"quilting" poems
If I ruled the world, I would be,
Not a benevolent leader, nor,
Would I be a tyrannical leader.
I would be something much unexpected and, hopefully, humble.
You see, I would be a quilt maker. Not of fabric and thread, though.
I would stitch the different cultures together, leaving each individual one unique, yet united by a common thread.
I would sit with my diplomatic needle and peaceful stitching and lead those whom hold contempt for one another see the other's perspective.
I would show them that,
The world isn't in black and white,
It's in full, high-definition color.
So let's celebrate unity,
Equality,
Individuality,
And uniqueness.
Because in the final chapter,
We all already rule the world.
It's up to us to thread ourselves to each other,
Or pull ourselves apart by the seams.
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 7:29 PM UTC
During the winter
flowers wash over with snow-
quilting in numbness.
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 12:38 PM UTC
Let me be,
As God intended me to be:
Neither a wicked elf,
Nor a fairy godmother,
Never a demon,
Nor an angel,
But a true woman,
Oh! No, not the ‘Phenomenal Woman’
Of Maya Angelou,
Drawing a hive of honey bees round
‘With the span of my hips
Or the stride of my steps’
But,
One with a loving heart,
Calm and caring
Though at times touchy and itchy
A gracious host and a helpful neighbor
Able to stand in my own light
And lessen the darkness of the night
An abiding spouse
In whom my man can see
An ocean of love in my dewy eyes
And feel the steady warmth of my grip
When the seas of life grow stormy,
For my children, an adorable mother
In whom they can confide,
Their doubt, despair or delight
A counselor, a friend and guide
With the balm to heal their wounds
Touch and move their spirits
And show them the miracle of love
Piecing together these different roles
Let me, into a close knit texture weave
The fabric of my life!
Like the interlacing threads
Of a great tapestry!
In a way, is not living the art of quilting
Bringing out unique patterns
Of exquisite beauty and delight
From the scraps thrown in our way!
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 7:13 AM UTC
Frantically unraveling into the throat of the earth
Throbbing molecules quilting the fabric of my minds eye into infinite horizons
Spoonfuls of dust embroidered in my hair
Branches woven into the groves of desolate despondency
My body clutching feebly into a mute embryo
My tongue silenced into a spinning crimson ocean
Tilting uncontrollably kissing the hard gravel
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 1:02 AM UTC
.
"That there Is'belle's house stinks wunderful turr'ble,"croaked Emma Beiler at their quilting bee.
"Jah...vell," sighed Rosanna Yoder. "All them there katzes , ain't so?"
Accordingly the two ladies set out to pay Travis and Isabella Salter a visit, only to be politely told that they had were in the process of taking some cats to a local shelter.
Two weeks passed and to the Amish folks' disgust the odour had merely intensified.
"Them there Englisch are chust liars!" Potato Sam spat the words out along with a *** of chewing tobacco.
" Ach, vell," sighed his wife Rosanna, unaware of her heavily sweating underarms. The Ordnung strictly forbade deodorant as well as perfume. "Reckon I best mosey over and see fur myself."
Travis opened the door with a tired sigh.
'Chust thought I'de ask vhat fur stinks yer house up so vonderful tur'ble...Izzy tells us youse gettin' rid of them but-"
A puzzled look crossed Travis weary face as he glanced toward the kitchen. Irritation gripped him, not lessened as Rosanna glowered at Tabby washing her face on the couch. Then a waft of a familiar scent, overpowering, drifted toward him from the kitchen. Brussel sprouts enhanced by -.
With all the stress, Isabelle was increasing her calming herbs, mixing the powders.... Valerian?
"Good evening, Mrs. Yoder." He motioned her toward the door, locking it firmly behind her. For a long time after she was gone he stood staring out the window.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 1:39 AM UTC
Sometimes there's a seamstress sewing in my head
Quilting batted blankets of existential dread
Comforters and covers cover all of our cold dead
They're neatly surged and finished in copper linen thread
Feb 22, 2018
Feb 22, 2018 at 1:19 PM UTC
In Shediac
The sidewalk threads up Main,
Past Church and hospital
To a yellow-frame;
Where wishes and the real world meet
Near Leger Street.
Here,
Quiet evening stairs leave cares,
And blueberries, dahlias and Parley's foam,
Like Sirens call our thoughts to home.
A quilt work of faces,
Some young, some grown,
Looked through windows to a time unknown,
Past the ledger of Grand-mere,
Past Hector's chair.
Though
Emilie was consumed with cooking,
Quilting, cleaning and sometimes singing,
She fed the dreams of her dear born,
And sheltered concerns of a heart well-worn,
Like a wrap-a-round porch in a Northumberland storm,
On Main Street.
These
Porch steps led to worldly affairs,
Finance, healthcare, CN, shopwares.
Each step, each child bore Emilie's breath,
Et dans l'eglise St. Joseph.
But
Bricks are brittle and paint will wane,
A picture or poem will fade and stain,
Yet Sirens still call out your name
In Shediac.
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 10:36 AM UTC
i did wrong by you
too many times
to count
and now
when i want so much to do right
you want nothing to do with me
i am sorry for sewing you a patchwork heart
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 10:37 PM UTC
May I write a Shakespearian sonnet on
the square inches of skin
between your thumb joint and elbow?
I’m a pretty good storyteller,
I can narrate in blank verse if you wish.
Can I write poetry on your spine?
Up and down in broken haikus,
tankas quilting along the curve of your sides.
Perhaps a sestina?
So be it.
I can work bay leaves into tea cakes.
May I write alliterations across your toes,
over finger bones and broken knuckles?
I have enough form poems to
paint my walls a matte black.
Gloppy ink blobs,
carnation stamps,
over raised red lines of a villanelle.3
Can I write poetry on your stomach?
I have soft ballad-dipped brushes
that leak cinnamon sugar.
Acrostic biographies written to a jazz tune,
papier-mâchéd into a handmade piñata.
Spider web hair pins
left in the bathroom sink spell out
another useless cinquain.
May I write a rondeau on your calves,
rising up into your knees?
Epitaphs in your running shoes
make limericks out of the hail in your back yard.
Don’t try super gluing petals back onto stems,
they’ll fall apart eventually.
Poetry is written on you like paper.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
These lost years of loneliness and social depravity
Have left me with nothing except this written tragedy
I sat and watched as the walls of my life crumbled away
Into this contorted sensation twisting through dismay
These ceaseless rememberance sessions screaming inside
A dead fixed stare on old friends taking cyanide
These bonds have come together in such a swift motion
And, just as fast they've came to their abrubt destruction
Dispersing any tint of mutual belonging from view
Molding a sad landscape of sighs and failing virtue
Watching as the remnants of my relationships loiter
The catacombs of these stockpiled confession letters
If only I could say anything my empathy had to tell me
My skeletal pose might have perched upright in a higher degree
And I would of have grown to a more formidable size
A clear cut aspiration that I never came to realize
Until all that I held grew too big for me to carry
and left me to stumble and sleep at the cemetary
Scratching dead love songs on century old gravestones
Where the forgotten have slept for generations alone
Hoping the crude penmanship might grace a weary heart
Or help a looming ghost feel a taste of love and depart
From the fog filled graveyard parade that it dwells
A final ringing from the synapsis of the greif bells
Sparking the ruin of a memory that doesn't seem real
A fading echo of a brotherhood I wish I could still feel
Detached from a reality that lurks in a decrepit imagery
Reshaping my empty cognition through a fake neuro surgery
I've reached the point where I have no reason to find
A replacement for all these buried pictures astray in my mind
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 1:00 AM UTC
we are bystanders at heart.
you always thought fools gold was beautiful
and we knew how to reach for highlighted
books in tattered low lighted bookstores
where people used to show compassion for
the little things.
old men croaked in these heavy feathered seats
but that didn't matter much.
it gave the place some history it never really had.
we would read each other excerpts that had no
significance and you would think of me as
kind of beautiful.
some nights we would drink wine, but then switch
to spiced *** to try and knock out the
thoughts that left bad tastes on our
swollen tongues.
i'd end up too drunk, and you'd find your
fingers woven in my hair that was too soft to
hold on.
sometimes you wished it was like wool,
keeping your hands from rigor mortis and
keeping me close to your bee hive body case,
busy with engulfing my bystander heart.
wool quilting to your shoulders,
you wouldn't give this up.
we may be patch work and hungover,
but at least we can keep each other warm.
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 22, 2011 at 1:26 PM UTC
Here in the dry constellations,
Orion winters in the blue west, the
Drinking Gourd spills silver on the void, and
the Seven Sisters crowd together,
quilting the covers of night.
I miss the beach.
I miss the salt, I miss the sweet
curled wave that rolled the wind
into a gesturing wand
of air and water,
joining two lurching souls
ungainly in their solitary progress,
into one smooth moving thing
hip to hip, stride for stride
handfast, untarnished
because you chose to throw
your arm around my neck
and let us spin
in the eddy, as the tide
ran out, till we were dizzy
and all the slipping stars
cleared the boards and moved
their heavy banquet
to our eyes.
©joyannjones December 2016
Aug 20, 2025
Aug 20, 2025 at 10:47 AM UTC
The house is now silent,
as if always it was this calm -
all asleep, all tidily done -
and in a thoughtful gesture
she reaches for the quilt,
grabbling for the needle minder.
In her mind, a coloured trickle
of threads draws upon the
inlaid tree branch - oh, the blossom
would happen before us,
would we look it trough her eyes
- as she picks a flaming orange
for the feather stich
and an ocean blue one
for a stich of satin feeling
and - there!, it starts showing,
the bird she nested for so long,
that bird bursting into songs
- now and forever catching your eye
here, molded by her hands.
It is so late, now.
Slowly, the unfinished quilt
is folded, threads and needle kept away.
The bird in esquisse flutters in her heart,
watching her stepping down
into the dark frown of the bedroom.
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 1:14 PM UTC
overcast
i pull on the day brightly
mine it at the maternal sources
and form a radiant :
a bloom from within fledgling elements
illuminant grenades
and the sky is peppered with characters
it's a wild play of childness
an old world whimsy
of 'here be monsters'
and shiny scrapbook havoc
the compass steps in
and with the turn of the globe
scores the horizon
clouds and the aviators
are combed into the soft crust
a spiral quilting
to cover the gift of a dream
given by one thirsty visitor
who stole it lightly
from the prism
of another travelling dreamer
God knows what'll grow
if there's a pillow fight
a deranged rain of innovation
perhaps some fiddly creation
will fast take over this world
and it's lover other
with the sky allied and fraudulent
we can host an early night
the stars (in strand)
prattle the ocular sense frontier
all constellations are like a single ribbon eel
never quite nourishing
upon its own thoughtless loop
a corduroy display
overcoat
Nov 27, 2021
Nov 27, 2021 at 9:55 PM UTC
I took you backwoods
Twilight went backwards
We crossed dimensions
Then Ian played flute
I told you what I want
You took a twist with your drink
We agreed to make it work
Babies made without actually having
I made you mine without thinking
You made me yours with a smile
Then you took your opposition
Gender reversal made math in your favor
Came out the way we both devised
Lord alien’s plan to metaphor control
As each other’s shade defense for lording
Partners in the grimy way we win over others
Your command heightens my experience
As we sway to the beat of concurrent hearts
Strumming stringed theories of dimensional bliss
Musical spheres sewn in the altogether
Quilting our shared communal experience
Grandmother, network our connections
Through mirth, myth, and siren’s long song
Superlative man-beast ushers your dancing words
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 11:11 PM UTC
God is not the cotton seedling that grows tall within manmade furrows , coloring the land as the first snow of Winter .. Jehovah is the quilting thread binding all of creation , suturing the thoughts of men in their moment of frailty and despair , tethering the covenant between Heaven and Earth ...
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 7:45 PM UTC
i wish i could tell you why i am this way,
why i see you and love you and still want to rip you to shreds
i look inward and backwards and beyond
and i see a young woman, a little girl, a grandma -
all of them intertwining fear and love,
sewing the edges together with stitches as they
sit by a fire and watch the quilts of their lives converge
each one beautiful, each one tragic, each one alone -
always wondering whether any outside eyes will ever
look past all of the complexities to see the simple truth -
we're all just looking for love without toxicity,
for love without contingency, for love without jealousy
i want you to look me in the eyes and see my faults
and love me regardless of the blood that drips from
my fingertips from pricking myself time and time again
with the quilting needle that's pieced together my sad story
i want you to know that my insides have been stolen
from me since before i can remember, and i may be
nothing if not afraid but i've learned that bravery is the
best mask out there, and that sometimes people are
worth trusting, and that maybe if i don't rip you to shreds
i might look into your eyes for awhile and find home
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 2:44 AM UTC
a shadow blue beam of dust
encases me;
they weave through me,
embroidering
gloomy brocades of
steel dullness.
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 10:05 PM UTC
This time I broke my heart
Giving us a chance to be together once more
Lacing
Weaving
Quilting
Stapling
Creating a stained glass temple
Beauty created through cut palms
Melding
Forming
Fitting
Polish the tainted glass windows of my soul
Bring me clarity in crystalline fractures
Kaleidoscope
Transparent
Allow your parts to hold my heart together
Creating this bombshell heart
Outright
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC
I can’t see my face
As it is drowned out
By obsidian mirrors.
The torch is passed on
By gold hooded monks
Illuminating curtains.
The moon's seven eyes
Blazing emerald,
Steal the iris of the sun
Hide the squalid tree
‘Neath the Kevlar cloth.
Infinity spins on tip
Of quilting needles
Knitted by the words
Of the god of the Raven.
The river divides
To the left and right
Ivory towers o’erlook
The cat tail junction.
Soundless chords echoed
Echoed
Echoed, echoed
Echoed
Into whiskey soaked sponges.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
I exhale my thoughts across the page.
My pen bleeds them into being.
The paper victim of open wounds to describe a hidden hurt.
This vicious dance of pain.
Breathing life to this war of love.
A mosaic of broken hearts.
Sharp edges of loneliness hidden in the mortar of hopefulness.
Is it fair to make believe a whole out of pieces?
To take these glass hearts and shatter them to make a masterpiece.
Taking the ruins of a life,
Puzzling them together.
A cobbled set of emotions.
Flashes of light against the surface of what once was.
Reflections of color, seeing beauty in the aftermath.
Perhaps hearts were never meant to remain whole.
Collecting parts of others
Quilting the fabric into a blanket
Warm enough to forget I am made of parts
Parts of everyone I’ve met.
Surrendering shards of me for the art of others
Taking pieces for myself to fill the gaps.
Sep 11, 2016
Sep 11, 2016 at 1:16 PM UTC
I speak to you in riddles
A mismatch of half formed inflections and watered down complimentary words
I constantly tailor my speech to try and fix the places you need patched
Attempting stitches to fix the pools of pain lingering in the spaces between the freckles spanning your back,
My fingers try to touch them away but my hands cant block the bruising spread beneath the plane of your skin.
You’ve become one of those heartbeats I have to keep my eye on for fear it will scatter down the screen and never return,
Your clothes are brightly colored, meant to weather the wind, but on your thin frame they trap you like wetted wool
Making it impossible for you to leave the form you possessed in the past.
I try different types of talking these days
Leaving maps for you to find the thinly veiled meaning behind the paper kisses
And the gold-leafed print floating inside the swirls of my lips
The pads of my fingers try to score your jaw with reminders
That the only thing hollow is the space between your neck and your chest
And the words I whisper into your void is heavy with inflected subtext.
I want to place your quilting back around your heart,
Make your veins more insular to keep the warmth inside that instead trickles out through your hands and feet that never feel the sun,
Your body temperature is constant and chills my intonations,
I can’t give what you won’t take and every day its 20 degrees.
I hope that in your desperation to forget the words you will better remember their meanings.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 6:08 PM UTC
The deer lies dead in snowdrops,
Naked and gored before the Copse,
Webbed innards, cradled by ghost petals,
Stewed infancy held close by Lamium nettles,
A gutted riffle wallows nearby,
An empty barrel, gunpowder palpable upon the sky,
Coughed up bullets, lain out in velvet grass,
Reeking of ripe saline, flesh and bloodied brass,
Rotted fawn rests, asleep in the forest,
Dried tears bleach her coat in premature rest,
Supple life bitterly sprawled in a crimson cruel quilting,
Embraced by lapping bellflowers, Hugged by only the wilting.
Dec 12, 2024
Dec 12, 2024 at 12:03 PM UTC