Can't Strategize Depression
James Croal Jackson
Chunks of chess in my brain / surgery for / inclement weather.
sacrificing pawns for the greener good. The greener god.
I am laughing at the things you say / though they’re not funny.
Nor trying to be. But I want to be liked / and to like / and to
continue the niceties on this island. To sever the sadness / I
said I never / wanted again. But words differ from / what
happens / when you swim the sea / no shore in sight.
Steph
James Coral Jackson
in the warehouse, cigarette
smoke sweat-drenched hours
of existence you need
to find the fruit hanging on
the balance of a day I crumple
balls of soft into paper
stones to throw vast arcs
into distant garbage cans
yelling Kobe! just to miss
an opportunity of rare self-
satisfaction in repetition
my mechanical hands must
make mistakes they are
unable to elsewhere
Barclaysville, North Carolina
James Coral Jackson
Because there was no shuttle, and weak
cell service, after your wedding I drove
through the dark of some North Carolina
woods, too poor for an Uber, fuzzy
mind fragmented across navigational
satellites. I can never refuse an
open bar’s riches, a reservoir
unending despite my need for
constant refill. To thine own
self be true, I tell myself, and
for me, that’s wine and vodka
and being lost in every
direction inside a body
of metal that just does
what I steer it, meaning
a left turn when it should
have headed right and,
when I find myself later
at the same intersection,
I make the same mistake.
Walking in Rain
James Croal Jackson
Don’t worry, I’ve seen Signs.
I know we’re not vulnerable
the way those on-screen aliens are,
deathly allergic to water. We’re made of
the stuff yet haven’t learned to fear it.
Avoid city taps. Toxic, they say.
I’m drinking tons of it, unless you mean ego,
in which there’s a bucket devoid of myself
the dark sky so badly wants to donate to.
In the way you believe, we are not aliens,
unless you mean we don’t know ourselves.
Every day, my mouth dries up
avoiding strangers. M. Night Shyamalan
dons an aluminum hat upon spotting me.
I’d do the same– leave the store looking
down at my feet, toggle up the heat
in my Ford in heavy winter clothes.
I prefer to sweat my chemical reaction out.
Developing
James Croal Jackson
the studio microphone for months has pointed up
waiting for a song from the sky to sing into its silver
mouth that won’t open not for anyone not for you
not for Jesus to clasp his grimy hands around and preach
I’ve had enough of that growing up in Catholic school
learning the sin of condom and lamb and holy shit
I never was the rebel pounding revolution into the air
because what was there to revolutionize but the future
and no one could picture that yet with our disposable
Kodaks slinging truth first black then the world