New posts on http://markwilliamjackson.com

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

2nd draft of 'Wattle and Daub' on markwilliamjackson.com

2nd draft of 'Wattle and Daub' posted on markwilliamjackson.com, thanks to Ashley Capes for the editing suggestions.

Poem: Wattle and Daub

Poem: 'Wattle and Daub' on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem for Haiti and link to the Red Cross

Poem: Haiti

Link to the Red Cross donation page

Poem: Elegy for the Lost [repost]

Poem: Elegy for the Lost [repost] on markwilliamjackson.com

The Night That Santa Died

Posted at http://markwilliamjackson.com

The Bird Within Us

Posted at http://markwilliamjackson.com

The Threat to Poetry

Posted at http://markwilliamjackson.com

Gathering the Pieces of Your Shattered Palace

Posted at http://markwilliamjackson.com

New poem on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Crimes of the Art

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Only Poets Read Poetry

Artwork: What happens when you leave your 7 year old daughter alone in your study with the typewriter your wife just won for you on ebay…

Art appears on markwilliamjackson.com

For the first time art appears on markwilliamjackson.com to accompany my poem: Compass [artwork],
original appearance of Compass as text

New poem on markwilliamjackson.com

New poem: Heroisch posted on markwilliamjackson.com

New posts on http://markwilliamjackson.com

Sorry, haven't checked back here in a while. There are a whole heap of new posts up on my blog at markwilliamjackson.com ,too too many to list.

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Circle

Poem: Caught As Something

Poem: Now is the Hour

Link: Poem published on kipple online poetry journal

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Waiting for the Shit to Burn

Link: Poem posted on Overland Blog

New poems at markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Empty Bedroom

Poem: Free Poetry

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Review: National Poetry Slam Finals 2009 Review posted on Overland Blog

Opinion: This Will Be Our Independence Day support independent publishers and book stores

New poem at markwilliamjackson.com

New poem: Extra-terrestrial Car Sick Blues on my new blog

New poem: Unspoken Love on my new blog

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Dreams as Finite as a Life

Announcement: Cordite Poetry Review 31: EPIC now available online

New posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Two new posts on markwilliamjackson.com

Poem: Pushing for the Moment

Announcement: Release of Going Down Swinging No. 29

New Blogposts

New poem: Never Again posted on http://markwilliamjackson.com/

This blog is moving

This blog is moving to http://markwilliamjackson.com/

Please follow me there.....

This Is Where

This Is Where

 

This is where my seeds are planted,
this is where my thoughts are filed,
this is where I house my visions,
this is where I lose my mind.                           

 

This is where my ghosts are living,
this is where my child was born,
this is where I mourn the lost day,
this is where I dance the dawn.

 

This is where I feed my cattle,             
this is where I starve my pig,
this is where I bury my feelings,
this is where I start my dig.                           

 

This is where the sun is colder,
this is where the moon is hot,
this is where the jazz bleeds pictures,
this is where the rock’s forgot.

 

This is where the smoke is golden,             
this is where the fruit is stained,
this is where I rest my body,
this is where I feel the pain.                            

 

This is where my mind is floating,
this is where my feet are lead,
this is where my life excites me,
this is where I seek the dead.

From a Box of Old

From a Box of Old

 

From a box of old photos

fell the picture.

I am pressed against

my dad’s back,

cheek firmly between

his shoulder blades,

arms wrapped around.

We sit on a rock

overlooking the Celtic Sea,

wind running through our hair

and I don’t want to ever let go.

We stare through the camera

and I am happy,

a smile as wide as the picture itself

features on my face.

From behind I could not see my dad’s face

but thirty years later

he looks worried,

something is about to happen,

the picture is about to be lost

amongst so many other

painful images.

At the Airport

At the Airport

The laptop-tapping-

cell-phone-talking-

bad-suit-wearing

zombies wait for their flights,

dragging bags and life behind them,

a slow death delayed

due to head winds.

The departure board flickers

like a stock price ticker

to all the hopeful suit boys

taking the delays as a personal affront,

the forces of nature having conspired

to keep Mr. Tie-Wearer

from his meeting.

I sit in my jeans and t-shirt

reading a poorly researched

Bukowski biography

waiting for the same flight,

delayed by the same winds,

only difference is

I’m laughing.

Laughing at the wrinkled frowns,

laughing at the frantic phone calls,

all the huffs and grunts

as the schedule is updated.

What can you do?

I guess some things

cannot be bought.

I Miss Myself

I Miss Myself

 

My little girl hugs me, squeezes,

Daddy, I miss you when you’re at work.

I squeeze back, me too.

She commands my eyes with her question look,

you miss yourself?

We laugh and I say yes.

But, you’re there?

But I’m not.

Death Without Any Words

Death Without Any Words

 

When you roll out the folds of your failed years,

and carefully trace back your choices,

each morning that you stepped into the shackles of life,

closed to the torment of voices.

 

When you lay down for a final time to rest,

and stale visions turn out the lights,

what stream of empty memories will climax with your death,

without any words save for last rites.

Freak Show

Freak Show

              inspired by David Lerner’s Mein Kampf

 

Step right up,

              step right up,

come see the poet at work.

 

Gasp at the furrowed brow,

              the constipated demeanor,

marvel at the rigor mortis life skills.

 

But please Ladies and Gentlemen,

              DO NOT FEED THE POET,

this creature must not be encouraged in any way.

Hopscotch

Hopscotch

 

Rain cries away chalk on ground,

my Angel howls,

all those opportunities lost,

but with the promise of reincarnation

television calls

The Price of Art - Commercial Success Kills Another Artist

The Price of Art / Commercial Success Kills Another Artist

 

1/

I got the movie

“The Basketball Diaries”

I bought it from K-Mart

 

I wonder if the shareholders know

 

while they’re sitting there

in middle class splendour,

counting their dividends,

and cursing their tax man,

I’m watching a crazed drug fiend

bash rebarbative

on his mother’s door,

looking for an angry fix.

 

2/

I stole some art

and deprived the artist of income,

but Nevermind the artist’s dead,

fashioned himself into

a martyr for an unknown generation,

though I do feel bad I deprived a

              major corporation of royalties.

 

3/

Commercial Success Kills Another Artist.

Starved from starving. Exploded.

Blinded after darkness.

 

Suffered a corporate soul extraction

with a stylus tipped syringe,

chemically reproduced

for the herd to devour.

 

Feral primal measure

replaced by a mission statement based pentameter.

 

Weighed down by grammys.

Sank in the flow of royalties.

 

4/

Ginsberg tore me,

Carroll restore me,

Charles Bukowski

is Henry Chinaski.

 

Kurt Cobain

died in vein

‘cause in his vein

was heroine.

Why Do We Do It

Why Do We Do It?

Why do we answer the chatter in our heads,

why do we soil white paper,

giving birth on a page,

painful labour not helped by Lamaze.

Why do we send our children out to suffer

what we must suffer.

We could be doctors or bankers

or deal with the politics of the world,

or the pure mathematics of the universes.

Sometimes it would be easier to part a sea

than have to bury another child under the epitaph

‘thank you but space is limited.’

Hote Hell

Hote Hell

 

The walls bleed hate

in this god forsaken place,

taps drip with torturous monotony,

they've short sheeted my bed

to mess with my head

and effect a frontal lobotomy.

Life by Remote Control

Life by Remote Control

 

Ensconced in the images.

Injections from the 40 inch frame

across the room.

 

Bourgeois buttocks comfortable

on a lounge cut from old growth

forest by third world underaged.

 

Watch the news for sports updates,

interspersed with messages of the

latest products, requirements for a

new and improved reduced fat life.

Abject images are quickly flicked.

 

Reality TV

is an oxy   moron.

Dust

Dust

 

I drove through the dense dust

carried to Sydney on western winds

leaving antique coverings.

 

As the sun supposedly rose,

the air changed from pitch to a sepia brown,

framed in forgotten photography

 

The traffic slowed to a crawl

I lowered the window to have a cigarette

and felt injected into a horror movie.

 

Everyone driving the one road

to escape the evil entity

that had descended.

 

I tuned my radio

to listen for messages

of Armageddon.

 

Through the city streets

branches had fallen in overnight conflict,

leaf corpses lay strewn across roads,

and emergency services sirens

howled in the distance.

Reversion (Ode to the Lackadaisical)

 

Reversion (Ode to the Lackadaisical)

 

Cry, scream, bleed,

              as the sun sinks behind

              the horizon’s teeth.

 

Ancient shapes appear in the darkness,

              raining

              their two thousand year old warning.

 

The past, present and future mould

              into a surge of grey.

              -like a cyclone.

 

A man screams as his toes are ripped out

              by the jaws of a mechanical beast,

              and are melted, to be used in car manufacture.

 

A baby cries as his breast is taken,

              his mother is to be used

              welding weapons for the poor.

 

I laugh and joke with my next door neighbour

              over the fence as we have a beer,

              “it’s been quite a good year.”

 

The soil turns to rock before my eyes,

              the leaves are turning brown,

              I’m feeling rather sleepy.

Some People

 

Some People

 

Some people

clean their cars,

paint and polish them.

 

Some people

iron their shirts,

putting razor crisp edges into the sleeves.

Some people shave their faces.

 

Some people

build their careers,

becoming more and more important

with each step

they take.

 

Some people

go to church

and can wash the sins of a weak

in one Sunday mourning.

 

Some people

choose to lose.

Addictions.

Lost At Sea

Lost At Sea

 

Scatter scumdumps on the sand,

              step in sea, be crushed,

words in air, blow and freeze,

              to a melancholic mush.

 

Foamy kisses caress bones,

              fluorescent orange life jacket sag,

remnants of ocean meal strewn,

              beaches face, a hag.

 

In seaweed, mulch, hair long, knotted,

              a skull hides to decay,

velcro to sand and wait a while,

              to stink on a sunny day.

 

A ship, whose name will be lost in time,

              sails into the death,

swirl and twist at the moons order,

              and anchor on a final breath.

 

Anguish and sorrow from castaway lovers,

              at the mess and what could have been,

step over mulch, and condoms, and twigs,

              to once more challenge the sea.

Life Doesn't Go On

Life Doesn’t Go On

 

You’re gone and

life doesn’t go on,

life becomes still

and horrible,

and every time

I see the trophy

that you won

in 2003 for

Most Improved

in Division A

Photography

I’m reminded that

you’re not here and

neither is the year.

My Stay Shun

My Stay Shun

 

I guest it was my stay shun

too sale with the fools

who ride the tide of iddio sea.

 

I tried to ply the game

I couldn’t grasp the rules

now I’m doomed to drown in sanna tea.

While I Sleep

While I Sleep

 

Time does not stop while I sleep,

breaths continue to turn the globe,

Europe dances above my head,

and bombs fall on Gaza while I sleep.

 

The gears keep working while I sleep,

machinery keeps crunching,

clouds form and rain drops and skies clear

and seasons pass while I sleep.

 

Books go unread while I sleep,

poems go unanswered,

thoughts wrestle to no end and

die in a dawn ambush while I sleep.

 

My daughters keep growing while I sleep,

possibilities germinate,

where will they go, what will they do,

how can they leave me in my sleep.

 

Tidal movements, and traffic lights, and moon phases,

and whale songs, and bread baking, and coffee brewing,

and street sweepers, and death, and birth, and learning,

and singing, and chasing, and barking, and shouting,

 

and life,

 

life does not wait for me

              while I sleep.

Men of the Lowest Repute

Men of the Lowest Repute

 

Men of navy, of black and grey,

who bleed their lungs to take the day,

who scream their rules, their roads, their way,

who choose the price that you must pay.

 

Men who should loud with votes,

their promises and souls they quote,

whose lives would be of little note,

who send ‘their’ people on straws to float.

 

They’ve chewed the earth, and spewed concrete,

throw us tiny morsels to eat,

with snide remarks they bid us greet,

and pull the grass from under our feet.

 

My vote to none, I won’t condone

the willful selling of our home,

to the beasts who deny our megaphone,

who carve their effigies with our bone.

Eighteen Months for Silvia

Eighteen Months for Silvia

I saw you.
Azure blue vomits fond memories,
celestial visions of our dance.

And how we danced.

But the song distorted,
hideous spasms controlled my mind
and forced my foot on the throttle.

I was starved of light in a summer sky,
minutes stripped hours from my life.
I drove a wicked road past vicious memories,

and crashed against introspection.

I craved for your nicotine
and to chase your caffeine buzz
while my salivating rabid dog of addiction

spewed shackles around my neck.

But in the distance you sang our song,
somehow the bruises hadn’t stolen your vision,
and you stood braver than I could dream.

Eighteen months is a long and short time
to stand in one spot and travel,
a lost weekend? a lugubrious retreat?

This poem should read as a song of ‘thank you’?

Gripped in the Middle of a Week

Gripped in the Middle of a Week

 

Wednesday crashes

like a drunken friend.

Gripped in the middle

of a week.

Too late to turn around,

too early to start

plans for a real life.

 

Separated

from your lungs,

weighted under

the water of week.

Wednesday washes

wishes away.

Only Tuesday

 

Only Tuesday

 

Reds and orange

attack the black

from the eastern horizon.

Car engines start

(the earth’s tired moan).

And today is only Tuesday,

but, like all others,

it is the best one ever.

Another morning

heralds

the best day of my life.

Monday Cripple

Monday Cripple

 

It starts again.

And the memories

of laughs

played last week

have faded

to black.

The end credits

have rolled.

 

The next movie begins.

Title screen:

“A new week.”

Starring:

“You.”

Directed by:

“You.”

With Special Guest Director:

“The Unknown Force.”

 

Fade in:

We find the protagonist

struggling

trying to lift

a great weight.

“Monday.”

Souls Reunion

Souls Reunion

 

After the long sleep,

after the dark tunnel,

comes the light,

the warmth of mourning.

 

Somewhere, hidden to terrestrial minds

reunions happen. Great heavenly dances

celebrate the end of loneliness.

Souls that travelled together

in frail earthly bodies

rejoin in ethereal flight.

Forced Words

Forced Words

 

Coffee cup stains on empty pages,

sunlight fights the poet’s eyes,

mourn the darkness remain in sombre,

dreaming dreams of unborn lies.

 

I called for you to add your coinage,

and build upon the mound of junkyard spit,

but found you lying in accidental sobriety,

prophesising doomsday millennium bullshit.

 

Force the words to fill your pages,

seek acclaim from those who count,

drop the pen in fits of laughter,

seek to blame the ones who’ve found.

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day

 

Sitting haunted at the end of a rented bed,

he lets his head drop into the paper he holds.

Paper from a happy past,

paper pressed before the bottle.

 

Tears drop from his bloodshot eyes

onto the crayon coloured picture

of stick figure girl standing between

stick figure pretty lady and stick figure tall man.

 

Old hands shake the ageing words underneath,

Daddy I love you, Happy Fathers Day.

Words from a happy past

a long time ago.