Every hour of every day,
In some clichéd way,
I think of you
At least twice.

I’m a friend,
I know.
You say it too much,
It chafes me raw.

Are you really that dense?  
Or maybe it’s a ruse,
A system you’ve devised
To keep me at bay,
Because you just don’t feel
The same way.

I’m crazy about you,
I admit,
If you saw me now,
You’d recognize the guilt,
Brightly scrawled across my face,
Like a neon sign:

The coffee, the talks, the long walks?
All excuses,
Preambles for profound, passionate *******,
That never materialized.

I don’t think it ever will.

Adieu!  Farewell my friend,  
I wish you all of life’s best,
I’ll cross the sea to forget you and rest,
Sail somewhere faraway,
Like Portugal or Paraguay.

Then,
On a lonely afternoon,
You’ll phone for yet
Another friendly talk,
Expecting me – your anchor, your rock,  
Steam will blow out your ears hissing:
‘She is missing!  She is missing!’

Will you sigh and say,
‘Ah!  My Love has gone away’?

This happy land of Diemens, dogs and bush-walks,
Creative flurries, chats over beer, spag bol and chocolate.
Van trip, scoot down the coast,
Wander along the beach.

Talk of this and that, laugh
And put the world to rights.
Thrash out ideas, share some thoughts,
Wonder if living could be easier?

Two friends who shared a trip to the Beach twenty years back take stock;

And find that from start they had more in common than they knew.
Now seperated by ten thousand miles, A thousand quid and two days flying,
They're closer than they were
sat facing front in that old escort van.

Another chapter ends
Or begins
Or begins and ends.

I awake and think of boarding,
My plane.
I hadn't realised how simple it was
To just be,
To just exist side by side
With an old friend who you connect with.

No need for the usual preambles
Just straight to the core.
Don't waste time, because 20 years fit badly into five days.
And What happens if you click cancel....

before the download has finished?

I'm so reluctant to leave.
These days have been so easy and fun and blessed.
Brotherhood is hard to find
And when will I return?

A red light shines through my window
And appears on the wall across the room.
It blinks yellow and moves as the people opposite
Reverse from their drive
And head off to work.

The daylight outside is growing,
The rumble in the air is not traffic
But waves breaking on the shore
About fifty meters away.

Soon I'll get up, make tea
And we'll all go for a walk.
Me, my frind Toby, Pablo the happy staffie
And Ava the lucky foster dog,
Wandering care free along the beach
as the waves break around our feet.

A plane flies overhead. *******.
Okay I know!
All things come to an end.
And this too shall pass.
It's just I haven't often wanted to stay this much.
It's so fun here,
And life outside can be a bit full on.

Hard working father looks in the kitchen
And sees his son who he wants the best for
He wants his boy to become a man
To take everything life can give and even more
But the son has other things on his mind
Unintentionally slashes his father's dreams
To the father he's straying from the footprint path
But not everything is always as it seems

If it ain't broke how could you fix it?
Don't worry about all of your worries
One for all and all for one
Live fast die young, just have some patience

Mother loves her daughter so much
Tries to protect her from all that she can
The closer she pulls her the harder she'll push her
Both feel the other will never understand
But they know when they look deep in themselves the see each other
And after all the yelling and cursing they'll say "I love you" to one another

Somethings are easier said than done
And actions speak louder than words
When living with constant change
Get to know yourself, just take some time

We resort to name calling
When downloading and installing
Upload then uninstall
The preambles to the pitfalls
The hostile hospitality
The aromatic pheromones
But memories who've reprise their roles
And take *** shots and low blows
Overlook the unturned stones
Overgrown baby's scared
Student loans and ingrown hairs
They have an eye-witness
So they come for a search and seizure
Drastic times call for drastic measures
I mean it when I say you're really a treasure
Made of cubic zirconium and pewter
I can't confirm or deny
If it's all according to plan
And I'm inclined to decline
I just may just to your dismay
Or I plum forgot
Because I've lived my whole life with my head in a sling
I discourage the disparagement of  releasing disclose information
But speak of the devil
I almost missed it
This is my own theme song so you all better get ready to sing

The piper's come to collect
Do you wish to go farther or further?
"I will take time to restore chaos and order"
Everything will be fine in the morning, so do yourself a favor and relax

-

a fixture for a canvas
of words that spatter
like mud thrown upon
a concrete wall

creaks like ice coated
branches from such
weight and is then

topped off with finials,  
failures of preambles,
rambles and scrambles,

—

the legs snap and the
easel falls to the floor
with a slap—

imprinting the surface
with an exact opposite

that someone in passing
thinks should be a good
fit for a reading...


s jones
2021

.

She had, to be fair, a rather nice voice,
Pleaant in a steamy-shower-and-church-choir sort of way,
So it hadn’t been simply empty patter on his part
The opportunistic language of courting
(Though there was no shortage of that,
But she’d recognized it as such, writing it off
As something she’d deal with later)
And so she would serenade him,
Softly if not just simply humming,
In one of the common rooms
Scattered about the cold cow college they attended,
Or some bench on campus
During the fleeting bits of summer or spring
The land enjoyed before the earth locked-up for the winter,
And later still after the requisite preambles
Involving showers of rice and self-conscious dancing,
Gaily tossed garters and force-fed cake,
Her voice retaining its amiability,
Though often for her sole enjoyment,
As there were late meetings and flat tires,
Out of town conferences and overdue notices,
And in time those nattering bits and bobs
Which required their presence in separate locales
Seeped under the same roof,
Their dinners together brief gulped-down affairs,
The evenings spent in separate rooms
Perched in front of separate screens,
The chasm only breached by infrequent *******
(The process either perfunctory expressions of guilt
Or hopelessly frenetic and ultimately empty)
And she would often don a set of headphones,
Pulling up playlists of the old songs,
Though there seemed to be an emphasis
On those tunes of a rather minor key.

Correction of expression
Scrapped lips dip in aggression
Where the tongue slips
It often falters and sips
Saliva to prevents from regression
Dehydrated words sprout
With narrow doubts
Sad collaboration of sentences
Unfinished refrences
Fall far  apart
Leaving the conversation to depart
All preambles to absurd ends

All that I believe is a cease
To be. I’m wrong and roam away
Freeing, in shambles, preambles of stay
Stagnant condition a rabid position

Goodnight to
The rest of the world
As it wakes
The earthquakes
Somewhere far
From what stake
I have left in it
Anymore
None left to gamble
I placed my faith
Too long
In peoples’
Preambles
To flawed constitutions
Consistently
Riddled
With holes in the plot
And foundations of brittle
Collapsing,
En massing,
Unrest in the streets
With the corners
And shadows
No scraps left to eat
An effete
Feeble tenuous
State
Disingenuous
Promises make
Us look more
Like the terrorists

and the bitterness calls their names
as envy and jealousy beat them hollow
while missing minds and lesser talents fight
in reverberation in the dystopia of troubled lives

and oh! how they toiled in *******
silhouetted in brilliance of iridescent mahogany
they failed by the failures of inverted disenfranchisement
assiduously crafting bacon into pigs to squeak brotherhood

and they laid out all their preambles
justifying idiosyncrasies in bellicosity of reprobates
knights in enamel armours are adorned turds in white cisterns
flaying shticks of Oliver's Fagins' in Rasputin-nic gifts to Bolsheviks

and in wanton mess they glorify
the nature of the dung beetles rolling ***** of dung
celebrating as human dung beetles in the isles of dogs and fools
Tis the ***** of power in the displaced white horizon of mediocrity

and so hail the tellers of falsehood
and the scribes of delusions planting fantasies
the infected head-lice sellers hawking head lice and lies
the inhabitants of the wretched pond only know of wretched things

A shadow whines like shadows do
sick indulgence preambles of a dunce wise
in lucid fog a **** rat takes the orators lectern
giving a diagnosis of the white witch doctor's fantasies

Had it be real and valid in factual fare
then yonder prognosis shames all burgeoning misdeeds
of the witless slaves in rags and sackcloth marching to pipers calls
for by days & nights in maleficent toil wraiths are left egg-faced saps

Show me victory of jealous and envious poltroons
simpletons recounting inventory and character analysis
how the spawn of deceit and chicanery becomes all knowing
when all now see and know how their chalice of disgrace is held aloft

Their shape-shifting serpentine tongues
now recognized with contempt and derision by allies
the two-faced clowns now openly aired and seen as laughing stocks
in raging dishonor a shadow rears up to write the prognosis of snakes