JONATHAN JONES

Bob Dylan accepts the Nobel Prize

I liked that he spoke about what he read at school. The time he saw Buddy Holly, and the way he made it  sound like he was alone when he wrote it. Like he never had friends, only people he cared about. I liked the way he offered no reminders, and that he didn’t  mention Facebook. I liked  the sense of humor in his voice, and the thought he might be stoned as he read it.

I’ll never be a poet obviously.

I like a street of leaves the best

a line that weaves and saves nine lives

the trouble, where the river glides.

Broad daylight is no judge of taste.

My heart a stitch, best served by lies. 

The moon’s fat mouth some time 

ago made this its Godless claim on me,  

to teach me words first “go” then 

“go”, till no momentum pried 

me free, inelegant and worldly-wise.

We fear to be the stuff of dreams,

that buys us for a modest sum.

I like a street of leaves the best,

a camel train in summer’s heat.

The river glides, a line that weaves

between fast gulps of strangers’ feet,

eyes straining in the foreign light.

Sister Christ

This is me, hot, tired

and half out of my head

on a stretch of summer

afternoon, unaware 

of this old woman of maybe

twenty one or fifty six

with the strong

sweet wine

the colour of apricot

in my used coke bottle.

Shuffle – shuffle,

I murmur to my 

dead eyed dancing feet 

and I cannot

tell if it is the sweetness

or simply the wine 

that tastes like water

having no sense of being

followed, ignored

or sketched out

against the hairspray smell 

of pharmacy.

Voices muttering

in on cell-phones

scratching my beard 

with yellow fingernails.

The only way I could 

tell it was still me 

slurring constant sorrow;

merrily making no

sense, a smeared mascara

my mother’s

way of telling me

I had such pretty eyes

once when there was

only one of me.

*********************copyright Jonathan Jones