my ears soak inside-out in a seltzer
filled glass on my bedroom nightstand
each evening so that the ringing will
hopefully dissolve and settle to the bottom

they dream of wingtips that the
maple can hear through the leaves
as they stir the breeze upon landing,
the patter of avian claws gripping
the bark in short scoots,

the stretch of a twig bending downward
with the slightest brush of a feather, the
splitting noises of a newborn’s egg,
and even the breath taken before
the whoosh of a dive—

they awaken this morning with
words and imagination bringing
forth a new voice,

one which reads aloud to them
about the simple sounds
that birds can make...



"a whoosh unheard"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

i once had a bowl of
alphabet soup that
cussed me out

moody soup i suppose,
maybe too much salt

it only took all of three stirs
to resume composure

nevertheless i have favored
literally innocuous
types of soup ever since

not so much from me
being onion-skinned,
but simply for the fact—

i would prefer to eat
as opposed to
entertaining such
potentially disturbing
conversations
over the dinner table...

s jones
2021


.

-

i tell myself sometimes–

"Cut !"

when i remember
out of impulse
some bad event(s)

playing on a taped
loop of myself
screaming—

and denied scissors
capable of putting
ends to it...



s jones
Mar 2022

.

-

they have empirically evidenced
      a spectral existence within
          computer imagery of
                small glowing
                       orbs
                      ~  o  ~

                     "yawn"

if i found myself in the middle of
these things as they bank off the
walls and nudge against my arm–
batting their lil' eyes at me,

it would likewise illicit from me
the perception of a largely
innocuous event,

But—

the
creeping
shadow of
a skeletal hand
appearing to reach
for my shoulder from
the opening of a doorway
within the steady limitations of
a traditional negative photograph–

would most certainly
pull me into

it's
               reality...



s jones
2021



.

-
video—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPiIEcwoDHM


One is supposed to sleep with the intention of repairing the mind and the body of all those ills encountered in daily life, but This night was not one for rest. I think the clock was reading 9:53 last I had glanced, but it could have been 3:59 or sumthin.

Anyway, my eyes opened to the stature of a very tall and muscular fellow holding a pitchfork to my side. He said "Miss Seranaea Jones, you have been selected to participate in a wonderous event. Your going to tour the finest Pits of Hell and all of the recent improvements. Satan has"personally" endorsed this invitation to you, so we must be on our way !"

I think at that moment I said, "its not done yet, let it cook a while longer".

I was not really capturing current events, so he jabbed that pitchfork deeper and pushed me right off the bed. Frickin hurt too, so realizing
that this was gonna be a non-negotiable parlay, I agreed to his terms.

(or "It", I dunno... this dood was holding a pitchfork on me and I couldn't find my gun)

We went outside to his vehicle. It was Hottest **** thing I ever saw !
We got inside and I was surrounded by blinking indicators, computer graphics and some serious leather seats and solid wood paneling. He said "Please fasten your seatbelt, it is not currently permissible to have you killed". I said "Thanks" with a fearful stare of a chicken being held by its throat.

He started the engine and Ohh !!!— such an immaculate sound emanated from it. With one pull of the gearshift we plunged STRAIGHT DOWN. Before I passed out I saw what looked like platoons of dragons in formation poised to venture upwards into to midst of the Earth. My last element of memory was of cheeks rippling with the force of acceleration.


Having survived the trip down to the Negative Pearly Gates, the next thing I knew I was in a fish and ski motor boat cruising the River Styx. Had all those extras too, depth finders and flat monitors that surrounded the driver position— the screens were filled with the ******...


ummm—
wished i had not looked into the rear view mirror,
looking back was a version of myself as some
mummified shriveled past-tense
Seranaea  "thing"—
                                      — ughhh

He pointed to the sign at the entrance. It looked new enough, but was marred by bullet holes and deep scrapes.

It said—

                       "Ye who enter, Abandon All Hope.
                              ATMs are available inside.
                                        No Smoking"  

He said "My apologies for the condition of this entrance, we just recently had some particularly unruly admissions". I nervously nodded, thinking on how unruly I was upstairs to have become a Hellbound tourist.

The next thing I noticed were the creatures in the water, their mouths gaping wide, wrapped by bedsheet-white skin tightened around skulls and pairs of hollowed eyes. They were screaming knives into my soul.
My captor said "reach into this bag and throw one of these out to them"  
It was a bag of charcoal briquettes, so I took one and threw it. One of those creatures snapped it up and then slipped back underwater.

Cool !!

I did this a number of times, skipping the briquettes and watching them get snatched as like so many minnows gulping down bread crumbs. I was really getting the hang of it by the time I suddenly Slipped And Fell !! –splashing into the water as these things start immediately towards me, reaching for new flesh with long sharp Nails When I—

4 AM

Woke Up !
Wet—

wrapped tight
in a bed sheet—

peppered with
blacken 
fingerprints...



think id better be a good girl
from now on !!!



s jones
2007


.

-


decades ago this was a tasty
quick meal between ten
hour shifts and sleep

tangy cheese in a metal container
that i cooked on a burner as the
shells boiled to a full fluff nearby

i mixed in some diced ham that
in of itself could have filled
a morning omelet,
had i the time—

to—day’s products consist of
much smaller shells that boil
into gooey blobs

and cheese– sealed in some kind
of chemically pre-melted state
inside of a silver bag,

and ham—

packed in smaller cans–
very much tasting like
the machines that process it.

i wonder now what level of
creature is low enough to
be able to live off of this

to within what measure
of survival

or—

if in fact this stuff
could actually be
                            
eating  it...


s jones
2021


.

-

what can be said
about a library
depopulated of
forbidden books—

when the librarian is
legally prohibited from
conveying information
to anyone about
its contents

?


s jones
2023





.

-

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


.

i used to throw bread crumbs into
a pond full of minnows next to a
place where i worked years ago

it kept me cool in the summertime,
pulling the heat out of me and
feeding it into the winds as

a turtle snapped up dozens of fish-babies,
transforming the vision of my frame into
maybe the size of a praeternatural feather

and for a moment,

i dreamt that on a clear night through the
eyes of a barnyard owl that i could
navigate the dark foldings of
space into the beating
hearts of praying
rodents—

blinking back to a view of
disturbed green waters—

i commenced
to waking...

"the frenzy, at rest"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

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


.

-

in a landfill one day i saw an
immigrant family take an old
bed and strap it across the top
of a banged up SUV that was

missing it's left front clip, the
headlight was taped where a
socket would have held it,
like a discombobulated eyeball

clearly marked on the edge
of the mattress was the
following in Red Sharpie—

"DO NOT SALVAGE"

the same warning i remember  
writing on Momma's deathbed
decades earlier, her stain clearly
visible on one side.

there was nothing to be said, 
even if i could speak fluently
against what was apparently

—for them—

clearly accepted
terms...


s jones
Mar 2021


.

-


Momma died two decades ago,
she would have turned
seventy-eight to—day

i woke up and spoke with her
this morning, imagining her
with a long red Irish mane

about Daddy being laid up in a
nursing home, my brother and
i hoping to fix him before he
finally gives up

she said—  "nothing"

i think maybe this is because
she long ago saw the lights
up ahead, in a place where
human conversation would
be considered archaic

and birthdays rendered
as undefined

she is illuminated within it now,
there to later show the way for
the rest of us who continue
marking our calendars

as we persist here on Earth—
still enumerating yesterday,
to–day, and tomorrow...



s jones
30 Dec 2021


.

-

i found a can of fish hooks
while looking for a pair
of gloves to—day

a decomposing hand
crawls its way back
to its owner;

in the course of parsing
her effects after she was
folded and filed away

finger over finger by thumb
over lithography of safety,
prying open the subtle warmth
of personal bed space,

like a pen seeking fluid
to fuel an exhausted
ink well,
the tip of one of
them pricked my finger,

finger over finger by thumb
over a papier-mâché torso –
casting long shadows, even
in total darkness,

my blood then violated
an heirloom—

a notepad of dreams she
had on her nightstand
the morning she died,

between the folds of blankets
towards vulnerable skin—
icy digits commence
with repossession,

detailing on
her last entry what
i had just written here—

frantically groping into thick
blackness for the pull chain
of a light switch—

something to do about a
can full of fish hooks
she happened upon
in a nightmare...

It was just a Glove
it was a glove
it's a glove
a glove
~




s jones
2021
.

a large hand from outer space
descended to the Earth's surface
and with a finger and thumb,

grabs me by the belt at the seat
of my pants,

hoisting me straight up like
a fish out of water for
viewing with a great
concern...

He turns my tinyness toward Him
and looks me eye to eye, frowning
in disapproval—

"I dunno, maybe You should
just,
                 toss me away??"

His face then smiled a little,
and with a sigh ,

i was gently lowered
back down...

"Intervention"
©2007-2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-


as a kid
i felt along
the walls of a
perceived dark
confinement for
escape

imagining that creatures
were taking swipes at me
with their claws and tentacles

knowing —full well— that
discovery of a light switch
would end this game of
nightmares


YEARS—


my illusion of exploration
has been reduced to ashes
from decades of rapid
illumination

just as well, i cannot afford
to trip my way through
the darkness anymore

still

some nights i will turn the
lights off and imagine myself
searching cautiously along
pitch black wooden panels

thinking next time i might
miss the switch &
instead

discover artifacts from
a lost childhood...



s jones
2021


.

-


illumination will conspicuously
reveal details only after such a
boorish tangency of skin can be
excused for dim–witted attempts
at enveloping one's entire surface...



s jones
2023





.

-

it was, for her~

a question, a dare to venture into a
place that few would ever visit
more than once in a lifetime

walled with earth, rock, twists and
turns, shadows that move—
bones that lay still

a smart phone was recovered there,
the woman who left it is somewhere
deep in the lower chambers

it recorded her unapproved descent into
miles of dark passages which multiply,
divide, intersect— mystify

images steady at first, a wonderment
of sheer expansiveness, these arteries
go on forever and ever !

"i need to tell someone !"—
                                               "ohh, no
                                                 signal..."

a "sotto voce" begins questioning confusion
as her disorientation becomes a
measure of breath

curiosity now relinquishes to a desperation
of sharp huffs as the camera aims about
in quick jolts, straining to see the
next hopeful opening—

the light stops
working.

minutes later she realizes her affiliation
with the underground brethren has
been met with tacit approval.

her phone is eventually abandoned with
all remaining composure, as a new

and permanent member commences
a delirious marathon down
the corridors of
                             home

—

the recording lasted awhile before
her drowning cries dissolved into
resolution of a sealed fate—

underneath and silent,
amongst thousands

                            of opened mouths...




s jones
© 2020


.

-

A displacement exists,
yet specifics defy the
scope of my radar,

sensing amiss like a
fellow would perceive
an absent billfold or

the way a hen may
feel one egg less
in her nest.

A lack exists for detection,
whether it be far away
or way too close,

it's gravity pulling me
toward the last glimpse
of it before fading into black.

Not so obvious as a
matador might lose
his cape to the bull

Yet,

somehow i just Know,
with question marks
drizzling about—

sweating beneath the
skeletal remains
of my umbrella...


s jones
© 2020


.

-


I think of you as the first draw
from a cigarette wish-well,
and the dizzy well being
of its so-so beckonings—

i became addicted,

remaining perilously close to your
edge with a potential for falling in
while reaching for another taste
as the cravings intensified.

But the euphoria diminished;

when i realized (finally) that you
were not my springwater, nor the
bucket of a dreamwell, nary even
the spool that held the rope—

you were merely a shimmer
of water under a bridge
that was too good
to be true.

Someday i will pause
over your delicious
flow once more,

to remember a taste
necessitating years
to drift downstream...


s jones
Dec 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

.

-

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


.

-

on the Sea of Tranquility sits
evidence of alien visitors
to this world ;

underneath one of the footings lie
the crushed remains of an indigenous
being who was delivering a message

inside a six-fingered metacarpus
entanglement is a wrinkled sheet
of aluminum with the following
etched in broken Earthling—

"we never sent invitations
and we never asked you
for anything–

Please,
               go home..."


s jones
2021

.

-

That line in the distance which
defines the boundary between
the Heavens and the Earth

is not even a line–
actually it is an arc,
so i have fooled
myself already.

I imagine this as a border
constituting what i can
and cannot reach

with all the lofty fixtures
of space high above

and the rocks below—

my endurance erodes
between them.

I admit to having grown
fond of the certainty
this divide represents

because it renders the scope
of my options unambiguous.

Still, i fancy some rungs–
a way to step up
so i can place hopes
just above that threshold,

but having attempted to
measure the height of
"Jacob's Ladder",

i realize success could mean
my condemnation to
a hopelessness
below...


s jones
2021


.

-

Amazing !

how They keep millions of
computer-boxed brains from
calculating out of bounds

using the same media,
which simultaneously
*****

to the left
                 and
                          to the right

sating a hunger for numbers
by drawing into either side
as many believers as possible

all the same ;

those who are ideologically
magnetized seem to
not mind
                   control

giving me every reason
to keep my eyes glancing
at the center for movement

where i know a monster
patiently waits—

smiling at so
many cattle...


s jones
2021

.

-

the owl hoots from across the field—

pulls the sun out from
the ground by its talons
and tosses it into my
kitchen window

winks at me

and then takes off into
the morning with its
fully cooked meal...


s jones
July 2021



.

-

I accepted this
portion of a

@-#)~"—?—"~(#-@


(conjured surely
from some black
cauldron)

And With Respect—

My mouth opened
wide enough
in the attempt
to finish the
whole thing raw
with a single bite–

but instead,
I grabbed one crumb
between incisors,

tugged
and tugged
until It tumbled
out of my mouth
and onto the arm
of the porch swing–

bounced and then
dropped
           between
                         cracks
amongst peelings of
old paint and then
into the funnel of
an Ant-Lion,

who thought it had
the catch of the day,
pulled It in,
bit into It–
went sour-faced

(as if it could)

and spat It back out
where It continued
into a wormhole
downwards
inwards
&
side-wards
inside out
through
multi colored
celestial
milky-ways—

bumping into a  
plastic spoon
spinning end
over end
along a
Mobius Strip orbit
between the
Rings of Saturn,
where It shall
                          (hopefully)
reside
For  Ever—

(Expansive Ten-Fingered
"E" chords played upon
Three Grand Pianos)

Finis
            Coronat  
                              Opus...

­

s jones
2021


.

-

the Clause read–

"by signing, you agree to have
your imagery and collected works
manifested into any digital scenario

chosen by the staff, associates and
management of this organization
throughout perpetuity"

So,

does this mean Bob Dylan and
George Lucas might appear
side-by-side on TV some
Christmas Eve

as dying trees ornamented with
numerical fruits which dangle
from their frames like the

links of Marley's chains ?

given his extensive background
on the subject, Santa knows full
well this will eventually happen...


s jones
2021


.

-


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


.

a keeping of structure framed into the confines
of expectations for readers who are by far more
educated and better read than if i can just keep
to writing within those experience perimeters of
uhhh, someone else—

who claims to have seen that the world is about
roughly the size of a really really big asteroid,
hiding behind the thumb of an astronaut floating
some distance away from the pad i wrote my
last poem on a quarter-sheet of tissue paper

with a china marker.

As per the vocational experts of my youth;
i may well have qualified for the position of
"document shredder",
or even the author of small gift books—

—had ANY of this material fallen into
the wrong hands...

"freeverse"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

my panic sack would have
contained enough breath
to blow out most of this
year’s birthday candles

inverted,

a mask tumbles out like
some kind of lung-wallet,

hinting whispered
passwords

i hyperventilate into it
with resignation upon
each casting of a socially
distant wave

splashing between crests—

a sense of security swells
in my chest as i drown in

absolute safety...


"pest bag"
©2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

That ******
Mirror—

the thought of faces in humanity
showing scars of cast'd regularity
now mutes my expressions ;
~
jovial faces display smooth contours,
riverbeds of smiles and amusement,
a'flow— gleefully downstream

sullen faces carve heavy heart canyons,
white rapids pushing difficult rocks
in opposing directions
~
all of this scribbled down
in short-hand by the
Surveyors of Time.

—

i now relax my
composure
to this—

carefully drawn maps of
experiences, upon glance

face to face, year by year,
smoothed and unfolded

ever so slow melts
my candle, abreast

whilst smiling my bones
with an approval
from Death...


© 2020


.

-

One day,

I found the letter "W" laid
face to the ground-
i knew this because it's center
was pushed downward,

like a nose in the dirt.

with every attempt i made
to stir it, it would only moan
and remain still, its thin arms
bent around backwards.

this is not the first time
iv'e seen a "W" laid out,
having witnessed many
letters and numerals bite
the dust of misplacement-

it is just the sad truth
of our language.

i found a cardboard box
and picked it up carefully,
making sure i didnt injure
the poor fellow further.

it looked up at me and
made a weak smile,
knowing we all make
mistakes—

upon it's passing away,
it was this expression
i remembered most
when i buried it
next to an
"M"...



-© 2020

-

have you wondered how most of your
personal and medical information is
now documented by outside parties
on distant servers ?

you could imagine right off that it is not
quite like a filing cabinet with hand written
tabs that help sort important papers which
will reliably remain where you left them–

No..

much of the data is actually scattered
on "clouds" into positions that were
immediately available when it was
acquired and then deposited

so one may discover digital fragments of
a chat-room dialogue residing adjacent to
a photo of someone's aunt's latest birthday
cake creation, which in turn is situated

into areas where web browsers have placed
ad's about **** undergarments and software
storage solutions, very possibly right next to
the last character that you typed—

all this should be easily re-assembled on
demand if one clicks on the icon which
represents the thing being retrieved,

except for the fact that numerical crumbs
are inevitably shaken loose from improper
bit-positioning schemes, made possible
within a digital bureaucracy bent on sorting
through your under-ware.

i wonder now if tech will
advance to a level that renders

"Going to Heaven"

into being irretrievably saved
forever into clouds that wander
aimlessly adrift over Hell ?



­s jones
2021



.

-

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


.

dark fluids unwelcomely
invade relentlessly into
materials unprepared

creeping brisk black hot
indiscriminant and unbound
consuming lust for gravity

over the edge
         down the legs
               onto my lap
           down my legs
over my edge
         into me—

offensively...





"coffee-brake"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

i felt a presence as i walked
past its shadow between
restless sunbeams and
lazy dark patches

too small to fill a stadium and
too light to resist a breeze,
it could not muster the most
muted sigh of thunder

still, it singled me out from acres
of trees and multi-laid squares
of rooftop hide-aways

and followed—

to send a message of being
to an insignificant recipient

through a small break within
divided thoughts, into a brief
opening underneath—

a single drop, into a
downpour of
tears




"the cloud"
© 2008 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-


when the dinosaur roamed the earth
they made little dinosaurs that would
later wander upon its surface,

following in the footsteps of
their ancestors.

something fell from the sky
and made them all stop–

passing down to creatures of
the future a few precious bones,
fossilized feathers and footprints..

—

when mankind roams the earth
they make little men that will
wander upon its surface,

following bigger men.

something they have fashioned will
escape control and make them all stop–

leaving only to what few creatures
that may survive their presence—

an abundancy of ****...



s jones
2021


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-


i never actually thought i would
live long enough to experience the
surfacing of all my wisdom teeth–

when my fourth one began to throb
and push aside the tooth next to it,
i felt the pain like a spark plug
in my jawbone

but i drank no alcohol
for it that time

i wanted to bath in its presence
as it chewed its way out
because it was my
              very last
                         one–

a knowledge earned from
this Last Rite of Passage

a rebirth of myself through
the gum line of aging tissue—

this crowning new thing you
will never have enough
of anymore...


s jones
2021


.

-

weeks after he ascended
from his fallen carcass—

troops vacated what once
was good ground,

rains washed in mud
to refill the holes,

the scent of honeysuckle
once again became
intrusive,

birds of prey returned
to their perches-

watching as

squirrels and rabbits
went about
their collections,

and the veil of silent
winds once again
descended.

after decades passed
through the footfalls
of morning strolls
between healing
vegetation and
eroding
rock—

a park had completed
formation about the
flanks of his bones ...


s jones
2020


.

-


it is like the pulling of fish from
water that is now too shallow
for minnows to swim in

or a child's deceased hamster
inside of a shoe box leaning
against a dumpster

while a breeze pushes autumn leaves
in the opposite direction of
a one-way street

it is what remains after the
door to everything has been
padlocked from everybody–

these are the bubbles that
pop randomly in my
dishwater,

all of this soaking quietly into
an old wet sponge situated
just between my ears—

did you hear any
of this ?


s jones
2021



.

-


Hello there !

i ~was~ that small gap on the
driver side wiper blade that you
paid little attention to until now–

glad to make your
acquaintance !

you know, its kinda funny
if you think on it, you and me
just staring through one another.
the eyes often fail in capturing
the obvious, i guess in passing

but as things tend to develop in nature,
they have creepy ways of obfuscating
the wits out of you as your
inane goes insane–

                                    Ya
                                            See ?
                            molehills
             do eventually
                                become Mountains
        when they are allowed to grow and
              cover your windshield with those thin
 brown and grey arc streaked Venetian Blinders

That now capture your fully divided
Attention as you drive in all that
Muddy wet sleet with only a small
Gap left to look through—

Hey,
were getting to know
each other pretty
good now...



s jones
2021



.

-


is it better to feel a sting
than to become numb
from the wakes of

those millions of voices
suggesting to you about
how to live out

your final few breaths ?

i might hold on
to mine
                  
                  forever...




s jones
2021


.

-

i wish a memory of
the old store that used
to operate down the street–

the pinball machine that
almost always would put
out an extra ball with a
bump on the side,

and that fella who ran it,
still offering a coin
from the register just to
hear me play one more

as he swept footprints
of the day off
the front steps

and

then left me soda on the
windowsill for my
bike ride home as he
locked up–

would stop reminding me
how easy it is
for kids of to—day
to sweep all this off
into streets of oblivion—

noticing how the road
where it once stood
is so uneven
compared to the
rest of the grade...



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


.

-

when i was very young i was
prohibited from climbing the
kitchen cabinets in order to
get into the sugar container

yet my ulterior motive
next to it was the flour

it started with the creation
of pictures of my fingers in
reverse

and then with a playing card
i molded shapes that would
crack apart in intricate detail
as i nudged at it slightly

with a tablespoon i constructed
mountains and grand canyons

i even made my own
five year old face

thinking how God might
have been inspired with
simple cosmic dust

—

reviewing the cracks and
wrinkles of my pale stoney
cheeks in the mirror

i have decided that it may
be best not to let children
play with flour...

s jones
June 2021


.

-

Among the constellations
sail upside-down
the vessels of old men who
have risen from their
earth bound material

keeping with them the footwear
they had on in that final moment
when each saw their remains
through The Divine Mirror:

two are embracing the masts
for unrenewable security

one grips the railing, convinced
he may fall back

still another holds tightly to the
chains of his anchor

But one lies face up on the deck,
content that his reflections will
never haunt him

he holds his hand out, extending
fingers into a celestial calm,
causing wakes

a destiny uncertain,
he flings his shoes
downward—

back into the sky...


"finding grace above the seas"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

.

-

-No need in worrying about some huge
"Billiard God" situated behind the Moon
with a pool stick, thus rendering it possible
to count the lunar craters with relative ease
as it approaches Earth—

( they have already checked,
there is nobody back there )

-Best not concern ourselves about collisions
with dinosaur droppings laid in your path as
they stomp about in pursuit of small vehicles
for an easy meal—

( as they were effectively wiped off the face 
of this planet by the droppings of much
larger space rocks )

-Pointless babbling about Poseidon's
release of the Kraken upon our cities—

( as the Romans had abolished such religions
in favor of one palatable enough for the
populace to digest, as opposed to
being digested by said elements
of the aforementioned faith )

-And finally, no cause for alarm if your
particular candidate —for whatever office—
fails to receive enough votes to win his/her
seat in this year's Election, regardless of
your religious or political affiliations—

As This Country has seen
The End of the World
numerous times,

and Will Continue,
just like it has done
for many decades,

Because—

We have seen Worse...



© 2020


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