Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Flames

Flames

With shelter
a blaze,
we close the door
to control its spread,
but as your halls,
timbers and trusses,
emit slivers
of flame,
do not lock
the latch,
leaving me
to only smell the smoke.

-Robert L. Jackson III



Tuesday, December 12, 2017

No title

Celebrate
stagnation
or even a slight decay?
The water 
does not stay
confined 
in the reflective lake
forever,
it is evaporating,
freezing,
expanding against boundaries,
and flowing
into deep grooves.
The landscape 
Is not flat, 
but ripples 
under motion, 
and feeds flames 
with wood and oil.
Celebrate 
the sun
warming our souls
from afar
and incinerating 
broken orbits 
and resurrecting bodies
as an incendiary. 

-Robert L. Jackson III


Thursday, November 23, 2017

Meteorite

Meteorite 
1.
Falling stars do not fall,
they consume,
in blinding temperatures,
bending reality
to guide the heavy rocks
together.
2.
Leaves,
lost minerals
on cosmic wind
gather to form
the soil of a planet.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Always

Always

The new moon
still pulls
without a face
or a body,
walking
across the dark.
So we wait
for celestial progress
and the light
to narrow our pupils,
remembering,
how to walk 
in the dark.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Saturday, September 30, 2017

Symmetry

Symmetry

The fruit,
bruised on one side,
was then dropped
on the other.
I cut the original 
damage away,
and it was flat
on one side,
but just before 
it perished
you removed the other.
This continues
until
it is consumed,
but the seeds remain.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Wednesday, September 13, 2017

A Coast's Return

A Coast's Return

The vacuum
of the storm
drew all blood
to reveal 
the teeming floor.
In the cyclic path,
the ocean
refills the basin
completely,
following the edges
of each island,
and contour.

-Robert L. Jackson III

Written for the Poet's United Midweek Motif of 'Reunion'


Sunday, September 10, 2017

Hurricane Irma

I don't have a new poem today, but would like to ask that you keep in mind the people of west Florida and Tampa Bay. As you may have seen from the Life of a Poet earlier this week, Clearwater is my hometown where I grew up. There are pictures in that blog;
Hurricane Irma looks to be headed directly for this area. 


It may look much different after this.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Yeast

Yeast

The mixture of grains,
eggs and milk,
lie flat
and sterile
until infinitesimal beings
emerge,
and conquer 
the harvested fields,
exhaling 
and shrugging
to stretch  the fibers
into a precarious state,
only to be subdued
by metallically contained
energy.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Obvious

Obvious

Holes
appear in the wall,
from both bullets and corrosion.
Both light
and water flow through.
If the metal is peeled away
and the containment breached,
will the land flood
or be enlightened?

-Robert L. Jackson III

Written for the Poets United blog's midweek Motif of 'Flood.'



Sunday, August 13, 2017

Catching Wind

This post is a little different than usual. After recollecting my high school days, I asked my mother to find this essay which was written for Mrs. Roby's English class about twenty-four years ago. I remember it because it was entered in some state writing competition, but did not win. After an extensive search, it was found (thank you!). This is a scan of the original, with errors and all. 



Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Placement

Placement

Cracked shells
are never found
on the souvenir shop shelf,
but their cracked edges
are unique
and savored
among ancient ruins
and repaired in veins of gold
among the terrestrial,
while their counterparts,
the matching edges,
are lost in the ocean
and ground to sand.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Sunday, August 6, 2017

Entanglement 2

Entanglement 2

Control bars link 
to each other,
and equalize
the marionettes 
and the masters.
The strings
pull in tension
on both ends
but buckle
when pressed
and cannot repel
until frames touch.
Each part of existence
-each particle in fabric
wood, bone, flesh and skin-
reacts
instantaneously
to their tangled lives
through theoretical fibers.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Sunday, July 30, 2017

Magnetic

Magnetic

The erosion
of many ages
has removed loose soil.
Debris
has washed away
from dark showers.
Soft minerals
have dissolved
under undulating rivers.
Remaining
are columns
of cooled lava.
Dense iron
bends the fields
and behavior;
focal points
on barren planes
of perception.
The calloused hand
liberates
a tarnished
brass compass
from a pocket
and holds it parallel
to the tuned
horizon,
as it pivots.

-Robert L. Jackson III

This one was actually partially inspired by a show on shark week about sharks apparent attraction to volcanoes.




Sunday, July 16, 2017

Tilt

Tilt

Two statues
carved smooth
from settled marble,
layered in seasons,
shaped to interlock
but apart,
held vertical
by gravity
from Earth
and horizontally
by each other.
Cracking,
their foundations 
tilt.

-Robert L. Jackson III


A picture of a Nathan Sawaya Lego sculpture from the Art of the Bricks exhibit.


Sunday, July 9, 2017

Adapted

Should the twisted tree
be chopped down
to the ground
and the stump
removed
because as a sapling
it followed
a river of light
that curved
around larger trunks
and spliced
clusters of leaves?

-Robert L. Jackson III


Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Mr. Hall

Mr. Hall

The alligators
nipped my toes
while I learned to swim.
But the teeth
felt like fingers,
and with time
the predators
returned to their form
as ants,
that my instructor 
embellished.
Soon I learned
to cross the sterile pool,
but then knew 
that no river
or moat
or ocean channel
would ever contain me
again.

-Robert L. Jackson III




Sunday, July 2, 2017

Peaks

Peaks

Men in the valley
stack pillars 
of pebbles,
and grains of sand 
into cones,
amid the mountains.

The terrain
seems unaltered,
and always returning
to smooth
from rain and wind;
Until some rocks,
alter the flow 
of a flood,
to collect the silt
of a new island.

Inspired,
men in the valley,
climb
to leave stones
on the apexes,
leaving them taller.

-Robert L Jackson III



Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Still

Still

Grass grows up
from shadowed soil
past sinking treads
and into the mechanisms,
following thin paths
of sunlight,
twisting past belts
and linkages.
Seals dehydrate
and crack,
returning petroleum
to the earth.
Live ammunition
bleeds black powder
from corroded
holes in their skin.
The barrels
bend under heat
and humidity
toward fertile mud.
Reeds engulf time,
leaving creatures
to detour 
around the mass.

Robert L. Jackson III

This poem was inspired by the Midweek Motif of War and Peace by Poets United:




Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Convex

Convex

The only buoyancy
is sometimes a lake
rather than an ocean,
where our bodies sink deeper
and are confined
by a concave shoreline.
The storms 
grow unrestrained
over the salt;
able to consume us
and digest us
on jagged reefs.
But through waves of energy
we can now see them
over the horizon,
and plot a safe course.
Yet the fresh water
and humid land
can nurture concentrated 
tornadoes,
that splinter
the ribs of our hulls
without warning.

-Robert L. Jackson III



Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Deep

Deep

Looking
for the hole
In the ocean floor
revealing the organs 
of the Earth
through a pixelated
image of the solid
measured from a device
marketed for finding fish
in the murky waters
of the churning currents,
voyagers spend their thoughts.
Only the fragile 
glass-bottom boats
floating on the clear water
of saintly springs
allow us direct sight
through the hull.
Only on unconfined vessels 
on the ocean
are the great depths 
and jagged topography
accessible,
yet only seen
through transcendental eyes.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Sunday, May 28, 2017

Foothills

Foothills

Perhaps the fog should stay
and not reveal
the teeth of the mountain range,
a lying creature,
breathing shallow,
waiting on my path.

-Robert L. Jackson III



Sunday, May 21, 2017

How man spread earthworms

How man spread earthworms

The stabilizing ballast
lowers the hull
and my eyesight
below the revealing horizon,
a blinking marker
lost in the mist.
Yet, I do not dare 
empty the belly 
of the living earth, 
and lose the ability 
to digest 
the consuming world.
But others have
already regurgitated 
their ecology 
onto the virgin land, 
once controlled by 
layers of the vivid fall.
The worms' appetites
free the thick brush 
to blind us 
of the lost civilizations.

-Robert L. Jackson III





Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Oblong

Oblong 

The wheel
struggles to stay round
as the spokes 
decay and pop
over time;
leaving no tendons 
to keep the mind
from collapsing
and becoming oblong.

-Robert L. Jackson III

This was written for the Poets United midweek motif of Bicycles, Tricycles and Unicycles.


Wednesday, April 5, 2017

A Warning

A Warning

Some wait
for the living ripples 
to return
from across time,
but their intensity
becomes lost
beneath the wind blown breakers
after too many reflections.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Sunday, April 2, 2017

Transparent Desires

Transparent Desires

On this finite journey
is any energy left
to generate the heat
that will melt 
our fissures together
and repair holes
in the filtering gut
while burning skin
to a crisp crust,
brittle to life's waves
of electrons
and photons,
transversing our boundaries,
as if we were glass,
to heat our core,
to boiling magma,
soft and malleable,
just below
the soles of tourists.

-Robert L. Jackson III


Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Treatment

Treatment

Quicken
the sun's rise
and the moon's fall
with medicine,
so the scorched 
cedes
to the resurrection
and the earth
erodes
to the precious
under clean skies,
without noise
and color,
as tomorrow
is pure
and the past
is a photo
with bruised edges
and scratches of regret,
lost in our mind,
until neurons
polish it
to a Seurat,
but the pills
leading back
have long been digested.

-Robert L. Jackson

This poem is the synthesis of two sources. First, my body has been battling itself in illness, and I just want time to pass until I am well (hopefully). However, am I then not relishing these moments in time as they should be. The second source is the motif of "nostalgia" posted by the Poets United blog (http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/search/label/Midweek%20Motif). They seemed to fit together into this poem.





Sunday, February 5, 2017

Entropy

Entropy

Do
the poles of our souls
lose alignment
following 
the spirals of the world
and the meandering
motion
of hardened feet
-numb and lost-
across the terrain,
-constant through time-
unable to find
north?

-Robert L. Jackson III




Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Faith in Light

Faith in Light

The assembly line
installed
with pristine edges
and mirrored shines,
operated 
by newly trained workers,
slides, pulls and presses
the raw materials
into identical
functioning forms.
In the repetition,
the workers age,
the corners nick,
and the reflecting
faces
from surfaces
dull and disappear.
Many are born,
that fail to glow, 
and no one recalls
the design,
tearing on
thin yellow paper
in a corroded
file cabinet.
We arrive at the store,
with faith,
but find
no bulbs. 

-Robert L. Jackson