Lady Rutherfurd’s Cauliflower

Lady Rutherfurd’s Cauliflower was originally published in 1999. Mr. Jameson was arrested in the spring of 2005 after being a fugitive from prison for twenty years. This book is a second edition, which includes all of the poetry from the first edition.

Praise for Lady Rutherfurd’s Cauliflower

Jameson playfully blurs the gap between performance and academic poetry.– Martha Modena Vertreace Doody, Poet-in-residence Kennedy King College, Author of Glacier Fire

J.J. Jameson knows his fruits and vegetables. – Lawrence Tyler, Author of Prophecies

If you wish to read accessible poetry read this book. – John Starrs, Author of The Suburban Poems

About JJ Jameson / Norman Porter

JJ Jameson was born in Massachusetts in 1940 as Norman Porter. At nineteen years of age he was involved in a robbery attempt in which a clerk was killed. The next year he was involved in a prison break during which a guard was killed. He was sentenced to two life sentences. From prison he earned his GED and attended Boston College through correspondence courses and began to write poetry. He was partially responsible for prison reforms which were implemented during the 60’s and 70’s. One of his life sentences was commuted. After being denied parole in 1985, Norman Porter escaped from a minimum security prison. He eventually came to Chicago and settled into a new identity as JJ Jameson. He supported himself as a carpenter, handyman, and real estate manager. He continued to write poetry. In spring of 2005 he was recaptured after living twenty years in Chicago as JJ Jameson. He has repeatably been denied parole by the state of Massachusetts.

Contents

The Authoritarian and the Control Freak
The Lady Rutherfurd’s Lawn Mower
A Weed
I Looked For You Between My Legs
On James Merrill
I Wanna Be A Carpenter of Words
The Cranberry Connection
Jjenifer Two
For Jessie Helms
Inner/Outer
Not Finished
Fibber and Belfast
In Memory of Allen Ginsberg
Citizen Tom Paine
The Woes of a Scheaffer Fountain Pen
Flowers (The Cauliflower)
On Reading Gibbons
The Floor of My Apartment is a Polish Stew
Francis Gary Powers
Jim
In the Light Morning
Semi Sonnet to John Keats
The German Woman
The Lustful Ballad of the Panoramic Butt
A Michigan Verity
A Tireless Vehicle
Twain
Gretchen From Glitchenberg
for ee cummings
Cantaloupe
Ode to a Frango Mint
Sera
Construction Whore
Slow Swallow
Author’s Afterword

Excerpt

Not Finished

Is human thought
an elongated view
of one spark kindled
in the breech
with physics rubbed by poetry.

Or are we horizontal
where focus comes
as brush fires
everywhere at once:

our energies expand
as we extinguished all
save man.

I do not pretend to human thought
except my dog Saucepan,
has an intelligence
I do not know.

Citizen Tom Paine

Your birth was questioned.
Your death is certain.
Your life transfigured all.
No live “The United States of America”
without you.

No death to monarchies everywhere.
And, god, too, assigned his proper place.
Still every new life blessed
from citizen to country.
How soon we forget
who are ancestors are.

We nourish on the fruit of your labor.
We breathe air free from tyranny.
We trod on soil not owned by divine right
nor claimed by kings or queens.

We live by the rule of law however imperfect
with tragedy we have forgotten you,
Tom, I apologize.

The Woes of a Shaeffer Fountain Pen

My finger curls
in habit
around my pen
but won’t write your name.

A tear floats down my nose
as it always does
in feeling your name
rush to my fingertips.

You’ve been gone,
forever now,
at least since your birth
sprang half-formed on my lips.

I tried to touch you
your skin melted.
You were really gone
to where I don’t exist.

I tried to be your friend
but you said that wouldn’t do
for I was just latching on
not letting go.

Your memory clogs my finger
and won’t write your name
a bitterness I don’t deserve
just for having loved you.

Francis Gary Powers

I come from a long ways away
where little birds
flutter in pine trees
building nests
for small blue eggs
that hatch into creatures
having the same bones
as I.

Only they can fly;
I can’t.

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