Jill Jones

 

How To Move

taking the edge off time

to reject the wherewithal

do not discover the factual

move down the miniature

passing the goal, forget

 

 

 

Dark Clangs Down

material quivers ever
something away
underneath

patterns breeze
place
unravels moving

 

 

 

Wide

Not water but distance
widens in the waking
Moons are not decisions
They are gaps of light
timing little boats
I take
each time the tune turns
to face its origin

 

 

 

My Little Empire

Crossing the stage, little dogs
worry dream thought,
'who'd have known this would happen',
the police guard is sceptical.

My mesmerist stares
into what went before,
expectation slithers on the boards
in its old agony, something from
the past, the old empire, the coarse light
of a hand-picked audience.
'One day we'll disappear', though
immediacy won't hide us, even if
we're held up by strings, hopes,
'nothing fancy'.

Returning empty, 'to see you again',
the cut of your cloth, the kiss you made
private, your breathing skin.
Imagining where you are,
a hallway of dead faces,
a new illusion, sleeves rolled.
The blood drains, but who faints,
if we've never met before.

You want to know what is done
and how it's done.
Sometimes you must go home
even if it's a heavy task,
sometimes you do foolish things,
raising thoughts that can continue.

We enjoy the show, our own show
(didn't you, didn't you).
Storm troopers, the powerful
arms, swords, never stopped us, not
an orange tree, not a dragonfly, but
something like that, truth in illusion, voices.

Until the extraordinary light
from the furthest hourly corners.
Keep your cards close,
truth is in your hands,
the evidence, the leaves, the ground mist,
day by day, half-heard,
each voice, singing into the road.

 

 

 

The Birds

Ideologies are gleaming now
set down on the table.
We've been diligent.
Smell our armour and weapons
tested with cash cards.
You take your pick.
Smell the petroleum dodging
between death ray comics
or gunning taxis down almost-
mean streets.
We had it all.

Each thought balloon's
pow kazoom, extrudes such fun
as Dr Evil hits the ground.
He cried, like you and I.
Dummies, such cowards.
And now, to write guides,
how-to not why-for.

Don't eat the grass.
Don't taste the air-con
it might give you ideas, no ideas
nor even things
just the fundamentals, m'am
pretending ephemera
on each protesting key.

But the birds are back
knowing what we don't.
They're not our friends
indeed, who'd be such?
That morning's dialled up
each by each
to tear the playhouse down.

Sky-full of plastic surgery
once were clouds
now are clouds.

 

 

 


 

Getting Burned

'It's all gut stuff' he said or something like
she was 'afraid of the bunnies', or the crawlies, while
'the kinder are in the garden' with little stings and fun.
They're not paying attention, though somewhere else
is here too. The world isn't made of china
things crack, a crisis in the crystal. 'What is this
bombing madness' is no longer a question
and the yards not refuges are where you watch.
Come out to play, you will get splinters
you have not the stomach for but there is
more hunger than you understand, no longer
is there time for you if the plants won't grow.

You can say your finger was not on the trigger
the gun went off anyway.

 

 

 

 


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