capitalism

This American Factory

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Work snips years
it abducts me
from living

and the drinks are heavy
after
in my liver

my tenuous body
if I could live
in a less-consumed way

outside
with the grass
not overgrowing

my head
in the mountains
with a beach-blue

overlook
and while I’m
fantasizing

I want a bug force
field to keep
the pests away

I want to glide
over the landscape
a less-ambitious Magneto

breathing in
high-altitude sea breeze
until the stress is gone

and I deflate
into the ocean
though I don’t know

how to swim
see
even my daydreams

end with darkness

(originally published in The Wise Owl, Spring 2023)

St. Petersburg in January

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

maybe it is not seeing-eye dogs training
in the grass I pass or the street vendors
selling sunglasses tamales and watercolors
or the waves that touch a difficult nerve
which snap me into a more relaxed reality
or the toaster-oven croissant at the French
bakery on Ocean Avenue but the cranes
that lift off skyscrapers in the heavy wind
that make me want to punch real estate
developers in the jaw or somesuch non
sensical violence bear trap tourist trap
somewhat Floridaesque my happy life
on blast it is dynamite at a luxury
construction site this weekend

(originally published in Artvilla, Spring 2023)

A Deep Exhaustion

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I have a deep exhaustion

  when an animal puts his head

      on my lap I fall

               ask anyone and they will say the weekend

      is gone too fast

                   you sleep through your dreams

                                   the train whistles

                          the beating heart

           of your partner next to you

                       asleep through the lost time you share

(originally published in Pirene’s Fountain, Summer 2024)

Temporary

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I often dream of simpler times–
driving my car to a customer

with a bag full of food, and poof–
gone. Then the memory fades

in an instant. All of time
passing. Right now. Into the ether.

The clock has dropped its weary
hand a tick downward.

The other hand desperately
reaches toward the sun.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)

FWIW

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

All the days of work must one day
mean something, being the bastard
children of capitalism, camouflaged
labor, fingers rough from wanting
to swim financial freedom’s waters,
a belief formed from looking sky-
ward, a cosmic agriculture, roots
ever present beneath (and above)
the stadiums, what temporal
monuments we return to
day after day.

(originally published in The Waiting Room, Summer 2023)

The Parking Garage Beneath Westside Pavilion

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I slept beneath the mall for some time
to avoid the burden of capitalism ha!

if I could that would be glorious to
avoid the landlord hey look I am in

the parking garage what garbage
all these ads for movies I do and

do not want to see but I would
not know I did not want to see it

until seeing that is the predicament
I do not have the cash nor the time

to spend paying for rent give me
gunmetal cement walls six floors

beneath the surface where I drive
to where not even bugs venture

there I am unbound
I fly in my dreams

(originally published in Train: a poetry journal, Fall 2022)

Career

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

After I axed past the tree-lined path, I turned
the wrench that opened safes of gold with my own
hand. And then I hired someone with wrists

of a little more tension. I should have
never slept in the bed of wealth. I should have
known, in the night when every dreamer is

dreaming, I would sink deeper into that
endless hole of jagged desire until
I was thrust like from a slingshot

through my roof into a room
of mirrors where I seemed to be me,
but adorned in glimmering garbage.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Winter 2021)