-

a "Purity of Being"
rests upon this
–Bed of Angels–

governing the distances
between crests of
wrinkled sheets

watching them

break along the banks
with his skillfully
sinful skin—

Waking me...



s jones
June 2021


.

-

i look up at my feet and
understand what it is like
to be buried underneath
the entirety of the Earth—

maybe Atlas was
simply interred
after all...



s jones
2021


.

-

we knew the Marlin kids in '71
at the house across the street–
Danny, Angela and

the youngest–
i cannot fathom for the life
of me his name

i played almost daily with that boy
until one evening he showed me
Danny's military photo to explain
why he had been away so long

a week later daddy told me not
to go to his house anymore

i am unable to visualize
his kindergarten face
even to—day,

only a memory of the photo
of a brother who vanished
forever, later taking with
him everybody else

whenever i think
of it now,

i feel like i am keeping a
space for his lost image
in my private album
like someone's name on
the Black Wall—

the name of a conscript
in a crusade made up
mostly of children...


s jones
June 2021


.

-

i spread sugar across the kitchen table
and use my index finger to start from
deep scratch, penetrating it's layer to
the smooth wooden surface below

writing characters into gritty detail
within it's fine grainy media, i finish
each line without any practical means
to re-work the structure

they are my sweet licks by finger tips,
rows of tasty words that lay bare upon
a temporary tablet— in a raw form
which will soon be swept into a dust pan

just a musing on a mess at a place
meant for dining, i remove my
thoughts with a hand held brush—

yet traces of its ghost now linger
in a fragile film awaiting your
consumption...


s jones
2008-2021


.

-

they have figured out how
to numerically make a
chainsaw function in reverse

in order to restore
a tree felled by it
to it's original state–

and somewhere there is
an effort being made to
airdrop maple seeds into
the path of a tornado

so a machine inside of a
huge building has posted
on the internet—

for what it is worth
these wood probably
look good on paper...


.

-


i cast only shadows
of twilight,

but like a ghost, i can
spoon deceptively well~

following just a fingernail away,
i can scrape the periphery of your
senses at any given moment

yet i remain outside a passing glance,
just beyond the visual reach of mirrors

for i am the corpse you sleep with nightly,
evidenced by those occasional scratch marks
i leave on your shoulders, neck, buttocks

the thing you've spent most of your lifespan
dismissing as some graveside mourner you
simply turned your eyes away from

yet as a faucet of sand left dripping,
you pool into the spaces between
the plankings of oblivion

Someday,

you will wake to a rope-snap
suspension upon the gallows
of my choosing

as you pour out the last
grain from the hourglass
of your lifespan

your fingertips slipping
down its smoothed
surfaces

— knowing — 

as i watch you
fall away

from far,
far
         above...



s jones
May 2021


.

-

feathered smudges like a floor spatter from
Jackson Pollard covered the lanes underneath
an old L&N railroad overpass where flocks
of pigeons used to **** from above

tiny pellets were sprinkled along the
rail banks & eager beaks pushed aside
large stones to pick out these "yummies"
which slid easily down the throat
causing vacant, fixed pupils

it is about thirteen foot-six inches from
the bottom of the bridge to the street,
hundreds of detached eyes looked
aimlessly from the pavement
for a sky to rise in

motorists rolled up the windows as they
approached for a finishing pass, hoping
maybe they would all eventually wash
away with the rains

i see a morning dove landing on my
porch railing, it's tiny black lenses
zooming into me through the window

causing me to think if maybe there is
a talon or a couple of small bones
embedded tread-wise into my tire

a vision now manifests some
thirteen foot, six inches away—

all those
                  eyes...


s jones
2009-2021


.