DALE JACOBSON'S POETRY

GAINSAYS FOR THE COUNTERFEITERS

2009-10-24T15:16:00.007-05:00

A FEW WORDS ON SLANDER

A former student says I bashed Catholics.

She’s better at slander than listening, often

the way. A jury saw her talent and awarded

one of her prey three million dollars. I was

a witness at the trial. And now what to say?

Let her chop down every tree in the world

so the rumoring wind cannot compete.

ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO WITH THE PLAGIARIST

–for Windy Chins Bob, excellent among them

Put him in front of a mirror

and see if there is a reflection.

Say go away and then go to sleep.

Listen at the cellar of the earth for invaders.

Shout into a cave,

capture the echo in a net.

Send it to him.

Point to the stars and say:

“This one!”

Open the window and say nothing.

Long Poems & Books

2009-01-04T12:18:00.002-06:00

Metamorphoses of the Sleeping Beast

Red Dragonfly Press, 2008

http://www.reddragonflypress.org/

"Throughout Metamorphoses of the
Sleeping Beast, Dale Jacobson speaks
for the unspoken, the victimized,
the disillusioned, and does so eloquently,
forcefully, in a voice filled with beauty
and moral indignation."
--Robert Hedin

Exile in My Homeland
Authorhouse 2005

Exile In My Home Land, though an
autonomous poem, develops from two
previous long poems, Factories and Cities
and A Walk by the River, bringing
together their manifestly separate themes,
history and politics on one hand,
and metaphysical questions of loss
and mortality on the other.

Ranging through my personal experience, the poem confronts
the destructive as well as constructive forces operating beyond
our individual control that nonetheless define our lives.
Working from my childhood as a reference, the poem wants to
make sense of these various powers, often ruthless and absolute,
which present themselves as either human constructions such as
war, or the inexorable forces of nature.

In writing about nature or mortality, poets tend to exclude history
and politics as if they are irrelevant. This poem sweeps beyond
those conventional esthetic limitations, drawing connections
between all these themes of nature, history, politics and mortality,
using the backdrop of the author's personal experience.
This poem explores these enormous powers, and our perception
of them, as we struggle to determine our place in the universe.

A Walk By The River : A Long Poem
Original wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec

Red Dragonfly Press 2004
http://www.reddragonflypress.org/music/493

"The river goes on flowing
indecently oblivious, opening
deep doors of its own darkness.

"There the shadows of sons

flow into the shadows of fathers
which flow into the shadows
of their fathers--a long regression
of sons, songs, daughters,
mothers and fathers in the murky
night of water toward the deep
undersea currents..."

Factories and Cities
1st Books Library 2003

"While the mighty engines turn,

and the dynamos purr

like demons feeding the gargoyle lamps of the labyrinthine
streets, our cars take us neither closer to nor farther from
home, beneath the high stone buildings with shadows cool
as slate--
and ourselves

near always to the past like distance

to the stars"

THESE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE FROM THE PUBLISHER OR THE AUTHOR

POLITICAL POEMS

2008-05-11T04:47:00.011-05:00

THE BOUNDARIES OF PATRIOTISM

If Americans could see past their fear
that the oceans will be stolen
from the national shores,
they might see the rain is equal
everywhere-- and when it is done
it goes away beyond horizons--
and we are all made of it.

A BRIEF HISTORY

An empty room did not exist.

The plain was wide and far.

Its attic was filled with stars.

The forest was full of clothes.

We had to eat and so did they.

Teeth were cruel and so were we.

We made our own teeth that tore.

Sharpened stone flew like thought.

We ate until the bone was hollow.

Then we made a flute.

We called the wind and the dead.

The dead slept curled in the wind.

And empty room did not exist.

Then we built a box.

And caught the empty wind

and sailed to all the shores.

Some were slaves, hanged or whipped.

Some wore gold and owned the world.

Now an empty room is all around.

But the dead are nowhere found.

AMERICAN LOVES

Among the monastical fungi,

their skins of cool dew,

nothing is moving,

except the slow odors of decay…

Inside the tin can

the rusting hours live.

I see a red blossom

leap out into the air,

instantly consume itself

in the cold bathing moonlight.

America…

America!

Love is a vulture

descending upon your bones!

Except they are honest

broken things are worthless.

Except they keep us clear,

tell us need, and how to listen…

Something could collide,

across the night meadows,

like wind swirling up

from two desolate dreams,

two stillnesses that know

each other,

rising…

lifting…