trip

DMT & LSD

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

when I see you next I want to ask you about the drugs
if you still do them because I still regret turning down
DMT you offered at 4 AM when I was on the ground
floor of your apartment sitting on black catfur carpet

though it sounds like quite the quick trip eight minutes
of being in an alternate universe how so many stories
about the drug involve tiny green creatures milling
about & that alone drives the conspiracy theorist out

although for a time I partook often in LSD & once
when in the shower high I could feel the alternate
lifeform in my spine black-and-white pulses being
cleansed inside me & then I wrote a wobbly novella

& there’s a doctor I know who microdoses on the
daily & I’ve made a new friend who says she wants
to trip with me & I cannot wait to have another such
experience even eight years older than the last trip

last time I saw you a couple years ago you had just
graduated from art school making mad money at a
crazybusy restaurant in the bustling brewery district
of my city but I was making amends with a friend

thus I didn’t ask about psychedelics though the thought
crossed my mind after & then I wonder does the boarding
pass for mindtrips expire what if I ask & you answer
the captain is dead the plane no longer leaves the ground

 

(originally published in The Broken City, 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)

East Through California

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I argue with the music in my car again
those rock’n’roll pots and pans clanging
in the soup kitchen of my imagination
the Steel Reserve of my rumba rumblin’
stomach unfilled from Maruchan ramen

really I’m running from anything but home:
in the apartment of my car the desert’s
a sandstorm of faulty A/C and mountains
obscuring the view of my future and
there’s nowhere else to go but here

 

(originally published in Outcast Poetry, Spring 2017)

After Palm Springs

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We spent the entirety
of our days together.

Now, the vacation from myself
is over.

There is a void beside me
unexplainable in the absence
of presence.

No one here will keep me
whole. Digging into darkness,
film, facebook, what’s real, what’s imagined,
why does it matter?

I want to caress your stomach in the sun
and know everything is okay.

 

(originally published in #thesideshow, Spring 2017)

Sunny Days

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

In memory of Chris Hull

friends don’t
wait for rainy days
to die
there is never
a metaphor
in the weather
the sun laughs
as it always does
when I receive the call
I find the nearest tree
to brace myself
with shade
it’s the only darkness
seventy-six degrees
warm breeze
the car
approaching the hospital
still takes her living
to work
at being alive

 

(originally published in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spring 2017)

Shapelessness

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

As I move further from you, whiskey in hand,
the thirst seems to pile like distance in the miles–

my shape roasted under Pacific sun.
Our sunglasses clinked with wine glasses.

The dry sponge. Run me under the sink.
Or run with me. You could be a ghost, too,

a phantom unfurling before me, haunting
each town I pass. Every morning, I am gone.

For a while, your blanket was warm. But chill the air
long enough and someone will notice. No one

likes the cold. Everyone prefers the summer river,
her water’s blue in the ice of winter, the clear

of July. I dig for you in the dirt. Then myself.
My shapelessness. My tendency to drift

so far away that I never fully return.

 

(originally published in Jazz Cigarette, Autumn 2016)

Arizona Desert

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

sand lodged in the crooks of fingernails
watch the way light

reflects its own water
the last time something glimmered

was birth driving ninety
through the Arizona desert

the scorch in red rocks
pursued our same dreams

pricklier than a cactus
you leave who you love

the phone conversations
of dryer lint and treble

in heat, tires tremble
in cold, you wait

 

(originally published in “the vacant hinge of a song“, courtesy of Origami Poems Project)