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After
the explosion
I found
pieces of you
in all my poems,

embedded shrapnel,
unclean words,
full of fever's fester.

I scrubbed the wounds,
massaged the scars,
repeating,

autumn is a doctor,
winter is a nurse,
night's blue sky body
arches over
the surgery of the gods,

poppy-soft, ocean-deep, capable
of illuminating
even
your lies.




~October 2013,
revised May 2014
This poem is written in the 55 form, that is, it consists of exactly 55 words..
Lonely As A Dream

If
you come through the door
you see at once it's an old woman's house
smelling of apples, eucalyptus
and yellow books rhyming by size.
Nothing is new.

Incense
burns in the bedroom
for the sake of a man's memory
smoking and braiding in soft light
that slips through heavy drapes
like a child's song, clear in the silence.

Peace
is there, and emptiness.
The ghost has learned to
keep to its corner, and seldom speaks to
the woman who gambles with words
in the hunger before dawn.

She's
the laugh no one hears
at  the midnight carnival,
the road no one takes
winding back on itself, the sprout
light's pulled too thin, too tall
in its mirror, shadow.

Besides
the dream, she knows only
a sky flat with heat
that eats birds and rain,
a plague without cure
that stretches its dead skin
to infinity.

But
everything passes. To all things come
this tension of maximums
just before the breaking
and the letting go.


©joyannjones  September 2022
I've unpacked the moon
from her nightboard box
so many times
I've worn out the ribbons.
I've hung her up
where she couldn't be missed
unless you were
watching
TV.

After a time, however
things loosen. The moon falls.
That paper crackle under the boot
is the crumpled bonesnap of
last night's hopeful crescent,
broken like a shotgun
that has two black eyes for
what it scars
and always fires blind.

So I gave up being
a moon-hanger years ago.
Now I'm retired--fallen
by the way
some say-- too tired
to lift that heavy glow
or to reach a sky that high,
but I have gotten by
by being very good at
dodging bullets.




©joyannjones~October 2015
Time came unbound
like your feather wild hair,
the feeling shadows of thorn,
endtimes laid on the plate
of a destitute breast.

It was hell dark
in the filthy theatre.
The old ticket-girl sat ****
and tattoed, like Madame Defarge
knitting the playlist for the guillotine ball.

And so clicked the tale
from her needles to mine;
how He spoke to the girl
in the bathtub forsaken,
razor-naked and numb:

'You die before living--' said
the Dark Prince, 'a sad backwards thing;
spread for me--learn.'

He brought her on velvet
the delight-box of tortures,
the ambrosia of Tantalus
to put between her legs.
He artfully taught her

to rub out the human
for the animal clench,
to **** all the sweetness,
climb hard for the falling,
then took it away

from the mad thing a-mumble
in her wilderness skull,
wearing the blind face
of an ancient race
we can no longer know.

He left laughing
laughing
on His way through the endtimes,
for the Fall was forgotten
and Death held no ease.



©joyannjones February 2013
This is a reaction to a 1973 blue film I once was reluctantly dragged to called The Devil in Miss Jones, a review in a poem.
As the ink grows a tad eager,
the heart beats a little faster.
To free the catch in my throat,
is a folly that I never could learn.
And this fire in my being that has my tongue...
forever could burn.
The matter
Energy
Condensed
I often think
Can't be fixed
Can't be true
Like
If you moved
Too suddenly
Bits
Would fall
Off of you
Catch physics
Off guard
And nature
Falls apart
And once
We all see it
Everyone
Disintrigates
Hard.
The world blew air - soft yet unrelenting.
As if drawn from bottomless lungs.
Breathing life into leaves that once hung limp.

This breeze...
That I found oh so familiar.
It's the scent that catches me unaware,
my world would halt for a brief moment as
I'd stop to ponder the where, the when
and perhaps the who.

Sometimes I'd remember...

These days I'm afraid I'd cease to...
"Some days I know
Some days I don't...
Some days I can
Some days I can't"
- The Freshmen
My skin flames redness
                    No heart is true
My brain floats headless  
                          Where are you??

My lungs breathe brown
                  My muscles ache angst
My eyes crack the desert
                             Their stench is rank...

My heart beats heat
             My groin is green
                  My bones bleed blackness


                                    And itch in-between!


SøułSurvivør
9.14.2025

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me.
Psalm 22:14
Eczema with practically no medical relief! Heartless nursing home.
I come to this well
Empty
White page
Refillleth me
A muse, or even God, maybe
Arrives here soon to meet me
Tells my soul
What I want this white page to know
And then
You see
The page tells me
Next page