Jon Tobias

Jon Tobias Feb 2013

The answer sits awkward in my mouth
Like an Egyptian vowel
Some language I have yet to learn

And I stand like a third world country that there are no commercials for
There are no heartstrings to tug
No Sarah Mclachlan songs
No one sees the hunger
Building in the bellies of my motherless country

But if there must be indifference in this love
I want to love you more than you love me

Jon Tobias Feb 2013

When a Poet Forgets

Forgive me for forgetting
The purpose of this poetry

I got lost in the prose
And diluted the feeling
Distracted enough
To not kiss you completely

I feel like a man who has eaten
Food with onions in it
Self-conscious syntax between my teeth

My tongue attempting to describe
All the things your lips are like

I forget that I am supposed to feel first
Then write

Jon Tobias Feb 2013

Tattoo

Black flakes fall from my side like
Charred skin

Shapely scars
Poetry mostly

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt… so it goes”
This hip don’t lie

Of all the scar-stories this body tells
I like poetry the best

Though the ones I didn’t pay for
Are more poetic maybe
Their stories longer
A journey
Across the throat
Chest horizon
Knuckle toothed

This body once holie
Now healed
Inked in poetry
Now holy

Like charred skin
Stained black
Falling
from my side

I think I am taking that Walt Whitman line a little too seriously. "And your body shall be a great poem." Another poetry tattoo.

Jon Tobias Feb 2013

Tell The Bears I Am Coming Home (Rewrite)

When I had a heart
Shaped like two red canaries
Holding each other
Wings flapping so hard
I coughed up feathers

I knew

I am not a big man
But I feel like a big man

I feel important
Like the glints of light
In a man’s muddy fingers

I shine in places

Trench my sides at night
I will keep you warm

In dreams I lumber
Break bee hives
With my bear hands

Dip my hands in honey
Like it was holy water

The bee’s tiny sting
Is worth it

The buzzing is a hum
I wish I could make with my chest

The pain is worth it

In dreams
My eyes are still brown
But darker
Reflect and camouflage
The landscape
The trees and dirt blend into the
Globes of my eyes

I dip my bear hands into the
Honey again

There is the sting
It feels like god

Tell the bears I am coming home

Jon Tobias Feb 2013

For The Sake of Discretion

For the sake of discretion, when I retell this story, I am a fish, gill-hooked, near gutted, and thrown back. You are a goose with swan beauty, but not swan grace. There is a girl throwing bread onto the water above my head. Competing for the same crumbs, through what could be a mirror, our mouths met. You took the bread, but I kissed you.

Jon Tobias Jan 2013

If Your Shoulderblabes Were Sharp Enough to Hang Art From

I want to hang art in the vaulted ceilings of your chest

Appreciate the space like
footstep
echo
silence

Hang paintings of ugly beauty from the knives still stuck in your back

That was what all this pain has been meant for
To hang art from

Newspaper clippings of suicides still walking into heaven
Their faces finally happy
Maybe one is waiting for you

Jackson ******* rugburn that taught you forgiveness

Hyper realistic pencil drawings of people you wish you could forget

Featherless doves in cages with the latches open,
offering their freedom to you a feather at a time

Sickly psalms coating the walls like wet silk
Like paper papermachet prayer
Like a piniata

Take a baseball bat to it
Lose your breath like a hallelujah

There is so much beauty inside of you
Every ugly moment
molded

I want to hang art in the vaulted ceiling of your chest

Get lost in the museum behind your *******....

Jon Tobias Jan 2013

Painted Trees

Got audio published. Check December's entry's for my name.
http://dimestories.org/news/san-diegos-best-dimestories-updated/