Poem of the Day

I’m going to see Mad Agnes tonight (yay!) so I thought I’d share something from Adrienne. This one’s from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place.

I think it’s time we heard from Adrienne Jones again. This one’s from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place.

Dog Dream
By Adrienne Jones

loneliness is a vicious black dog.
he chases me
as I walk down the road to school.

fangs bared, he must bite something.
I break off pieces of my pencil
and throw them away
for him to chase.
I wake, alone,
and sit down to write again.

Here’s another one by Adrienne Jones, from Written in Stone.

Here’s another one by Adrienne Jones, from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place. Also, the new Mad Agnes CD, Revenants, is amazing!

Expedition
By Adrienne Jones

I am the undiscovered moon
that shows up as a shadow
against something bigger
and brigher.

My nonspecificness incites
your compassion, my
nonlinear orbit your
curiosity.

There is a vast liquid sea
of unknown composition
on my lighted side,
a crater on the dark
reflective side of some
colossal,
ancient impact.

No one lives here now.

It will take you a long time
standing by this alien harbour
to piece together my past,
to assign meaning
to my components.

You will lovingly send out probes with names
on suicide missions
to send back data
that will take years
to process.

You will have to call in
an emergency crew for repairs
when things break down.

You may or may not
find water.

What you will eventually find,
if you are faithful,
is that I am not only the moon
but also the planet,
habitable
warm
and dizzyingly ringed.
My oceans teem
with finny swimmers
and birds perform
the seldom seen dance
of the red dawn.

You’ll step round the sacred labyrinth
that turns back on itself.
Leave your token at the center
and I will walk back with you
on the path in between.

Here’s another one by Adrienne Jones, from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place.

The Affair
By Adrienne Jones

I love my pain so much
I’ve proposed!

Stay with me forever,
I say.
We know each other better
than any lovers.
You’ve been faithful
even when I was cheerful
over some other fancy,
always there waiting for me
when the air cleared
and I was ready to come home.

I know what you wear
and how you eat.
We speak a language no one else
understands.
You make me feel
so alive
and so real.
It’s hard to
imagine going anywhere without you.

Let’s have children
and name them:
Tears, Tremor, and the twins, Grief and Ire.
We’ll live a long life together
and leave everything to them, in the end.

But, wait.

There is something I must say
before we wed for good.

I have had an invitation to sit,
to look within,
and see the emptiness in all things.
It has come from the highest source
and I feel I must accept.
I’m sorry if the timing is awkward,
but don’t worry;
the Source has assured me
that Nothing
will come between us.

Here’s another one from Adrienne Jones. This is from Written in Stone.

The Voice in the Mirror
By Adrienne Jones

I belong to a secret corps of women
with passwords known only to those
in their forties and beyond.
So this is how it is.
We didn’t know!
We didn’t know!

My journey
took me far beyond my native country,
or any I had traveled.
Desire was Paradise at eye level
but the landscape was rocky
and cut my feet up to the heart.

Through its center ran a river.
My battered guidebook said,
“Don’t drink the water;”
but I was so thirsty I drank.
It sickened me for the better part
of a year.

When I strengthened
I set about my escape.

My fragile map said
I could not return the same way.
So I set off through the desert
on wounded feet
and made my way to the woods
where I walked in shadows
along deer trails.

Many times I looked back to Desire,
hearing the river calling,
but I caught dew in laurel leaves
and drank of that.

When I returned to my house
I looked for my face in the mirror
and knew for sure
I’d been lost.
What came back in my place
was an older woman
I hardly knew
who had walked the desert
and trailed the forest deer.

Every day the river called me.

I put my house in order and
after a few seasons it began to feel
like home.
I looked out from my upper window
and scanned the horizon with wondering eyes.
I watched the changing of my hands
and felt the heat begin to steal
into my bed at night,
soaking one shirt
and eyeing another.
I found old Notions scattered about
and discarded them.
The woman in the mirror became
familiar
and friendly, and one day she smiled back at me
and I smiled back and said,
nice haircut,
and she said gently,
do you still want to go back?
I said, I know I can’t go back,
and I don’t want to go back,
but oh, I own the bright beauty of Desire
and the pain which is its shadow.

And she said, yes, you’ve found the secret;
you own it,
it does not own you.

When she finished speaking
I saw my lips had moved.

This is to go with a friend’s new favorite shirt. The poem is from Written in Stone.

It’s Simpler Than You Think
By Adrienne Jones

Back at home, Americans
argue the infinite complexities
of war, while

coalition trucks rumble
through a small village
chased by children shouting
for water.

Insomnia has attacked me again. At least I’m in good company! (Today’s selection is from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place.

Sleep and I are strange bedfellows; true
By Adrienne Jones

Sleep and I are strange bedfellows; true,
We’ve made, for decades, our Lethean crossing
(On rare occasion, I am prone to tossing
Until the ferry’s gone) as many do;
Hand in hand we’ve yielded up the night
To Morpheus’ dark mirror; in its gleams
We parley in the lexicon of dreams
Whose wisdom cracks and shifts in morning light.
But there’s a place between the bank and deep,
A fragile state where I can sometimes hear
Tones of such aching sweetness and so clear—
“Are these the spheres in their majestic sweep,
Or—oh! Some angel, bright celestial dancer,
Sleep?” I entreat. He offers up no answer.

I got a very special treat yesterday. Adrienne Jones, a member of my favorite band, Mad Agnes, has self-published two volumes of poetry. As soon as I heard about this, I ordered them and they came yesterday. In short, I love her work and I’ll be posting more of it! If you like the samples I post, you should definitely order your own copies! I decided to start with the shortest one (which is from Walking Down the Street in the Spirit Place). It’s so simple, but it so perfectly describes how I often feel!

Guilt
By Adrienne Jones

I tried to give up guilt, but
I couldn’t do it.

Now I feel just terrible.

So Margo, Mark and Adrienne killed me tonight when they sang this song as their encore. I don’t generally post song lyrics, but I’m making an exception in this particular case. Somehow I always cry when I hear this song, yet I am incredibly comforted.

Guardians
By Adrienne Jones

After a morning there is an evening
And when the evening’s gone, another day.
If your heart’s broken, it will be mended,
For we will rise for you like guardians.

And we will sing your soul to keep
And we will keep the dark at bay
And we will lift you up to greet the morning.

If in your lifetime this world of troubles
Should come to peace among the nations,
Your heart, in gladness, would leap to heaven
And nevermore you’d need your guardians.

But we will sing our world to keep
And we will keep the dark at bay
And we will lift you up to greet the morning.