Poetry by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper

​DON (HERO)JUAN


Did I know why heroin was better than sex?
Because it is not human.
— Statement of the Obvious


Converse in the dark, the abject dark,
where only bodies lie and lies reveal;

the adrenal narrowing of all scope,
every compass and every possible act

to yielded desperation. Time, meaningless,
brims a tiny present there, a moment

good as past before it has begun,
one that thrives like a cobweb among corners

without memory. It lives, inhabitant
of this deodorized darkness, precisely

not to be able to, to be dead: a wraith
draped unrelated, proud above

any but a world material, where need
takes the place of want, painlessness desire.

She hides. He waits: a branch stripped bare,
dried needles discarded at her feet.




​UM


At these moments I feel its erosion,
a catastrophic occluding of deluge:
some slate wiped clean ― no, annihilation

seldom slight ever is. Rain, through my window,
drowning the desk, lessive, unsoppable
apocalypse, a decomposing mill

would seem to ground only being ― replete,
repetitive reduction, spit from sputum,
guttural monosyllable, through the throat,

on the tongue: defenestrate, shatter, break ―
that, unbroken, once done unto you ―
mimic the monster, mouth, lip-sync, those screams.

Rage, transparent, re-broadens isolation,
every inert atom left fend for itself;
claim failure; accept abandon, should shame

prove predetermined, inevitable,
even deserved ― nonreferential, such
punishment without context; privilege, deny;

no character suitable mirror obscure
the smoke that blurs gotten into the eye.
Caught nor yet alone, discovered, this time

around, will find you, the sentence still rise:
words, imploded; smashed against recall, make earth
crack, flood, lightning flash! kill ― how to say.





CRACK


It’s flowers all around me,
The valley below
And my legs open wide to the sea;
How high the tide may reach,
Gently pointilliste, aches on fingertips.
Visited cloud, resounding:
Marble-murmured steep,
Proclaimed — echoed climb; ascend meets
Descent, the final mount,
Arrest in chains: peak let flight alone obtains.




Bio: John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper is the creator of These Are Aphorithms (http://aphorithms.blogspot.com), author of Ten (Poets Wear Prada, 2012), and Ten … more (Poets Wear Prada, 2016). His American English translation of Wax Women, with French texts of the original poems by Jean-Pierre Lemesle and photographs by Henry Jacobs (International Art Office: Paris, 1985), drew acclaim and dedicated full-window display from the Gotham Book Mart in New York — legendary fishing hole to the “wise” — released in the United States the following year. His work has appeared in Brownstone Poets 2013; The Venetian Hour, Dinner with the Muse, Part II; CLWR 49,CLWR 50; online at exitstrata.com; in the Sweet Tree Review (Summer 2016); and Rat’s Ass Review (Love & Enduring Madness); forthcoming, in the Unbearables anthology “Somewhere to Nowhere.” He is co-publisher and co-editor of Poets Wear Prada, a small literary press based in Hoboken, New Jersey, the birthplace of baseball, Frank Sinatra, and Blimpie’s. His whereabouts have been numerous, like his names, but unlike them currently unknown. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.