-


i have decided to
meditate on
nothing

by filling a moment
of voids with -

no parks
no dogs to walk
no children out playing
no cars cruising dead end streets
no boats in a river that flows nowhere
no fishermen having fish to fill their boats
no livelihood, no fish on a plate, no plate
to place back on the shelf, no shelf
to fix upon the wall, no wall
to hang photos, no photos
to look at, no faces
to recall,

nil,

just so maybe i can
feel the Universe
pour itself

back into me...


s jones
Dec 2020

.

My new windows are transparent,
Free from smudge and tarnish.
I was clear-eyed gazing out,
Reflective peering in.
Two-sided.
Finger prints have been wiped free,
But around the edges there are still ridges,
Evidence of being opened and closed,
Unbroken in their sturdy frames.

But time is no friend to glass.
Winds assail it, birds bounce off at break-neck speed,
Dust accumulates, it becomes opaque.
Missiles assault its permanence,
Shattering the pane into foreboding shards, like a shell.

Some desperate glazes never get replaced,
They invite stone-throwers.
Then the building becomes derelict, untenable.

One stone can break a window,
Or fell a giant.

Something About Life

                                      “Live.  Just live.”

                               -Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For me, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” I said to myself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death comes,
Then up the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

I must apologize. I'm sorry, man.
Let me go out on a limb here, Jack.
On behalf of all Senators,
Republican and Democrat;
On behalf of every congressional rep,
Every government worker,
Whatever the jurisdiction,
For every student council,
For the clerk stamping the seal,
For every department...
I apologize on your behalf
For the slanders hurled
And flung like dung
At the men and women who weeped
At the bedsides of the lonely and dying.
Oh the shame.
I apologize for him,
Who will never apologize.
I apologize to the medical profession,
And to all First Responders and Essentials.
Oh the horror... the horror...
Believe me,
We don't believe him.

Can you feel the seismic rift.
Shift your weight. Keep your balance.
Hold steady.
The ground is moving beneath.
We've been waiting, expecting this to happen.
It's Mesopotamian.
Hordes will be swallowed up.
Legions will burn,
We will be punished,
But there will come calm.
Our will be done.
Until the debris stops falling,
Look down, cover up.
Look up.

Take away my feelings,
You take the
press, **** and poke,
the nudge, palm and *****;
my caress, hug and tap,
my hold, tag and grip.
where's embrace, wrap and push,
entwine, rub and clutch;
                 and more.
take a glance, paw and grasp,
a nuzzle, scratch or clasp;
an itch, clench and handle,
my entangle and ******
all gone... all lost.

They have taken away my touch,
Making it hard to say Good-bye.

I was tricked into believing
This is my world.
There are too many signs
That can't be ignored.
It's certainly not my old world.
No, not my world at all.
Not the one I inherited,
And not the world I'll leave you.
And I'm so sorry for the mess we're in.
I'm sorry I'm made of carbon,
I'm changing,
I could be a diamond still.

I'd like to read a poem
Written by our world;
In any style, it won't matter:
A sonnet or an ode?
In rhyme or free verse?
Figurative or Found?
But, and this is critical,
The world must write it
To help heal our wounds,
Share our victories and good values,
And expose us in mixed metaphors
In all our human frailties.
It's a poem we'll all understand.
And each spot on Earth,
Every country that's birthed,
Adds a personal verse.
Allow me to read this poem
To all our nations,
With a theme to unite us
As the one and only human race.

I wear an old 45 for skin.
Side A is the surface you see;
White and pale under our winter's skies,
But much darker by September.
Side A does a fine job
Keeping my entrails in.
I like the harmony, beat and rhythm of it.

Side B of my skin is harlequin,
A melting *** of mosaic colours
You can't see,
But if you listen,
My lyric is a palette of hues.

Here is my home town.
I'm lucky to live here,
To have grown here
With all our familiar streets and sights;
The houses where we lived together,
The homes of my childhood friends;
Our schools, churches and local attractions
Are mostly here.
The comings and goings of the locals
Are documented in The Observer.
Familiar and strange.

Today I see a city of cards and cardboard cut-outs.
Sarnia is a museum display of life
In the 21st century I study from this side
Of the display case.
In time, the partition separating us will dissolve
Into a pile of shifting sand about our feet.