-

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...


.

-


it was working towards me
in tiny increments with this
unusually adamant
determination

loop-scooting itself across a
hot gravel desert populated
by abrasively inert killers

scraping off bits of itself
in detail along the way

i gave it a lift—

it rolled into a tight ball,
relaxed and then died
in my hand

its last act, a lamenting as if
i had denied it some chosen
final resting place

leaving me holding
this barometer

for measuring the spaces
between those less than
lofty of goals in the better
part of my years...



s jones
2021


.

-


He is home now,
her metallic
soldier–

and has brought with
him a few souvenirs
from "in country" ;

things like sand,
sun-bleached
boots

and a script he
submits to her
daily

she will be returning soon
with groceries wearing a
simple paper mask–

driving between stoplights
at each intersection, she
counts the remaining with
tightening fists

as red concentric circles
fade to black inside
his desert.

"On set for the
performance–
             
                        Places Please !"

an enemy now arrives
at the flank of the
forth curtain—

She is home now...




s jones
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

.

-

for centuries people have set aside
special days to schedule certain events,
mark a historic point in humanity,
or signify the passing of a torch

so perhaps within such varieties the
makers of calendars could introduce
to the world in all their wisdom,

A Wildcard Day

a day that people can do anything with
and be able to place it at will within a
positioning scheme of convenience,

empowering it so that
you can substitute any
pending occasion,

say like, (insert bad day here)

so that you can make
it yesterday,

put it off until
next week,

or at the very least—

resituate it anywhere
but to—day...


s jones
Feb 2021


.

-

"it indicates much skill and
agility with either hand",
someone told me in youth

meaning i can throw and
catch baseballs with
either hand,
             with great difficulty

suggests i can knife and fork
food into my mouth with
either hand,
                  after a fashion

implies that i can
write legibly with
either hand,
                    just barely

insinuates that i should be
able to juggle tennis *****
with fire all over them,
                          No

Well then,

given the above
I find that
"ambidextrous"
might mean for me—

an embellishment in
compensation for
skills lacking in
both hands,

                    Definitively...


s jones
May 2021

.

-

-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


.

-

i could imagine this word
being used by a hypnotist
to induce a trance

or maybe typed in as a fake
name on a website to get
access to free software–

but i would really like
to put this into some
possible context,

(being how i just
thought of it)

(~!@"–MoonFish–"@!~)

i could cast a line into
the Sea of Tranquility
and pull one out

pop a tab on a beer
while firing up my
portable grill,

scale it, clean it,
cook it-
                eat it.


(<Moon-Fish>)

the name of a poem written
for somebody who works
at a fisherman's wharf,

moonlighting as a night
watchman kicking rats
off the pier.

moon fish—

a phrase coined by an
amateur poet for an
idea that may never
actually come to being...



s jones
Apr 2021


.

.

lights spin backwards in the awakening
of midnight with all the youthful bodies
moving in reverse to it's rhythm

one moves naught because of his wish
to step forward against the flow and
is thus fixed                        
                            stationary
­
a too-late-to-adjust suspension, the view
from his seat for the upcoming show
is his only companion

he is most eager to be drawn into the
perimeter of the stage with his bouquet
of wrinkled dollar bills

stripping down to a personal submission,
he presents to her his graying embers

and with a grin~

she takes the green from the blush,
exchanging it for a golden touch

he smiles,

with a wink, she spins away with
a quick stomp of her heel

he smiles,

he returns to his seat to sip down
a drink that fizzled out years
before she was born—

he grins...



"a dance for the humble"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

they float in rusty rouge waters
as fog steams upward, obscuring
various uncanned flotsam

white shapes of vocabular form
disperse into random orientations
entangled by processed seagreens

i saw the letter 'k' rise to the surface,
only to slip below again as other
consonants recomposed

with a single dip of my spoon,
seven of these lifted from
their salty wakes form
a simple line of
characters—

spelling
                   nothing...


"unremarkable soup"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

second hand pushes up
the weight of minutes,
in turn lifting hours

it struggles climbing
from seven to eight
slipping back a bit

by nine it trembles
but inserts itself
notch by notch

the last fifteen seconds
are desperations of
loud ticks

and when the twelve is
reached, it brief rest
is pushed overtime—

plunging straight down
to the six again,
loosely swinging.

the minute felt a slight
nudge forward, but the
hour paid little attention...



"the inertia of a moment"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

~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



.

im not forty-five just yet~

the picnic table to celebrate this
occasion was likely constructed
in the 1960's just as the illusion
of security began to unravel

it will have marks cut into it from
a paring knife some kid snuck out
of his mother's napsack to

scratch in a few here-and-there notches,
juvenile swirlies and crisscross patterns
expressing out with what little language
he could muster at the time

and —of course— some initials

two letters representing a presence
which will later metamorphosize this
simple gathering point into somebody's
threshold between the sky and the grave—

a horizon cruel, unyielding and
dead straight

i wonder how many have sat there, pondering
the timelines carved into this rest area where
forty-five years of inertia will be spent in a
long venting breath

the picnic basket will be packed light when my
day comes, observing in the company of old and
weathered timbers, feeling the etchmarks with
worn fingertips for a name i never was...


"forty-five"
© 2009 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 had a detailed look
at a 24 inch machine scale and
pondered some new ways to
relate to the sizes of things

some "inch" scales are in gradients of
decimals and i see them divided into
tens, those tens in turn divided to
even smaller tens, thus~

1.00 =    1               inch    
0.10 =    1/10  th    inch    
0.01 =    1/100th    inch    


1/100th of an inch is very small but i see
certain things that my mind can measure,
like the size of the Earth— a little less than
eight thousand miles in diameter.

i can see a mile, but not thousands,
so my magic scale says:

1" = 1,000 mi, thus
Earth = about 8"

i imagine holding Earth in my hand
like a small beach ball, then i figure
that the moon is about 2 1/4" big.

how far away is it, i wonder ?
let me grab a tape measure :)

given what i have on hand, now there
is a basketball and a tennis ball lying
some 20 feet apart from each other
in the back yard

i look upon all this and fathom it in—

but this vision now zooms upon my "Earth" ball
with the scale situated conveniently next to it.
detailing the texture of its surface, my eyes
become disproportionately larger than my brain—

observing the Space Station
cruising about 0.15 above it,

the clouds hovering at 0.01,

and further still through the winds of upper distances,
descending between the smallest of lines to my
mere figment of a presence at
1/100th the size
of this tiny
period
dot
.  

— leaving me to wonder how
i could possibly have even
glimpsed all of this—

from way down
                              Here...

"Scale"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-


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

.

-

.
!!
!!!!
BANG
projecting
stars and cloudy
nebulae, forming amino
acids, making wiggly blobs that
eventually find direction towards the
capacity to think about how long it takes to

count backwards
to zero
!!!!
!!
.



© 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

.

-

she laid there on the carpet
like a fuzzy brown pillow
i could see her mid-mass
slowly rise and fall

small twitchings of her paws
caught my eye as she began
running in a yard of dreams,
expressing her excitement for 
                    it

a rear leg jerks followed by another
but they never seem to coordinate,
all the same i know she dogtrots
quickly in her vast green parcel

i think now her goal has just
been reached, her legs are
straight and she is softly
barking muted "yes"s
through her nostrils—

her tail wags significantly,
dissipating quietly vented
puppy treats...



"sleep dog"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

.

-

—                                           /..\
                                              >@<
                                            when
                                       the house is
                                   otherwise empty
                            aside from me, the senses
                   of you seek out the most minuscule
               of things to woof at, a fault line between
             loneliness and apprehension slips a little in
     the path you must take to sniff my hand as it gestures
your tiny pitched notes into the silent end of this open space—

"Come..."
                                         ­   


                                                           ­                                         


"the small dog at the end of a hallway"
© 2010 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

i submit~

they had been used to fill the balloon
in order to make it lofty, without any
regard for these molecules not desiring
a state of massed captivity,

with a clown smiling literally from
ear to ear with what he had done,
sentencing them to an uncertain fate
inside a rubberspheric prison.

floating erratically above the small child
he had given them to, they bounce up and
down repeatedly upon string as this small
jailer runs between tall ma'ams and misters

they long to be released,
but they do not desire
a wandering cell
at the mercy of
the winds—

!!! FANTASTIC CHANGE !!!

A man in dark vestiges
has wandered into this paradigm
with lit cigar in mouth, wearing a black moustache
upturned at the ends. He smiles in twisted lip pleasure

as he
POPS!!!

the key into the lock

FREE !!!

the yellow cocoon shrivels instantly away,
tiny helium souls quickly separate as they
dissipate completely into oblivion within
a welcoming clear blue sky

Free—

~so you may understand, a possible
justification exists for —conceivably—
any negative human activity...

did i lose it already ?
this fragile notion
piercing the fog
that hovers my ocean ?

i must place it
somewhere safe
so i may remember
the fragment
if not the face

perhaps this snippet
of waste?
     no, there is
not left a whit of space

Here is the vessel,
a white bleached and
prepared remnant
of an elm or a spruce        
that once
stood
         Tall
and shaded the sun
from exhausted lost
explorers—

cut stripped and
diced
to provide
               for Me
this small
space,

so i may forget...

"memory paper"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

Their leader was very persuasive, repeatedly
promising them sanctuary from the
dangers they all faced in that
daily struggle to survive.

they were all seeking
the same thing,

A Light

that would show them
the way
                    to  Salvation..


at the onset of dusk
they headed out boldly,
numbering in the hundreds
—a single destiny.

the journey was long and treacherous
with many of them falling behind.
some succumbed to exhaustion, thus
becoming victims of nocturnal predators.

eventually the destination is reached,
a Holy Illumination just ahead,
that same light described
in the stories told to the
little ones each
night

some were so overcome with emotion,
they became careless and fell short.
the leader exclaimed with such exuberance
"God, to think that I would hesitate !!!"

the survivors —en mass—
ventured into
                              The Light...

—

Robert Caine was taking a nap on his
back patio after a bit too much to drink.

His sleep was suddenly disturbed by
a great many pops, cracks, and zaps
emanating from his bug lamp...



"the scope of salvation"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

A Ball works its way downstairs
through steady staccato beats,

airborne and then plunging until
banking against the baluster
and then over the edge,

bouncing hard from the sooner
than expected change in height
from floor to wall, it is then

Snatched from the air mid-flight
by the jaws of a Canine, a
quick and limber ball-stopper

that runs outside with the ball in
mouth, it then notices a shadow
casting over his own and is

Snapped up by the jaws of a
Velociraptor that just happened
to wander by.

Canine in mouth holding a ball in
its jaws, it runs across the street
and into a field through loose dirt,
as while in mid-stride it is

Yanked downward by an
enormous Ant-Lion—

that now holds a ball snatched up by the jaws
of a dog that was snapped up by the jaws
of a lizard which was yanked down by the jaws
of an insect that in turn was
Swallowed
by
      The Earth,

which is, all in all—
a Ball, after
                    ALL...



"captured events"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

i want to reach up into a clear
night's sky and gently pick the
moon out from the darkness
between forefinger and thumb

but when ?
and what shape ??
such a chameleon !!!

shall i do this in a crescent
phase to see if the contour will
fit atop the periphery of my thumbnail

or perhaps wait for the full glory of
its radiance, to roll it between the
palms of my hands and feel the
illumination of it upon
the skin of my
cheeks
?

Yes

to feel the coarsen texture
of tiny mountains

and to see for myself
what lies upon its shy
hidden face

but as i reach skyward,
my intellection hesitates

watching how it confidently
sails with the stars—

having pulled it down from
its heavenly perch,

and

not knowing for certain
how to put it back...



"to hold a celestial being"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

               a suspension in the sky with refined silver cords
                 bearing tiny droplets full of crystal reflections
                     in a slow rotation which disintegrates the
                      periphery into gently unfolding louvers
                         that carefully define feathered edges.

                               i wish for it's pull chain over
                                    my own midnight sky—

i have but
small candles...




"cloud chandelier"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-

a detailing of moments
metamorphasizes
seconds into minutes,
minutes into hours-

into patient waiting
upon children
to emerge
from a toy shop

an unwanted noticing,
listening dull—a'fied to
adjacent patrons talking
furiously into their hands

almost wishing to
urinate again
just to pass
the next hour

tick—tock
sitting still,

autobiographies have been
written and published
in this time

tock—Tick
Still sitting,

Children have been Conceived
and then given Birth To
in this Time

Ticked—TOCKED !
Still—

Moons have been Known
to form on the Surfaces
of Uranus

In This Time...




"the Tick— & eventually, the Tock"
© 2020 By Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

.

-


totally submerged
they laid side by side
three puppies of
different colors in a
shallow puddle
by a pasture

a bull with udders was
fixed halfway into
some fencing nearby
like no big deal

he was totally dark and
she did not labor

i lifted the brown one
he yawned and
looked at me with
black sleepy eyes

the middle grey and white one
was twitching partially under
the first, buried halfway
into sawdust

i left him

the third one had bands
of orange and red
around its little body
he was far too little
to pick up with
my fingers

they all just wanted
to lay still and sleep
in mysteriously
clear waters—

i woke...


"pups of a puddle"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-


ticking is a solemn arrest, a faded white wall,
and a pattern of blank stares, all ripe for a bold
occupation, affixed to space-taking suggestions
that lie upon linoleum in small paper snippets.

i heard the hoot of an owl by the window, maybe
it was something to do with the mismatched feather
dusters hanging side by side, or perhaps the noise
i was making with the scissors.

it then spoke to me in a broken beaked English—

let me help you burn that bland confetti,
we can slip off to a place where fast boats
await careless operators,

i have so many reckless gifts of debauchery  
packed for delivery to those "Whooo" wish
to entertain the sharps of my talons—

Share with me, your most
Malignified Thoughts !

— my head split wide open and snatched down this
creature with one swipe of a dry tongue, the taste
of it was that of winter leaves and —probably— the
discarded cigarette butts from a public walkway,

it itched a little on it's way down,
concluding otherwise yet another
unremarkable event...


"boredom eats foul"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

they know who i am,

i first violated their ordinances
in the commission of a prank
phone call when i was eleven

simply a twenty-two second call
to a residence notifying them that
their refrigerator was running away

and i guess maybe it did—

because there was a strange non-analog
sound which indicated to me that the
authorities were monitoring.

my name is now certain to appear on
government stationary amongst a list
of other eleven year old offenders

inside a folder that sits in a drawer
of a file cabinet within row after row
of other file cabinets matrixed

underneath probably an eleven square
mile parcel somewhere outside
Langley, Virginia

(not to mention how many floors)

telephone patrolmen never forget a name,
and even if i turn eighty-eight they will
eventually issue warrants for my arrest

with patch cables on hand to tie me up
in order to extract confessions regarding
appliances for which no one has
any immediate concern—

ring tones will distract their focus as i wink
into the two way mirror, their failure to
hang me up until the eleventh hour
sandwiched firmly between my lips...

"the phone police"
©2012-2020 by Seranaea Jones
All rights reserved.

Pregnant Penelope placed
pealed pears in pairs in a
path which pickled preacher
Percy just previously pondered.

Pealing downstreet in a Plymouth,
he placed the gear down and
pushed the peddle purposefully
upon patent plush carpeting

PLOW!!

Poor pealed pears pushed
plumb with the pavement,
they promptly exploded..

Oh Please ! Pause !!!
Plllhhheewfff,
puke...

preposterous poetry should
be punished promptly with
proper penalty,

BUT

regretfully someone
will plagiarized such
pompous penning

Alas, THEY shall be known
for the **** they pass
in some preferred
publication,

which —personally— would
please the p*** out of me...

"intentionally poor ****"
© 2007-2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved

-
as i lay down for the transition into a
difficult sleep, i notice the shimmer of
a slight convex on the surface of my
ceiling fan winking with each rotation,

drawing my attention away from visions
of to—day as i attempt to erase them with
heavy sore blinks, pouring tears into

the fires of the immediate past, knowing  
all too well they will steam back into the
clouds that return for tomorrow's rain—

(you just gotta love the water cycle)

i re-imagine it as the incredulous stare of
a dolphin or maybe a sting ray lost in the
oceans of eternity, bereft of any suitable
media to push it's useless fins against

my lids slide downward to dismiss its fate
because my place is somewhat above their
high water mark, being fortunate enough
not to have drowned within such depths—

yet this lingers to mind as the last image
of the evening, blinking shut the thought
of some creature leering down at me with
its one envious eye...




"a glance between waterlines"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved