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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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