Category Archives: Poetry

Bill T. Jones

YOU said a system in Collapse is a system moving forward.

Do you have memories of Sex? Of Dancing? Of Dying?

I remember cleaning Hepatitis from your layers of Oppression.

I remember someone said:

“Man is the only animal that truly laughs and weeps.

So struck

By the difference between what is and what Could. Have. Been.“

Do you remember when they told you Why He Died?

And why You Would Too?

Was it a needle skip?

A thought stuck in the well of a record’s groove?

A sweeping emptiness so vast it fills itself?

As composition decomposes,

Note by note, as you unspool,

I wonder if it is not the Light that creates the Stars.

Unique Margueritte

Unique Margueritte

Not a thought was her own

And she grew to be no one

Before she was grown.

Each detail and feature

Distinctly the same

From her plain, striking face

To her rare, common name.

A copy of replicas

Odd and obscure

Exactly like everyone

Nothing like her.

In footsteps of forecomers

She was always herself,

As well as – no better than

Anyone else.

The worst day

The worst day of my life that I ever knew

Was the first day of my life that I spent without you.

I woke up, got outta bed, and made a cup of tea.

I sat down all alone, and I watched tv.

I went down to the corner though I knew you wouldn’t be there.

I bit my lower lip and ran my fingers through my hair.

The man who drives the bus said I’d have to make a choice.

I said it didn’t matter, in a coral colored voice.

I’d never made decisions of such pressing magnitude.

Where I’d go or what I’d be, I’d always left it up to you.

I never thought I’d have to deal with such mundane sorts of things;

I thought the world would stop the day that you stopped loving me.

Annalisse

Anna walks on careful limbs

Mermaid fins

On charcoal sand.

Swallows sun drops with her eyes

Seeks clearer skies

Than others can.

Her space is cluttered up with living

Life with grieving

Brush in hand,

She paints her past with turpentine,

Naples’ wine

And hinterland.

What is now, and what was never

With endeavor

Countermand.

Loss that takes and loss that binds

Intertwined

A woman stands.

Community

Within Siphonoforous stive

One scarce can criticize resistance

But the zooid does not, CANNOT thrive

By fixing on his own existence.

A galaxy is a star cluster,

Not one tiny star.

We only see one point of light

By reason of how far we are.

If I am you and you are me

And both of us are light,

So the dust and dreams that make you up,

An analogue to my own plight.

Bugs

Lennon, are you listening? The egg man’s at the door.

He says you finally got the order that you placed last March the fourth.

I wake up and my hair is in significant distress,

And LS Darling Alice let’s me spy her looking glass.

But the problem isn’t product, it is probability,

And Dr. Greg, though paramount can’t diagnose my malady.

Someone get me out of my head.

I refuse to be convinced that everybody’s blood is red.

They say the path to hell was always paved with good intentions

And all the plans of mice and men are nothing but pretentious.

I get down on my knees to reaffirm my sad transgressions

Straight to the loins of a brown haired boy in a reprobate confession.

Somebody call the exterminator, my mind’s infested.

A cocaine Angel gave me a smile, now I’m invested.

There’s a bottle in my pocket and the prescription isn’t mine,

And a gaunt, coat-hanger baby tells me everything is fine.

One pill makes you bigger and one pill makes you small,

But the little white pill that makes me chill is the one that I like most of all.

So someone get me out of my head.

I refuse to believe a single word the holy handbook says.

A compendium dashed by the men of the sash doesn’t hold me in concern

When the parish gets high on communion wine and liturgy in turn.

Too much too much

Too many sedatives

Too much amphetamine

Too many negatives

Diggin a hole in me.

How can I get out?

I can’t even get up,

I’m sick of this ghetto

And done with this getup.

My makeup is made up

My whole genealogy

Breaking me down

While this breakup is killing me.

This breakup is killing me.

This breakup is killing me.

Daily distortions

The cognitive kind

Of contortions contorting

My encumbered mind.

Coalescing ephemery

Out of validity

Pressure and pleasure

Both low probability.

Sentimentality

Stealing my sanity

Stuck in this town

While this breakup is killing me.

This breakup is killing me.

This breakup is killing me.

Id intuition

My ego unchained

Inhibition

A vision

I visit, ashamed

Of imperfect partitions

Of my personality,

Placating

Catered-to

Boys of banality.

Basal and base

I will wait for you willingly,

You’re still around

But this breakup is killing me.

This breakup is killing me.

This breakup is killing me.