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[jacobmayspoetry]

Plow

The Devil cannot forgive the poor, but does understand

Since I was small my mother advised we grow our food out of spite for the land-- more rust than pasture. To show we can. Back then I was paid fifty cents a day to pick the many rocks out of the newly turned clay. I got to keep every arrowhead I found but they were hard to tell apart from clods and I was to hurry. My mother canned the same bright peas and waxy beans hoardingly.

Then later in the city I was still more determined to spite the land my yard a sour asphalt spit; I was driven to both steer and pull the plow. Pitch myself against the task. I have transplanted arugula from coffeecan to bigger coffeecan. I have eaten even the ugly carrots, even the chard that sweats at having been forgotten. Stubbornly I have fried even the broccoli stalks, chewed every radish out of fear that I may not eat tomorrow. It is hard here to eke out sunlight enough to grow anything more useful than a lawn.

[jacobmayspoetry]

New Zombie Poem to add to book

NEW ZOMBIE POEM

Forgot god and walked through bullets and wind

gone through me, shed the skin

I don't need a coat let's

slough it out. I want to gnash in

an orange's pulp. Friend let me talk to you about the horror

being; of hands turned hungrily on other hands.

Mine hands hang penitent and slow, idle

cold as kitchen knives.

I loll my clumsy self along

after you.

[jacobmayspoetry]

This is an age into which one can buy anytime online an oil painting of forever verdant pines-- impossibly so-- from a man in London and a tactfully stark by comparison frame from another man you'll never meet in China whose hometown I cannot geometry well enough to spell. This is an age into which such divergent crafts of hands arrive the same day on different trucks. Two realities schlepped across two separate oceans by many hands until one is fitted into the other.

[jacobmayspoetry]

First draft, suggest a title if you want

Once while walking the asphalt of a parched Madrid an almost stranger who has taken to walking next to me notes the rutted up hide of a gutter dog a Spanish stray that had almost crossed the street. He said “A pity to be spilled out without a home. Where were you born, friend?” Where I was born we farm a bumper crop of dirt and never really mow the lawn, never thin the thickets out but god was I ever taught to scythe and swing a rake in anger. Where I was born we spare the rod for being too worn to swing it but our children do not spoil. They work. Where I was born we tumble all night through in a fistfight with the dark. Where I was born we whistle through our split lip grins and some days after toiling we have energy enough for only sleep. Where I was born we dream American and sing big like sacrifices accomplish anything. We could only ever love where I was born we use our beltknives to scrape iron filings from out our palms. Where I was born we tend the ground and sleep assured that nothing that does not kill you will ever make you kneel. Where I was born rust is a society itself. Where I was born the children are baptized in mud-- the center of a tract once called a river. Heaven there is a diamond ring caught just out of finger range, dangling off the disposal blade or circling the kitchen drain. Flitting, a thing to grab at.

[jacobmayspoetry]

Maya Angelou died today and the shock of the news seemed slow to me. Her death was mentioned in passing on the morning radio between sport headlines and call in contests. Her verse was really important to my development-- when I was young I had access only to pretty well known poets but her imagistic and candid manner meshed really well with the mostly romantic other voices I was reading. More than that, she was definably an American voice and I appreciated her more for that. Frost gets associated with New England irrevocably, but he could just as easily been Canadian or Welsh or a tree really. Angelou traveled broadly in her Good work, she spent the 60s writing and working for the Good in Egypt and Ghana, but her's was a uniquely American poetry. She was the northern coordinator of the SCLC and was awarded tons of awards from lots of Presidents. She had a Pulitzer and Grammys, she was Tony nominated and wrote and directed films when black women just didn't do so. My favorite book of hers is "Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well." She was 86 and I hope my life proves half as interesting.