Ron Jones was a poetry board bum, a rake and rambling boy. His writing was published in literary magazines, newspapers and online. He had two daughters & lived with a Madonna. One day he hoped to retire from his day job and relax in a hut on a beach in Brazil.
Remember
The two of you slipping
into the well of night,
fluid hip pressed
against belly, lavender sheet
snaking up, over your shoulder
as she arches her back, moves
close as dream...
blue rain into summer.
She sighs, drawing
your hand to her breast.
As your flesh listens
to hers, you sense the curve
of her lips remembering
all you have been together
and all you have not.© Ron Jones
Last Week
One mutant tulip bloomed
outside my door, an anemone,
the size of a dinner plate, red-veined,
pink. Those damned lawn chemicals.
Then, hoopties thumping bass, drive
up and down the street, rattle
windows and shake walls.
Pause friend, while I light
another cigarette and let you
in on the rest. Listen: The cancer
tests are negative. I'm waiting
for the valet to bring the car around.
I've a fine buzz on Demerol
when this old guy with busted, braced-up
legs wheels in. He's got a harp
in a holder around his neck and a red
squeeze box in his lap. He's playing,
"Nearer My God to Thee."
The grass needs cutting,
so I drink a beer and mow. And the tulip?
To hell with it. The kid comes home
with the wife. You'd have thought that tulip
was a shrine to the Blessed Virgin.
I turn the TV to the news
and see the cemetery in my home town
has been bulldozed,
that even the dead have moved on.
© Ron Jones
X-Rays
(for Susan)
What can I say after those unbearably
translucent pictures:
that I put out table scraps for the dog
fed the cats Nine Lives Tuna & Chicken
then cleaned the litter box;
that seven new messages are on the machine
and one of us will have to return the calls;
that I cut coupons from the paper
and worked my way through the bills; that last
night a town somewhere in the Dakotas was all
but wiped from the face
of the earth by a freak storm; that a retired
couple in rural Iowa won the lottery and plans
on moving to Florida;
that the past belongs to the present
and to the vast unfathomable universe
that is the human heart;
that the sun still slices the horizon beyond
the river and all will be well; that I came home
showered, turned the tv on
and kept to routine common agreements;
that I watched myself observing these distracted
moments as if I were the
camera video taping over my shoulder;
that in the absence of flesh the abrupt
language of bone
rings sudden and clear?
© Ron Jones
Careless Love
Lasted until the children were
nearly grown.
Their father hears sounds
made long ago as he walks
alone at the ocean's shore.
He sees the faces of his children
in the salmon colored sky;
in the red sun he sees again
how it was when they were born.
The gray stones that litter the beach
are dry and cold to the touch.
They are like words he
does not understand.
Of the children's mother he
can see and hear nothing
although he imagines her
beyond the blue, curved horizon.
He stands alone and feels
the water's pulse wash
the ground from beneath his feet.
He cannot remember how
sunlight touched her hair,
or where, the color
of her eyes, or the innocent
violence of their youth.
Here is a man who does not
recall which of many
languages they spoke.
© Ron Jones
Troubled Authors Sleep Their Dappled Lives
Our text here is the author's
existence, his book of mistakes,
his leap from a tall building
at age five--he wears a Superman
outfit. How is he to know
what a long, insistent fall this will be--
to one last-night consciousness
in his single story
ranch at the end of Goodman Drive.
Desiccated remains along
with an overweight Cheshire cat
are found in the bath; water still drips
from the shower
head. And this, three months
after gravity and porcelain claim him.
Our subtext consists of 2631
cigar boxes into which the author
compartmentalizes fifty-seven hard
luck years. Photographs, IRS documents,
valentines, dossiers, receipts,
a child's crayon drawings; the list
is speculative--perhaps stones, coins,
broken watches, Cracker Jack
baubles, mix with love and french letters.
The cigar boxes, each layered in duct
tape, are whisked to a landfill;
the books are closed.
© Ron Jones
At Morning
Watch your step, I say.
"Look." She whirls and points.
"Eagle wing shadows."
Sure enough a great dark
bird is overhead.
One wing beats against the sun.
Then: rustling in the long brown grass.
Emily jumps; grabs for my hand
as some small frantic
animal we cannot see runs hard
for the timber. We stand
silent watching the eagle plunge
"Like Icarus," she says.
I want to tell her what I know
of the cold and distance and time
that separate the stars.
She's my daughter.
I let go her hand
and feel the tug and pull
of loose stones underfoot.
Keep your eyes to the ground, I say
as she leads me
toward a red elm forest
then on, to the next vanishing thing.
© Ron Jones
Runway Lights
Greasy blue steel, I stare
at the Colt in my hand.
Someone (me?) forgot to pull
the shades. Fall nights
used to be starry, fresh as the ring
of a Bakelite phone,
now the nights are worn, occluded:
inside the children laugh;
Laura sets a dish on the table,
steam rises;
I see familiar hands pass the salad,
perhaps I cracked
a joke; it's me all right. I can tell
by my gold rings and that stumpy
thumb lost to a circular saw in 86;
I could walk in the back,
open the door
on the intolerable, shoot them all...
or simply knock, but they'd see
the gun and be frightened; I know
how they are, living in a city
where the only lights in the sky are 747s;
I'm in a holding pattern too.
I turn away
and walk quietly down the street,
pacing myself.
© Ron Jones
This That & The Other
Clarity is the key they say to writing well
& well they may know apples, oranges,
obsessions. The kittens, Pancho and Ganja,
don't need to understand to apprehend…
we make stuff up as we go, no big deal,
this, that, the other. Papa likes his bourbon;
mama likes her gin. My sweetie watches
Rather. I tell her she can play with my tube.
These far-away voices, this temporary
landscape un-naming the un-nameable
isn't bringing us closer to the bone.
There's no compromise in naming
a thing, trapping syllables, language's
muscular heart, no utility in wanting
it written, wounds inflicted
on words…we won't mention love
or confession; why would we when
it's all we have. Still, there ought to be
some place to hang meaning, or not,
maybe meaning should be lined up,
bourgeoisies shot into a ditch, bulldozed
over arrhythmically simple words, sinew
and bone, seeking illumination.
Put this away now, in a drawer
or cigar box; have another drink, another
cigarette, make silly indigo-night talk,
mutter sweet nothing while outside,
mandolins & saxophones flicker
in the streetlamp glow
until sleep is wanted, until the body
demands an understanding of the mind.
© Ron Jones
No One Knows What Electricity Is.
Or what goes down in the neighbor's house
when the shades are drawn. My advice is,
don't worry the unnamed. There are more
than enough peas & walnut shells to go around…
prestidigitation in a lover's touch….Smoke
and stare at the ceiling mirror while grifters
grift, and manly men in cheap suits dream outlaw
sorties…tales one hopes will not be told…
diminished, hailstones disappear in the sun;
instantaneous mumbo jumbo like breath
touches us inside out. Decant the Muscadet;
empty the haversack, move through solid air--
fish don't miss memory--tintinnabulant co-
conspirators of ire...we're goners sure…
like the guy who fell into a Klee, August 16,
1987, The Cleveland Museum of Art, circuits
switched to off, streets gone suddenly dark.
© Ron Jones
On My Feet
Maybe I'll go
stumbling among
strangers like Pablo
into the street.
Brittle, believing still
in art and all
that nonsense.
© Ron Jones
Three Hundred Dollar Boots
The way to catch channel cat:
treble hooks & chicken guts. Where to
find guts? Now.
First things thrown out:
blood on the highway, beer
bottles, thirty years.
U turn; address the direct question. Which exit? Curtain
call booked on the horizon.
No plan for isomorph. Dead
by thirty you thought.
What to do when you're still here---
Racing rake and rambling boy proof
Recursive---- your children are humping
like mopeds.
Elucidating patience and marijuana
in the cellar they play at their lives, believing.
How they do believe-they believe I'm
alive. Maybe I'll take the 87 Citation
on a road trip, buy
a three hundred dollar pair of boots
taste fresh strawberries, begin again,
find some pretense to love,
some reason
to scribble & scratch, Kilroy was here.
© Ron Jones
The Closed Grain of Belief
The woman she'd once been
lived with a man in an old white
house on thirty acres. A solid wooden
bridge spanned a fast running stream
at the end of the drive. Shade trees
and lilac bushes bordered the yard.
She and the man were
crazy in love.
She believes this is how it was:
the two of them scraping, painting,
putting house and life in order. She
sees the papered walls and floors
of close-grain Red Oak, tongue
and groove made to endure, floors
she and the man worked, sanding,
then staining, sweating over in the awful
summer heat until they'd rid themselves
of every mark and trace of those
who'd gone before. Claiming the
floors for their own, the woman
and man dance barefoot
on the smooth clean wood, circling,
turning round the room, marking
territory like two peacocks
beneath a fingernail moon.
All this she remembers, or imagines
to be true, although she knows
truth is no defense against memory,
the persistence of belief, or even
outright deception. Perhaps there
were two kids, two jobs, two very
different points of view, and other
darker going's-on in that old, white
house; things taken for granted,
exchanges not taken lightly, things
that over time took their toll.
Perhaps those hardwood floors
were finished in blood, or a woman
there drowned in a swollen stream's
sudden, rushing waters.
© Ron Jones
Walking The Aisles
dark bread
broken on the far side of nothing
orange juice
sunny days we nearly saw
kleenex
dirge for a thousand festive songs
dish soap
toads copulating on my chaise lounge
tonic
couldn't get the hang of tap-dancing on water
cigs
all of it greatly increases a serious
risk to health
peach preserves
some joker got lucky and stole her
apples
coincidence of form, content and adornment
pastrami & swiss
fill the two of them full of holes
sprouts
children grown in someone else's garden
cucumber
a metaphor sillier than three dancing monkeys
gin
straight shooters oblivious to mounting
garbage, stained sheets
toothbrush
everything needed you knew, one look
at the bastard's shoes
© Ron Jones
Flight
(for R. C.)
Death's door was closed
the day I rode my Indian off the cliff.
A sign read, Gone Fishing.
I believed I was flying.
I thought this was life.
Blue sky, green earth
the tops of trees below.
I landed in telephone wires.
I heard the sound of breaking
bones, a sound like laughter.
The sound of dumb luck.
Vietnam:
I walked point, re-uped
ate acid
the way a kid eats candy.
I flew home on a freedom bird
bought a house
on high ground.
I tended to the lawn & trees.
People, this was another life.
Yesterday, I drowned
in a muddy river
caught by swift currents
finally pulled under.
At the end
one sees how the dead survive
worlds of their own making.
© Ron Jones
