O Jesus Jack you make me want to cry
I hear your words and know that you are dead
I hear your living words and know you’re dead
by your own hand
I just don’t know for why
you say your “form of blues…is limited…”
and no one cares and no one ever did
O Jesus why, it makes me wanna cry
and what’s this called the blues
you took with you
to everywhere you went
from here to hell and gone
and what’s to do now
what’s this called the blues
that’s made of you
while time is meaning nothing ‘til you die
and roxy poets coax you with their muse
not one of you drank deep enough
to know you were alive, not one of you
and what’s this spirit brother called the blues
and what’s to do
O Jesus Jack they sat and watched you die
a thousand times
not one of them your equal by a mile
as wide as tears
not one of them your mistress
or your master by the sea
not one of them you always ran to see
could ever see
you running after life
with death in hand
and death inside
or what to do
about this thing you called the blues
that’s all of you
and all you ever do
O Jesus Jack
it’s all you ever knew
you make your desperate choices
then the choices they make you
(Mikael Covey lives in Dakota with his five-year-old daughter. You can find him at Stokeycat and Lit Up Magazine.)
Hemingway’s shotgun
is still out there
like a sniper’s rifle
like a forward-positioned gun
you weren’t expecting
casualties on your computer
emotionally stumbling
through the solitude
of cyberspace
needing another drink
to neutralize the threat
of a dry throat
realizing a future writing
reputation has been delivered
on a bipod of raw talent
on a temporary billet
of writer’s block
as the petrochemical
fumes further complicate
the walk over
open carpet
out of position
at the cocktail cabinet
with enough velocity
to lift the elevation turrets
of autopilot
learning center black
is leading you on
your first
internal ambush
(Recent poems of David S. Pointer have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Labour of Love, and The Beatlick News.)
forget serenely reading books
& jotting in the margins
forget writing in
cursive on neatly lined
pages of journals
forget the day, the month
the year
forget your name
drop the pencil
from your fingers
& braille
the dateless
eye sockets
of a skull
then take a blade
to the abc’s
chop them up
ontop
of a
tombstone
roll a page
of the bible
up into a tube
& snort the black
dust of the alphabet
then pound the laptop
like you should
like a coked-up
corpse-to-be
(Rob Plath, no relation to Sylvia, is a former student of Allen Ginsberg. He has five books of published poetry under his belt. His latest release, “Tapping Ashes in the Dark”, is available through Lummox Press. You can find Rob pounding out new poems at My Soul Is A Broken-Down Valise.)
