-


take any pen and
pull off the cap,

test-scribble on paper
to see if the machine
on the end of it
will distribute
ink

or

take a
charcoal
briquette and
mark a concrete
wall with your ideas
in full black

either way—

i guarantee that
—somewhere—
an authority will
make an attempt
to pressure wash it
back off with a
water cannon...


s jones
2021


.

Can I just stand here and disappear?
I don’t want to have to do it all by myself.
You know, I tried it before.
And where do all these evil people come from?
Same place as all of us?
I won’t come back here.
Maybe they will, I’m sure they will.
This place called earth is full of hell.

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Maybe I have become a bitter beast
Insides numb
To say the very least
Sometimes I am overwhelmed by what I can't control
Sadness disfigured once beautiful soul

I was always infused by the quartz of time
I balanced love in separate hands ; cut , aching , refusing to heal

Happiness was measured out one grain of sand at a time
My measuring cup runneth over

My thoughts are bleached  bone white .
But I have preserved the marrow of my ways

I am the walking cacti
that push rocks in the sand creating the trails of tears that never reach the ground

I am desert
Full of the emptiness
that exists on the face of clocks and time

I am one grain of sand
The silence of the wind
I have no foundation
I'm tendered to my whims