In melancholy, our thoughts reside.
In dreams, our thoughts preside.
With the most deft of touches
Our thoughts subside,
And ride the most noble of crests.

In time we shall exhume
Those withered bodies in their sunken tombs.
Why Lord? O Los!— the weary pang of time-forgot—
Birth me from your cosmic egg,
I wish to sit amidst the hawks.

Cluck, cluck. Peck, peck.
Chicken!— thou peck at mine brain!
I was not placed amidst the hawks,
I am spread across the pen—
I sit amongst the grain.

They told me never to count my chickens before they hatch
but I just never count my chickens ever
because chicken salad always looks like chicken ****
when I’m obsessing over nuggets.

-


i can just imagine how things would
end up, me being a little more than
hesitant to even consider vocalizing
myself "Live" to dozens of listeners

—me—

starting out on a platform in some school
gymnasium just a short million miles away
from the safety of my writing cubical deep
inside a worm hole underneath my domicile

im sure that a few in the crowd will wonder
what this thing is doing there, my thin, shaky
form walking erratically to center stage with a
tablet in one hand and a cup of water in the other—

well, it could be *****..

the microphone will be way too big for
what little i have to say, commencing
with an unsteady vocal that many will find
indistinguishable from man or woman,

the rhythm should get better after the first
of several stanzas, but i will have already
spotted the ombudsman standing near the
emergency exit listening in—

just as i feared,

and as our eyes meet, his expectation
of structure and rigidity will boil me
down to the hardwood floor, reducing
me to the basic size of a Cornish hen,

spun lengthwise upon his rotisserie,
roasting away as a smoldering torso
from his slow hand-cranked rotations

over the campfire which he will light his
cigarettes from, leaving me choking
from the smoke of his evaluations
as i drip into the cinders and
evaporate along with most
of my self ~esteem..

i realize that he'll just be some ghost
that has haunted my every attempt
at simple boldness,

but i know he is gonna be right there
if i ever climb up to laser like stares
and the wide-open ~hears~ of
kindred poets and curious ears,

an easy fellow to pick out—

he will be the one
holding my neck
in his hands...


s jones
2008-2020


.

I am a chicken
Trapped in a cage
I see no way out
(What is out?)

I am surrounded
By chicken heads
We are one creature
(What is one?)

I hear unpleasant-
Ness. Something in
This body aches
(Am I the world?)

I feel cold metal
I feel heat
I feel nothing
(What is feeling?)

That hawk,
the one who sometimes attracts my attention,
by
repeating a pattern of swooping ellipses, as if

signaling me,
I'm witcha man, I fly by each day to say,

look up, I'm witcha man, which

is what my lizard brain would say, I think,
if it had words,

to express awareness of the pattern seeming
meaningful

enough
to
warrant a closer look.

Ah, I see. The hawk is not signaling me, she is hunting
my neighbor's range fed chickens.