canada

Blown-Minded

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

      “I was born blown-minded
      with an eye on oblivion.”
                       –Young Galaxy

I’ve been sitting at my desk,
no artistic talent, drawing
a primate, the universe,
a fetus, a circus, and
with each I realize I’m
just drawing myself
over and over again–
hurtling through space
and time in my muddled
mind to conclude I don’t
know shit. So all these
lines connect where?
I don’t know whether
I’m looking to God
or to get laid. It’s both
the same, really, accessing
the part of the brain that
activates to a higher calling.
Whether that’s the faith
that I exist right now!
Or I must reproduce!
doesn’t matter.
I am a goddamn mess
made of star matter
and the more I try to
laser-focus my brain
at understanding,
the more I learn
there’s nothing
there. I feel as empty
between my ears
as the space between
Earth and the moon,
but then I learn that
all of the planets
in the solar system
can fit in the distance
between those bodies?

Gray matter.

(originally published in Cacti Fur, Winter 2019)

Scenery

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My roommate takes me
for a walk, or she takes the dog
for a walk. It doesn’t matter.
It’s the second night

we’ve walked each other,
or the dog walked us,
sore throat, brainy fog,
and this time can’t even find

the moon, obscured by houses.
We look anyway, together,
comparing bloom to doubt,
how one is sure, the other

grows, and leaves
crunch beneath as the dog
stops our walking
to pee, to leave another

thing behind. On Sunday
I watched the Niagara dump millions
of gallons into itself, mist rising
into something, nothing. The moon

loomed huge over the bridge
to America towing sunset’s lavender
bed but you can watch a thing die
before your eyes, or not at all–

the way, driving back from Canada
in heavy traffic, I tapped you
on the shoulder on the sky bridge
and said, look, here’s something,

one thing beautiful left, look,
and took the world’s last magnificent,
proffered blue and there, as a passenger,
you refused.

 

(originally published in The Knicknackery, 2018)