the sublimity of bombs blasting
Cities of blood-stained streets wounded
Babies crying the sublimity of oceans of
Unrotting trash engulfing seas decimating
Whales dolphins once swimming in poesy
Why write anything at all when before
Our very eyes the glaciers melt calve
Storms burst with bolts hail and winds
Forests blaze homes go up in a rage of fire
When rooftops blow away when
Devastation for which there are no
Words comes to us live 
Full of screams

Jack 8-18-14

Dad

Here it is Father's Day
As you shuffle to the Dollar Store

What must I give you in thanks
For all the disharmony of our lives

Now that you have no outlook
No die-hard military reaction

Now that you can't deplore my
Left-wing marijuana vision

Now that you are my fears
Loneliness disdain senility 

What can I  give you but words  
Thoughts that upset you decades

You frown at me from my iPad 
You decry my beard not knowing

Your own unshaven face mocks what
You tried to achieve that fantasy

That you love and are loved in return

Jack 6-14-14

Almost There

Almost There

Death eyes us in the storm
On Alligator Alley 
Rain washes us toward the
Gutter edge of our graves
You steer us side-road down to
Deco indulgence in South-Beach

We fill our guts with
Croque-Madame and crepes
Beer wine warm camaraderie
Fervent friends from Frankfurt 
In Venice you sing your sad song 'til 
Your detractors spill their tears

We shall forget it won't we
Your slipping into bed beside me 
Two dreamers adrift under the
Comforter and your playing guitar 
Next door to the wedding house
Secret tokes up-deck drunk on sea air
In waves over dazzling midnight sand

What we remember most the marble  
Patterned fine tile warm water shower
Touching kissing watching the attraction 
You want to wash me with your penis
You say and our intimacy shifts from the
Nakedness of bodies to our laid bare minds
As you give me an orgasm of solitude


Jack 6-11-14

What It Is

What is it she asked
young girl on an Acid Trip
WHAT is IT
is it Sigmund Freud's half smile
through his magisterial beard
nonetheless chomping on his
big cigar does it all come down
at last to sex are we
mice in a maze cheese  down
the path ignored because
we are pushing the button
that stimulates our hypothalamus
until we die from hunger
is that it


Is war just sexual frustration
all that killing and usurping
nothing more than the desire
to fuck and be fucked
are we cock blocked is that it
our guns cocked ready to shoot
and the world population
that is all about the fucking
right and world hunger
we eat to fuck and suck and
get the cum out
is that it

or maybe it is art
we live to create music
poetry paintings videos
film architecture the Pyramids
and the Sphinx they are not
just cock blocked cunt sphincter
deferred products of frustration
they are expressions of our spirit
as we push up our endeavors
up the hill of creation
that is it

Or is it
our moments of rapture
our love our awareness of
beauty of truth of goodness
of gods is not that it
wisdom emerging from our years
of fucking and fucking around
allowing us perspective
making us see and feel
ecstasy fuck is not that it
being high and sharing a pipe
or dropping acid together
that is it
isn't it?

Jack 5-24-24

Belle Isle by James Land Jones

Belle Isle

---

Late spring and night. Rain-scented air
Surrounds us like a presence. Ahead,
Past threaded rivers, Belle Isle waits.
Beyond, St. Catherine's Sound unreels, a bolt
Of crumpled purple-silver, into the far horizon.


For months we've said we'll boat out to Belle Isle.
Now lightning plays about us in the shuttered trees.
Transparent knives of moonlight sculpt your face
Between my hands. Your eyes, grown deeper blue,
Compel my lips as birds are drawn to air.


I wait, a silk banner to be filled by you.
Give body to my body through your body.
Turn my empty cloth into a sail.
So fitted, voyager, what is Belle Isle to me?
I would explore the rivers of you all my life. 

Written "For Jack--14 Sept 1984--with love."

May

May
Be that you are
Me armed against me
In my arms this
Night springing with
The fountain of you
My budding love

Maybe
You hold me
Knowing the new
Shoots of ourselves
Entwined will turn pair blossom
Sweet-bitter fragrance
Of May

Advancing Years

The blessings of old age are mine
You've got your health you say to me
You can walk through the high meadow
You can enjoy the fruits of your labors
Drink the finest wine puff the Peace pipe
See the world in all its splendid variety
Reminisce your rich life of accomplishment

You cannot know my Love how such blessings
Are curses for my health is my undoing
The source of my lust my longing my desire
Once again to fuck in the high meadow
To roll my flesh with another's flesh not
Merely to sate but to be desired wanted
To have my Lover tremble at my touch

What is the world's splendid variety to me
Beauty encompassing me returning my stare
With one of kindness mistakenly assuming I
Am sweet generous someone's saintly granddad
A philanthropist not a philanderer someone whose
Memories ought to be preserved for posterity
As I am fantasizing the sweetness of your posterior

How we are herded into this false integrity 
This jail of  distinguishability  propped up as
Revered when all we are is reviled our bodies
Reminders of mortality the very thought of our
Nudity disgusting the young Hell disgusting our
Selves nothing of the weathered twisted juniper
On the cliff standing in sublime loved resplendence

The truest blessing of old age is that it will end
The body and mind will fail  as we own oblivion

Jack

The Canisian Creed

The Canisian Creed

I believe in Almighty Dog the father

Maker of piss and shit

And his only begotten pup

Our lord

Begotten not made

Spot of spot

One substance with the father

Who for us men came down

From Doggie Heaven

Was incarnate by the Holy Stud

Of the Virgin Bitch

He was chloroformed for us

Under the leash of Fido

He suffered and was buried

On the third day he rose and

Ascended to Doggie Heaven

 From thence he shall come to sniff

The quick and the dead

I believe in one holy smelly Kennel

In the pup's lick for the

Remission of sin

For the unearthing of the bones

Of the dead and 

Mondo Cane to come

Amen

Jack--

Dedicated to Dar and the Holy Church

Lost On Ibiza

We found our dream beach
swimming naked in the sea late
afternoon among the chosen of
Spain as sun blazed August heat
balanced the cold salt waves
we were deliriously happy
you and I for hours
until the sun dimmed into
cirrus on the horizon beyond
the horizontal nudes strewn along
the sand

Fatherhood

In '77 my aborted fetus 
was the apotheosis 
of my life as wanderer
from a woman's honeyed virginity 
to an older man's  savoir faire
going from that multi-colored Scream 
in Oslo to Rome's round  bright beam 
pouring over me from Hadrian's oculus 
from a laid-out foam mattress
in Amsterdam sleepless night fucking 
sucking not caring high on the wondrous 
wandering weed to downing a stein 
of local beer in Ludwig of Bavaria's 
mad castle on my 23d 69ing a buff Dane 
on the sand of the Sea of Corinth 
my first immersion in the Holy Land 
wandering sacred Delphi sailing Greek isles 
naked among the naked 
swimming in the blue Aegean

I am father of no one
wandering through all the levels 
of prejudice against a non-breeder
prejudice against my smarts in middle
school prejudice against my hots for
my girlfriend's brother prejudice against
my bedding a 16 year old girl at 24
prejudice against my love for a
reciter of Yeats and Keats he
the image of Don Quixote prejudice
against my living off the fat of my 
live-in girl-friend social worker prejudice 
against all my menages a trois ah
disdain for my black lover of Shakespeare
my oriental lover from Myanmar my teenage 
Zapotec lover in the Zócalo of Oaxaca
my Persian lover hard
in the redwoods of Russian River
prejudice against my wedding the 
lesbian cousin of Winston Churchill
Prejudice for marrying the Man 
from Tennessee  and most stabbing 
prejudice for my going old

"Are you his father
you look a lot alike" 
I love you through thick skin
love you cunts and pricks alike 
from Tōdai-ji in Nara where Chinese sages
in 700 gave gay sex and Buddhism to Japan
from the beaches of New South Wales 
lush with lounging pregnant marsupials
from the bottom of Argentina's blue glaciers
from the top of Earth's most massive mountain 
its cone shaped shadow pointing to infinity
I love you all I love you like
my very own
offspring 


Jack 2/14

Shalako Mana

She turns to the West
On her own wherever
She is placed
Spirit of the Winter
Solstice a snow crystal
At the base of her garment
She has lost one of her seven 
Headdress feathers
She has gotten used for now
To our home in the East
She is a Hopi Kachina
Shalako Mana
Singular unpaired self reliant
Making herself known as
December and days of rain
Darken the sky
We met one winter years
Ago in the Southwest
There was snow in drifts
As I drifted toward her
Shelf where she stood among
Hopi figures and Zuni pottery
Her black bangs and tan pelt
Cape her snowflake
Awakened in me empathy
A kindred spirit
She patiently every winter
Conjures from me the urge
To go to the Western Lands

Jack 12-5-13

All On A November Day

Like all of these colors filling
My senses this late late fall day
You know them plum burgundy
To lemon yellow leaves lifted
By the winter-like wind coming
To bring change like  all of that
Are the feelings bubbling up like
Champagne or marsh gas
With so many images that my
Eyes glaze over like freezing rain
On the green green grass under
The influence of grass yes grass
For as many faces as colors of leaves
Stare forth from the blur of vision
The blond curly haired girl I used to
Shit with in the woods the boy
Who like me rubbed his tiny tiny
Penis against our girlfriend's vagina
From those images arise all the bodies
As on some judgment day that I have 
Held naked in my arms you know
Love love and all its connotations
And revolutions and shared fluids
Flesh and wet kisses vainly attempting
To transcend to rise up like the Holy
Fucking Ghost beyond the earthly
Confines of existence all that all that
Blending into a spectrum of songs
Streaming streaming from the 
World Wide Web world wide until 
We know the ecstasy and the Irony
Of a November Day

Jack 11/22/13

Take From Me Once More

What would you have me say
What lived wisdom do you want
To take from me perhaps one more
Story of love and loss from my
Catalog of the dead
Apropos the Day of the Dead
Approaching zombie like
Or would you prefer to tap
My syrup of philosophy dripping
My grasp of being not having
Trickle down dialectic from the Academy
Seen through Dutch lenses or shaped
By categories of Prussian understanding
Sensations perceptions concepts
From the march of thinkers issuing
Out of my mind prancing like a Pride
Parade Simone and Jean Paul 
Pulling up the rear cigarettes in
Fingers  stained with ink flowing
Down from the tomb of Balzac
Maybe I should say nothing
As you lead me wet into our ocean 
Awash with salt waves you laughing 
Finally emerging into a blaze of sunlight
So hot we cannot resist full embrace
You and I on this beach expanse
Our years together prompting Prospero
To snap us for all eternity

Jack 10/28/13

Hysteria of the Cicadas

Hysteria of the Cicadas

What is it to me
the hysteria of the cicadas
two weeks before the autumn
equinox as they sense the end
of their world what has it
to do with me am I
a cicada in a world of ants
warrior ants scurrying to kill
whatever they can devour
red and black doom for
the songs of insects high
in the boughs of a dying summer

Jack 9-9-13

Love Haiku

monogamy bites
the plural of spouse is spice
poly-paradise


Jameson 8/14/13 (exactly 6 mos. to Valentine's Day)

Arthritic Ego

Arthritic Ego


Is there anything more to say
old age is the demise of both
lad and ego neatly contained
in the very words and dispelled
with finality to the quick
to the joints that once bent
like reeds in the wind
undamaged by the onslaught
of storm and season's change
now inflamed as if in anger
thundering with pain at 
the very idea of age creeping
creepily under the skin
to the bone 
as I become stiff as the
Buddha on the porch
impervious 
my knuckles touching as if
in holy meditation knowing
nonetheless I shall be no more
alive than the seven icons
adorning my home
denying what I could never quite
the ego the lad in me the flash
of lightning I thought was my soul

Jameson 8-12-13