-

Greetings,

I am the empty chair you just recently
pushed into the carport like some unruly
child made to stand in a corner.

Not a new chair for sure,
but you made me Your chair
by the force of gravity,

transforming my cushion into
perfect contours in the image
of your ***.

Though you were always careful
if crumbs fell into me to get up
and brush them away,

and instead of just plopping down
******* me, you sat gentle and easy,
even if only doing so to soften the
shock for yourself,

there were moments as you sipped beer
you let it slip through your bottom lip,
dripping on me with bitter aftertaste.

Still, I was forgiving of that, and even
to those numerous occasions of you
venting your evening meals.

But the one event that forever sullied our
personal relationship was the morning you
woke on me soaked in most of the past
evening's              
                ~~brew

Though you tried to patch things up
with towels and scented sprays,
we were never to look upon
one another with the
same recognition
again.

I know now the days for me here number
far less than the buttons of the controller
you so frequently lost between my cushions,
giggling me in your efforts to retrieved it.

Although our separation will mean for me a
transformation into a twisted pile of springs,
stuffing, splinters and ripped cloth within the
bucket jaws of a front end loader in the snow,

I can take some comfort with me to the
resting pits of jettisoned human folly that
our severance was of no fault of my own.

yours truly,
Chair...


s jones
2007-2020


.

-

~a small pile of ash—

some teeth
metal oxide and
grated bone material

fitting a cardboard
vault with such a
precision

a weighing of decision

to throw in some
flour or a handful
of dirt

upon a
lifetime allotment
of sanctified hurt

i sleep
to-night in a
shoe box casket

to fathom that
finalized state
of being ~


s jones
Nov 2020



.

-

she stands there with
equal curiosity and
reaches as i do
towards the
surface

thinking
how we both
could dismiss the
truth of the glass—

knowing
we each think
alike and are of
the same mind

believing
in each other's
convictions of
being

accepting
the warmth
of our fingertips

to prove we each
exist on opposite
sides

wishing to join
one another

looking deep into
focused eyes

whispering
permission

to allow the
other's hand
to slip aside

and
pass              
through...



s jones
2020



.

-

stripping off bark,
carefully neat
unbroken
strings,
and then
into the bone
of the branch

bigger chips follow suit
as the carving
continues

the knife peels, chunking
out rough pieces as
they litter the floor

later to be swept aside
into darkness

years pass in solitary
cutting as cars
go slowly by

looking where the front porch
is buried at one end with
the chips of his wilderness

displaying no
ornaments
to show
for the labor

no birds
no raccoons
no whistles
not even his cane

pare of nothing
but the pile—

all he is...


s jones
2020

.

-

in case you was curious,
that "©" which appears
at the end of a writer's

printed work is purposed
to indicate copyrighted
materials within it's body

recorded —somewhere—

on government stationary in
a government office located in
a government city guarded

by government agents who
typically are out to lunch on
the government's dime

(our dime)

but My lil " ©" doesn't
cost all that much, like if
you buy stickers from

an alarm security outfit for
seventeen bucks to throw on
the front and rear windows
of your house,

instead of the $ 1,700 system
that wont go off unless
YOU are there to
turn it off.

still, its nice to know—

a burglar would be less likely
to risk setting it off from
reading the copyright notice
                                                   anyhow...



s jones
© 2020

.

-

I discovered it protruding a bit
between reference volumes in
the library, seemingly amiss.

Stuck fast, I pulled
on it hard, it popped out and
then flew past me,

flapping across the room like some
quasi-winged frisbee-lark, bouncing
off the edge of a bookshelf and

landing on the carpet with it's
feather pages fanned outward,
the quills then slowly relaxed.

I let it sit it there for a moment to
settle from the occurrence, then
picked it up for a closer look,

releasing my breath into Tut's Tomb,
to blow away loose sediment dating
from it’s forgotten inauguration—

Upon reading, it thanked me
for this flight from a
static Perdition—


by
telling me
tales of taradiddles,
page after page to no
end...Taradiddles, page after
page to no end...Page after Page
to no End...telling Me Taradiddles ! Yes !!
Taradiddles !! To No End !! Page After Page to NO
END !... PAgE AFtEr PaGE AFTeR PAGE—TARADIDDLES !!
PAGE AFTER PAGE FROM COVER TO COVER TO NO F—

( thuMP ! )


—leaving me with little doubt
which section of the library
it should have been placed...


s jones
© 2020


.

-


oh, considerate
counselors~

i fear the scars of your instruction
will never erode, even after i
melt down your mental
tarbabies
with a solution
that i hope will make
them chemically dissolve away,

leaving nothing but your staples.

what was it really ?
hyperactivity, autism,
anomalies of perception,
social detachment,
maybe—

a Gift ?

well, i guess it would not have
made a difference, everybody
knew of this but
                                  me-

patching up my gray matter mistakes
with remedies permanently cemented
between impressionable foldings

i feel this cure like masonry damming
where free-flowing thoughts that ride
upon streams into oceans were supposed
to have discharged naturally,

stopping me from causing my
summers to mix with everybody
else's winters (or vise versa).

you see, my natural configuration
would have sated for me what
would —in turn— infuriate others,

thus the picket around me was built
sufficiently lofty so i would never
grow tall enough to oversee it.

these days i often mistaken this perimeter
for bricks that line the inside of a well,
complete with a leaky bucket
swinging overhead,
beyond my
reach—

of all things an adult child could ever
want for Christmas, the removal of
what now prohibits true potential

these things they instilled into me
so i could not violate the principals
of conventional wisdom in their day—

but this is
My Day
now !

and dead counselors need
not protect their world
from Me anymore !

and this Gift ?

it continues drifting
conspicuously aloft
in my gray ocean—

a Divine Gratuity that remains
—to this day— unsuitable
for redemption...


s jones
© 2020


.