Exile  

Flowers do not grow on cemented graves, 

Only weeds grow in the cracks in summer, 

Living in the Nation’s Capital in 78. 

Departing at the height of my descent into darkness,  

When life had been so violent and bloody, 

Going to a place where there are no, 

Cemented graves and the sounds of  

Gunshots and screaming and suffering. 

My soul can rest among the flowers.  

Sing in the light of the rising sun.  

Living in exile in the mountains of Vermont, 

Left all the deaths and pain and suffering and, 

Cemented graves in the mountains. 

9-27-2020 

A shooting Star 

A star shooting across the night, 

In skies full of stars and the moon, 

It was the beginning of a life’s dream. 

Away from the prostitutes and drugs, 

Away from the daily deaths in summer, 

It seemed to have happened in a flesh.  

Listening to the peacock’s crow and freshness, 

of the nights’ air surrounding me in the summer, 

With tears falling to the earth like that star.  

9-27-2020 

Beginnings of Life 

When the rains of violence stop, 

And the sounds of death stop. 

The standing of the corner is over.  

After the inner-city summer’s winds, 

Blow its despair into my life is over, 

Prayers from the depths of my soul.  

A soul is reborn into a life of contentment, 

Sitting on the porch as snowflakes fall, 

Living in the middle of winter’s crispness. 

9-27-2020 

Beginnings of Life 

When the rains of violence stop, 

And the sounds of death stop. 

The standing of the corner is over.  

After the inner-city summer’s winds, 

Blow its despair into my life is over,                                                          

Prayers from the depths of my soul.  

A soul is reborn into a life of contentment, 

Sitting on the porch as snowflakes fall, 

Living in the middle of winter’s crispness. 

9-27-2020 

Voice of Soul  

            For Richard Wright 

The voice of depression and anger, 

With all the grief of life being black. 

All the years of slavery and beatings. 

Lynching of family and friends at night, 

Burning crosses and white robes in shadows’, 

A chorus of glee as the body swings on a tree.  

It has been four hundred years and it continues, 

As those in white robes come in the middle of day, 

Carry their flags of Nazis crosses chanting  

In 2020 there is a return to high tech lynching 

10-23-2020 

Belief  

Do you believe the soul of black men?  

Does the color of their skin disturb you? 

And their voice of suffering surrounds you?  

In the shadows you seek to quiet those voices, 

Still those souls will not be quiet in injustice, 

Years of waiting to sing for their freedom.  

Yearning to find their voice of solitude, 

With God while the whip cuts into them, 

Whispering for liberation of the body. 

Believing in God’s compassion as they cry.  

10-23-2020 

Crosses of Black men 

            For Langston Hughes 

You have carried your cross made of endless justice, 

Carrying your cross as you breathe in innocence of,  

Your race as they are put upon a cross of life. 

As they carry the burdens of blackness as they cry, 

Crying for a life without a whip cutting into them, 

While they bleed, they cry for salvation are heard.  

10-23-2020 

Freedom comes for one 

            For Mary 

It is the blackness of my skin, 

Covered in a tide of blood,  

It is my black skin falling, 

As a storm of hate surrounds me. 

As the crosses are burning in the yard. 

As the rope swings in the tree waiting, 

For me while in my youth of life.  

Swinging back and forth waiting for me.  

They wait to watch me hanging from a tree, 

It is your gentle touch that holds hope for me, 

It is your gentle voice singing that I hear, 

As I swing from that tree of whiteness.  

10-23-2020 

A Sea of Hope 

Wishing for freedom from the agony, 

Hoping for the tears to stop plummeting, 

Into the sea of turbulence of agony, 

As the waves rush to the shore, 

And the tide carry me into the ocean, 

With blue twirling clouds watching, 

While the angels gather to pray for me. 

10-23-2020 

the 2020 election
 
so over seventy million
people voted for racism
for fascism, for the thought
that money is more important
than people
 
most of these ignorant fucks
are from families lincoln
should have slaughtered
after the civil war
 
instead, the losers got to tell
the story of that war and you
get what we have here
 
generation after generation
of stupid fucks breeding
even more stupid fucks
 
ignorance is a disease
and no one in this country
seems to like the cure
 
they are more than proud
to be stupid and dress
themselves in the flag
and think that makes
them patriotic
 
and if they are willing to
die for their racist leader
 
let them
 
thin that fucking herd
forever
-------------------------------------------------------------------
raven haired beauty
 
she was a woman
straight out of a
springsteen song
 
a raven-haired beauty
full of desire with eyes
that could burn through
your soul
 
as much as i longed
for a kiss
 
i was hoping that she
would be what would
kill me
 
take me from this world

once and for all
---------------------------------------------------------------------
some kind of loss or relief
 
i suppose i was supposed
to feel like some kind
of loss or relief when
my father died
 
it was neither
 
it had been over twenty
years since i had seen
or spoken to him
 
it was like being told a
ghost had finally been
captured and killed
 
i thought of it as a
tuesday and i must
have stumbled onto
some television station

i barely watch anymore
--------------------------------------------------------------------
unless provoked
 
all my friends
have moved on
 
i sadly never
got the chance
to do so
 
i'm never good
at burning bridges,
unless provoked
 
yet another joy

of apathy
-------------------------------------------------------------------
a difference of opinion
 
i never thought
of myself as
an addict
 
apparently
 
the authorities
have a different

standard

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He’s been widely published over the last quarter century, most recently at Dumpster Fire Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Black Shamrock Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy and Terror House Magazine. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

 
 
Detours
  
Couple bottles of Boone’s Farm that Belinda’s 
older brother got for us at A & C Beverage 
when we met up with him around the corner 
and of course the peyote buttons and we were off
cruising country backroads in my mom’s ’63 Impala
convertible that last summer night after graduation
when we found a moist valley of fireflies that 
swallowed us like the sparkling, star-filled sky
as if we entered a Kusama Infinity Mirror
when time was giving us a second chance
to lose ourselves before maturity showed up
with handcuffs and magicked the key away.
  
Midnight phantom footfall inside the bedroom
ceiling and the scene dissolves out of focus
and then into focus again
landing me in that prickly flip of past,
not to repair history in order to save
a Joan of Arc or Soulika sister,
but to squirm into my middle school locker
so that this time Ruth White won’t find me
with her punches when I take the last
chocolate pudding cup in the cafeteria
before she can get her spoon-ringed
fingers around it.
  
A jet stream snares me, squeezes me
through jalousie window slats
to territory of bigger/faster/more/more/more
instead of snailing through sweaty lines
of government cheese and unemployment.
How to make doppelgänger sense of it,
these roundabout visits that send me rewinding
to never meet up with Gus who stained me
with a mickey he claimed was the size of a whale’s.
  
How can I be my best ingredient,
in glory to each birthday’s butter cream?
To follow the next trail of twine
through hallways where Easter eggs
are painted zygotes and that if I swallow one,
I could clear my throat of trouble.
  
  
  
 Clothes Horse
  
 You like wearing a soup of polka dots
 with rascally pockets 
 and that hat of ostrich-egg-over-easy.
 You’re a landscape
 seen through pinhole, born for knowing how
 to keep your clothes
 dancing. Passersby nod through clouds around you,
 gardenia with a bit of ginger on top.  
 Sometimes you’re in the habit
 of spandex, buttery soft camel toe
 whispering for guests.
 Sometimes you’re all in for the dissenting swag
 of a judge’s collar.
 But always you’re hungry for the click & collect,
 or thrifting
 in the hunt for your next highlight reel.
 Closets never enough,
 scarves and gloves and bracelets color-sorted
 in the pantry.
 You tell us it was the shapeshifting of adolescence
 that got you here, 
 the scripture of accessory,
 the rebel arithmetic of your  
 outsiderness + your outside-ness
 = bondage trousers, chain mail nose
 ring, neon spikes for hair.  
 Now it’s martingale back and designer
 pouch with teacup pooch.  
 You say you always wear your soul on
 your sleeve, your style slippery or stonewashed. 
 And there you go again, chiffon creature 
 preening in limelight,  combat boots prancing
 for romantic notions like sprezzatura 
 and je ne sais quoi.
             

  
 Rod Serling Takes a Stab at Stand Up
  
  
 Before he says anything he draws deep
 on a fresh Chesterfield and turns his head
  
 to profile so he can better think sideways.
 Swish pan / swish pan / swish pan / ah,
  
 there’s the ringmaster, hot light, hot mic 
 and he’s rapier thin cool in a black mohair 
  
 3 roll 2 sack suit and crispy white oxford
 spread collar.  Glad you all could make it tonight 
  
 because you’re traveling now with the best 
 dressed man in any dimension. Rod straightens
  
 his Brooks Brothers double stripe and clenches
 his jaw for the baritone glide.  I just flew into
  
 town an hour ago and boy, are my gremlins
 tired.  Rod straddles a stool. You know, some 
  
 people call me the Arthur Miller of science 
 fiction TV, but my wife calls me television’s 
  
 Groucho Marx of  eyebrows…Yeah, I’m a
 Jewish kid born on December 25, that one 
  
 Christmas Day my parents had something else
 delivered besides Chinese take out.  He grips
  
 the mic and a beam of light launches off his
 silver military bracelet. You might have
  
 heard I was a paratrooper during WW2,
 but hell, that wasn’t half as harrowing as 
  
 battling with TV sponsors… I’m no dummy
 but we all know what it is to look into the face
  
  
 of the Twilight Zone—you have to have toilet
 paper with you at all times for the doo-doo- 
  
 doo-doo… But seriously, I do hold the record for 
 winning 6 Emmys in outstanding writing for a 
  
 drama series but what the hell do those two aliens
 in the front row care.  They’ve probably got better
  
 jokes on their planet, like “an Earthling and a Martian
 walk into a diner”… A mound of ash has been softly 
  
 growing near his Florsheims. My daughters keep 
 telling me that I smoke too many cigarettes, but then 
  
 I remind them of our digs in Pacific Palisades and
 Cayuga Lake, and they stop nagging me. Oh yeah, 
  
 Sometimes I like playing the“ In Rod We Trust” card.
 Rod drops his cigarette butt to the floor and rubs it 
  
 out with his shoe.  So that’s my time, folks.  I’m heading
 back home now to the hacienda and when I get there, 
  
 I’ll walk into my study, sit down, put paper in the typewriter, 
 fix the margins, turn the paper up, and bleed.
  
 
  
 Consider                                
  
When you consider a pitch to end all pitches, a pitch for
angels some say, for what  materializes in the dusty corners
of your apartment, a pitch as delicate as Shantung Silk 
carried across ocean in satchels underneath the ruby 
throats of birds, then your perfumed scarf will touch 
down upon a vestibule’s tapestry rug and proclaim 
the final exit.  How euphemisms spiral into themselves
as our pendulums slow, and cantankerous static clings
to our nose hairs. How we want to chew the date off
our ticket to the Imperial Lounge and just keep rolling
around a lush field, olly olly oxen free. How we yearn
to get drunk on cocktails of instant smiles and 
cellular serums, our pinkies tapping our lips. 
How we limit, to a parakeet mirror, our scavenger hunts
for wrinkles and dearly pay to have done what alchemists
do with plastic. Death will launch the trajectory
of our accumulating selfies and leave us with our
monkey minds godsmacked like undigested bits of beef. 
So wag your tongue all you want at that grandfather clock
and swath your phone in a crochet shawl to muffle calls
from the grave. Branch shadows will play upon your
sleeping face and your scarab ring, too loose now
for your fingers, will twang to the floor. 
No such place as exactly what happened.  
  
  
  
Poetry Accessories
  
after Rod Serling’s “The Bard”         
  
 spurs of moment + tertiary motivation 
 + worn copy of Ye Book of Ye Dark Arts 
 that flies off top shelf + riddle for riddling 
 + doodle for doodling + fecund uncertainty 
 + that crazy moon + blacks, whites & grays 
 spring-loaded + quill pen at attention 
 + title/act/scene/cup-inside-cup-inside-cup 
 mash-ups from Brother Will + sand conjured 
 from your loafers + first picture book cherished 
 + porcelain tureen with footnotes brimming 
 + six-foot hot dog bun for napping under stars 
 + dust motes whirling in sunbeam 
 + pixel by pixel hearing + gaze unmediated & gliding 
 + cockles squirming your heart 
 +  Harpo’s harp in barbed wire 
 + Méliès’s flash, dazzle & poof 
 + world too small to be satisfying 
 + horsepower via headstone + va va voom +
 ipsy dispsy  + za za zoom
  
 
  
   

Overtaking

You’ve led a life of doing many things

but now shadows overtaking

slowing of your stride

slit of eyes and cold hands

sudden and surprising

longing for when you’re ultimately free

humming your story

only part of your remembering

tightness in the throat

hero and fool

balanced in-between by circumstance

love hopefully

a someday soon apex

as the world chaos

judges you

not caring of the evidence

jail or to the barren desert

perhaps a guillotine

but a pardon from an unknown source

yet knowing in your spirit the truth

a release at midnight through a squeaking gate

the long walk

searching for the lost family

where are they

how to find them

building endurance

time of little time

striving on for contentment

the hope

in the breath of a new believing

of the old belief

racing over earthquakes

shaking streets and rattling windows

people watching you but most in the quick

stir of their own silliness

their own fear turned backward

and you realizing

you were and are one of them

an endless family

so you pray

oh how you pray

cup of hands filling with salt and tears

some of the who and what of God

praying and praying

until the climax finally overtaking.