..............there’s such a clamour
         so much choring
    memory thread
I sit
armchair
rocking head
receiver of motion
    bleaker of putty trauma
                creator of mammary craving

.....best take up knitting or wood carving

the fortress of thought
(in strict connivance with a bewildered host)
compiles the 'person idea'
protects the fragile calculator
               from biting at its own exposed
                  and useless self mating psychology
               from glutting on its own tail 
                   and merry going mad
                        in a tune of hoops...

..stammering to achieve valuation

for our decent management
projector
may you continue operations falser still
defeating our own polygraphs and making fools of our internal courtrooms

i sit on this chair
things go still
thoughts occur elsewhere
am i left to not be ?....................

hitting myself in
the head with a chair leg i
sit on bathroom floor

i am lying on my stomach
after having spent hours propped up on my elbows
spent hours reading, sunbathing
spent hours getting drunk and tired in the sun
i am outside our new chicago home
in a courtyard belonging to only us

i am sprawled on the transparent blue plastic of my past
the cerulean beach chair that never made it to a single beach.
its plastic wound and woven around the metal
like nothing i’ve ever seen before

and i fall asleep

and i’m awakened by the raindrops on the low of my bare back

but it is not raining

and i wake up naked, inside, in your arms as you tap out a tune on me

and the blue chair that we put in the shower
when my brother was too weak to stand
because my brother was too weak to stand
is nowhere to be found
even when he went to live in the hospital
that chair
gathered rust
in a closed, dripping shower

we threw it out
it reminded us of a hard time
he was our only surviving souvenir  

i miss the chair
and i miss the person he was before it all
before he gathered all this rust

-

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


.

Abandoned in the middle of the blasted field,
its arms shredded, legs battered,
the chair exists in broken splendor
catching the best of the speckled light
dancing in the quivering shadows.
Lines of the seated father stain the backrest,
motherly molds are left behind in the seat foam,
the relentless kicks, tattoos of children’s feet
bruise the red velvet of the front rail.

At dawn, pulses of light run along its rails
dispersing all shadows to the wet ground.
At the speed of forgetfulness
two robins alight on this storm orphan,
widow, widower, this sole survivor,
with twigs to build a new stick home.