E-Mail This Article to a Friend POETIC JUSTICE Killer bard ponders ethics, existence, and puttering penises BY CAMILLE DODERO

When Chicago poet J.J. Jameson mentioned "prison" in his writing, it probably wasn’t a metaphor for emotional entrapment or knowing why the caged bird sings. The 65-year-old bard who’d established himself as a well-known presence in Chicago’s open-mike poetry scene was actually New England native Norman A. Porter, a convicted murderer who’d shot a clothing-store clerk execution-style during an armed robbery back in 1960, gunned down a Cambridge jailer during an armed escape from Middlesex County Jail the following year, and got caught again after trying to hold up a New Hampshire grocery store. But Porter was shrewd: while serving two consecutive life sentences, he enrolled in classes at Boston University, scribbled poetry, and established a penitentiary newspaper and radio station. In 1985, the ever-crafty character escaped from Norfolk State Correctional Facility simply by walking away from the jail. He fled to Chicago and adopted the pseudonym J.J. Jameson.

So what kind of lyrical whimsy spilled from this convicted killer living with a dirty secret during 20 years of stolen freedom? Does the work reveal anything about the duplicitous author? And is it any good?

Since it’s Poetry Month and all, the Phoenix asked Lesley University professor and psychology of art scholar Shaun McNiff to comment on a few of Jameson’s pieces posted online. Below are excerpts, along with McNiff’s thoughts.

Slow Swallow

In the slow swallow

of the earth.

I feel myself

being chewed.

Another tiny morsel

without spices

to feed hungry eternity.

What matter I

in a slow second

of earth’s insatiable appetite

through generations

devoured before my history

writ tiny

on the tongue

that swallows naked me.

McNiff comments: "What I pick up in the poetry is a certain despondency. He’s self-effacing, not grandiose — there’s a consistent self-effacing tone to them.... You get this sense of someone who’s seeing quite clearly and looking quite clearly and searching for what matters in these poems. There’s nothing particularly pathological that I see."

Citizen Tom Paine

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 [sic] ancestors are

...

We live by the rule of law however imperfect

with tragedy we have forgotten you,

Tom, I apologize.

McNiff responds: "‘How soon we forget/Who are [sic] ancestors are.’ That’s a strong line. So is, ‘We live by the rule of law, however imperfect.’ And reading the poems naturally opens up speculations of his life.... He’s open in the poetry, expressing emotion, and he’s dealing a lot with the ultimate purpose of it all. He’s really showing a lot of ethical empathy here."

The Puttering Penis

Last week, late last week,

I went to the theater to listen, raptly,

to the vagina monologuing.

I put my ear down close,

I mean really, really close,

I wanted to hear every spluttering syllable,

I wanted to bite very pulsating enunciation.

I put my other ear down,

I mean really, really down,

I did not wish to miss fondling, aurally,

any climatic sentence even a fragmented one,

preferably a compound one.

I strained so hard

I felt like Arnold Palmer

Aiming that dimpled ball

For that verdant pinhole

With an unsteady puttering penis.

Thence, it dawned, slowly on me.

I began to reflect:

How come it is that only

vaginas can monologue?

Is it because they have lips?

Or is it because they have a lot to say?

McNiff had nothing to say about that one.

Read more poetry by J.J. Jameson (a/k/a Norman A. Porter) online at www.angelfire.com/poetry/puddinheadpress/jameson01.html, or listen to him read two pieces online at voices.e-poets.net/JamesonJJ.