Stephen Jackson Poems

Out there, beyond the abyss of night
Beyond the lightlessness that lies behind my own
Eye – worse, my inner eye –
A dog is howling.
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he span of his gaze was so great
He could not see the generations come and go before him:
Flickering, quicker than motes on a sunbeam.
Growing, rotting, burning at a supersonic pace;
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It’s night, when one needs love like blood,
And a city is an iceberg of lights,
The air throbs, roars like a distant bear.
The finger of one’s mind, in indolence,
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As I contemplate the waste that is a living mind
The moon, thin as a sabre, darkens in the sky.
More slender than my fingernail
Or so I want to think –
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To carry the child into adult life
Is good? I say it is not,
To carry the child into adult life
Is to be handicapped.
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It is the big black before an execution,
Dark enough for him to feel the texture of a sound.
Fresh from an alcoholic stupor (giving a strange,
Recluse’s keenness to the senses) : the tart aroma of
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Beneath the feverish chintz of
Someone else’s living room
I contemplate my own mortality,
And the thought of it wearies me.
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My mother, as usual, judged it best.
The day before her funeral, in a gibberish of legs,
A fly refused to die on her bathroom sill.
Out of its time, come February, but still
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Love should be like a hatchling butterfly:
Tearing free from worn-out skin,
Bursting with new blood its once-crushed wings, and
Ready to surpass the sky.
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