EATON JACKSON - POEMS

My name is Eaton Jackson.
I am a Jamaican by birth, but now a naturalized citizen of United States.
I have been writing for most of my adult life, aspiring to be read and found worthy of publication. Over
the years, a few pieces of my works have been published in various publication. I am still aspiring to be
found credible enough, to move from sporadic publications, to produce works that are regularly
accepted.

​OLD MAN and OLD WAYS    

​longing for the old days
when you were king dinosaur,
your tails knocking down trees so your long neck
could negotiate the 180 degree turn to the waterhole,
your feet trampling  squashing
making freshly ploughed  dirt  tracks,
 
to reclaim the old ways
that you think time has colluded with  history
to misappropriate from you,
and lock away in some jar
hidden away in some silo. Old men country, riding
shotgun.
 
riding against the wind, fighting the face-slamming wind,
kicking at the shadow of feet of the windmill. drunken hate rage tears
standing out there in the rain,
spitting hoarse slurs at the rain. white lightening illuminates your shadow boxing,
with time. for sweeping by you like a rushing stream
for inundating.  cherished heirlooms rattling falling off the windowsill,
 
to act on it    to charge the gates.
that  the old ways are reclaimable.     a wire hooks
under the icy water.  searching
to prove that it’s a lie
that time
rising like a mist from under  the earth
made extinct your family
of dinosaurs.
 
 

​ 
MUSING ON MICHAEL  

​When my effigy was impaled for all to see:
birthmarks, lacerations scars,
yours found a boulder to hide behind     ME.
 
and while your high-pitched clown’s laughter
at the crumbling house bricks,
of my eccentricities. And while
the chaos of falling faulty construction, yours
 
was given the luxury of my helium-filled
controversies,
concealing by the fact
your own crack-filled self-assurance of normal,
 
on a thread-mill, I flesh out your wild reams,
and your crazy screams reaching grabbing hands,
at THIS   at ME.  At your neon-reflected selves,
 
how far out on the gang-plank
will I ballet for you?
as long as you remain with me on this thin film of frozen
                                                                                                   lake,
cheering on the thrills
no safety nets
below,
 
to finally conclude about whose selves,
these projected shadows on the  walls of,
moon-dancing across planets galaxies the moon dancing back
in sync,
 
The quietude
after the thunder, the dusk cloud the film of ash  hanging on our eye lids
the acrid burning in our noses,
and in this eerie freeze,
to dissect:
scornful fingers sifting through the distended caricature,
to find Billy  Jean.  
 
 

​CHEMICAL TOUCHES SELF 

​Air brush strokes to the unhealed discomfort of self.
Bending twisting the mirror  ‘cause she had to teach herself the mixing of colors,
not like the color wheel says, but making paint to cover the naked ugly
to cover it.
Mirror at a  selfie angle,
deft flicks angled brush strokes, re-makes    new selves.
 
Pride instead of shame:
flicks like the tongue of a lizard, up the burdened hue of self.
base colors first, until she finds the shade that doesn’t remind her of
her mom’s thick-lipped mispronunciation of her name
to strangers......to Mrs Scott, the English teacher.
 
to be pretty as the girls on the labels of her cosmetics,
to bear the pain of  tattooing her new name
with sanguine grunts of nearing a journey’s end,
to wipe the cut clean,
to wipe the tiles of droplets
of
blood.
 
To sit again before the frosted mirror,
veins after veins melanin after melanin
plucking them out.
the implants now like when her cousin did her corn rows in the kitchen
sink of dirty dishes. strands of hair and paint splashing on the
countertop. mother cursing from the room:
“You two nasty girls make sure you clean up my kitchen, Ya all hear me?”
 
 
More excruciating to fit in than to pull out,
but the pain like an investment of tremendous gain.
she mops up the place of her discarded self,
re-sists: to put on the final coat of reconfiguration
on.
 
Her mom is doing double shift at the nursing home and her cousin
is hanging over at her boyfriend’s house ‘ cause his mom is also doing
double shift.  
so she had to.    to re-do herself by herself.
ain’t relying on nobody. she hums...
 
Her cousin’s boyfriend isn’t even worth it...  
                                                    
 
 
 

​BACK TO THE POTTER’S WHEEL FOLKS WE KNEW

​your return journey to atom to clay to no more time.
to silence to a void to black hole.
you abruptly did this breaking of hearts
in a bubble of forever in a room full of life and love.
you concocted this  bittersweet laughing crying
 
no grammatically correct goodbye. As in
the last remaining spot of semi-dark
you slipped on your backpack. And
without looking back. You walk
through the door     closing it softly.  behind
you.           Still
 
enmeshed
in unsafe assumptions,
a room remains.              to be jolted
by the fading light of a plummeting
                                                     star.
 
the music  the felicity stops
abruptly.
disemboweled.
happiness. scattered heaps silhouetted still, somehow. in the pitch darkness
as an imperceptible trail of light tapering
                                                              tail
 
ends a journey.
this engulfing sense of finality.
friends and bystanders stand
looking up into the void
where the final tiny infinitesimal
microscopic.
idea of. memory of  a
disappeared  
light.
 

​AMERICA IS QUIET  LIKE THE QUIET AMERICAN

​No sound but loud stillness.
Her highways empty. Her off-ramps
Lead into eerie well-lit towns and rest areas.
From inside windows from outside windows:
Silhouettes, ghost, apparitions appraising each other,
A noose-like fear that dare not allow itself to be swallowed. So
 
Nothing moves. No one breathes.  Shallow breaths.
Swallowing shallow breaths. Stale shallow breaths.
So scared of each other’s ghostly existence we
Look through windows which no one opens.
We brace against the door, which no one opens.
The keys hidden from our own ghostly selves.
 
The ingrained orderly queue,
breaks up like earthquake earth, shells falling of like lobsters
Hissing pans of water.
Hysteria, into anger at losing control.
America is quiet. Loud quiet. Primal quiet. Stupefied at the paralysis
As something primordial creeps on the finger that flick the switch. Up
 
Crawling up along the elbows, shoulders, up like the underside of the face of a cliff,
up the nose, down the throat into the lung.
Sucking at oxygen.
vampire’s blood gurgling sound.
 
Scream.
Frozen in the intubated throat.
To break from under leagues of  oceans’ weight
Crushing.
To break from the bunker of home. To run out onto
Empty                           streets,
To punch at the imprisoning emptiness,
To hate something that appropriated everything.
 
America is quiet.  But for the humming sound
AC window units, refrigerated trucks
portable morgues.