I was just a misspelled word
you so easily erased
from the notebook of your life.

                  
Now,
how do I ever erase you —
the most beautiful poem of my heart?

Far far away from you

in some corner of the universe

somewhere in the unknown —

is there any place

I can call home?

A place of peace and quiet,  

where happiness also lives.

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

the moth flew        to the right
and then                 to the left

back and forth
forth and back

ping ponging
between the headlights of my car

fragile little wings of white deep in a winter’s darkness
adding to the confusion

was an unexpected november snow
the moth did not seem to mind

the heavy flakes that fell
some as big as its own body

within
and without

we are so tiny
in our lives

we are so tiny
in our world

Type: Revelation / Integrity Binding

Effect: Unveils hidden truths, restores clarity, and binds words to their deepest intent. Especially potent in moments of doubt, deception, or emotional fog.

Verse Begins:

I do not pry.
I pull thread.
Not to expose,
but to unfurl instead.

Truth ain’t sharp
it’s soft and slow.
It hums beneath
what we think we know.

I speak not to judge,
but to join.
To braid the broken
into one line.

Tongue to tether,
heart to hand,
I cast from the place
where truths withstand.

No mask can hold
what rhythm reveals.
No lie survives
what silence heals.

So listen.
Let the hush unwind.
Let the woven word
be kind.

Verse Ends.

Verse

See the crone that comes
through the thorn-walk and the breaks,
with a ribbon for the coffin key
and a dead-scroll curled with snakes,

she will never die.
she will never die.
roll her bones through the catacombs--
she hasn't the grace to die.

Inverse

My eyes were tired, so I set them soft
in the cotton-bedded heart of a pale red box;
deep under the earth with the coldsong quick,
was nothing--and nothing--I reveled in it.

Verse

Hear the crone who lies
with a dead tongue, poison-sweet,
words chopped blind with a kitchen knife
tourniquet-wrapped and awfully neat.

her teeth in the flesh
her teeth in the flesh
slips gangrene dreams through the finest screens
making rot-milk sold as fresh.

Inverse

My soul was sick, so I intertwined
its feminine face with androgyne,
to speak itself twice in a language of thorns
to bleed--to bear--where vermilion's born.

Verse

Bury the crone who's filled
with a paste of hate in her hollow bones,
a candle kept in the bag of her gut
to wax the devil a hag-head stone.

she will never die.
she will never die.
resurrected, insane, infected,
she hasn't the grace to die.
__

Here in the dry constellations,
Orion winters in the blue west, the
Drinking Gourd spills silver on the void, and
the Seven Sisters crowd together,
quilting the covers of night.
I miss the beach.

I miss the salt, I miss the sweet
curled wave that rolled the wind
into a gesturing wand
of air and water,
joining two lurching souls
ungainly in their solitary progress,
into one smooth moving thing
hip to hip, stride for stride
handfast, untarnished

because you chose to throw
your arm around my neck
and let us spin

in the eddy, as the tide
ran out, till we were dizzy

and all the slipping stars
cleared the boards and moved
their heavy banquet
to our eyes.

©joyannjones December 2016