Simon S Jackson

Simon S Jackson Poems

Simon S Jackson Biography

Simon Jackson is an award winning writer of poetry, plays, films and music. He was director of Living Arts Space Theatre Company, Manchester and a features writer for gossip magazines in the 1990s. He worked as a musician in Serbia, a journalist in Poland, a history teacher in Egypt and was Head of Drama at Newton International College, Lima, Peru before returning to the UK. His recent short films with Scottish poets and Billy Bragg have been screened by the BBC and in film festivals around the world, and his last play, Turning to the Camera, was The Guardian's Pick of the Week for Scottish Theatre. Eleven poems from his collection Fragile Cargo (BeWrite Books) have won first place in poetry competitions. He writes and teaches in an international school in Cairo.)

The Best Poem Of Simon S Jackson

Defeating Gravity

Have I told you the tale of Icarus?
How he and his father stepped onto thin air and flew,
flew from captivity?
Imagine the feeling, an air cushion beneath your chest,
gliding onto winds warm and buoyant as the Med,
floating on a cloud lilo. The ending?

Don’t worry about the ending.
Imagine the view, even better than from our perch
up here on the fourteenth floor.
Imagine the view as they soared above the turrets and towers,
the farm yards and factories.

I know it’s hot, my love. Keep away from the door.
We’ll press another towel along the crack.

I’ll not think of dark tentacles
of smoke stretching into your lungs,
clinging to, smothering alveoli,
forcing their choking passage
down your protesting throat,
a boa constricting, a black wolf squatting
upon your chest, pinning you to the scorching floor
as orange tongues stretch up
to lick black strips from your bare arms and legs.

What if we were Daedelus and Icarus?
Striding from the broken window
into that ocean-wide blue
to float above the tower blocks and touch down
safely on some golden meadow?

Hold me, darling. Hold your daddy.
Be brave and take my hand.

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