Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Rebuilt Another Day

A Jackknife made of birds and bees
Explores the quicksilver chimneys
Near the mill pond that sleeps
The death of dark long years
Beneath the brass and broken clouds
On this whirligig of a cold day
Whose dim streets open the stale pastry
Of my old wounds
Till I retreat to my garret room
To paint all this with quill and ink
And rhymes my pigments that I carefully mix
So that I might better fill these "canvases"
With what grows on vines
And had the power to make sleep the mind
Way oh way back in most ancient days
Gone forever now as if by ocean waves
Carried away to the junkyard of old deities
No longer even in the thoughts of the humblest birds or bees.



Even When Silent

The intricately carved monastery soars like a carousel
The red hot polka dotted riverscape will have its fifteen minutes of fame
As a flock of origami cranes glides up its cliffs
That are like a room full of mirrors
As they go to where the story takes them
As all becomes like it belongs on stilts
As I let out a long sigh of rusty salt spray
And all of this is after the snow melted
And left behind only giant saxophones
To pollinate the nearby gardens that were scribbled long ago
On a blackboard salvaged from hillsides covered
In neon yellow autumn leaves and quartz crystal stone



A Forkful of Violins

The constellations in the winter sky
All start to blur together
As we watch the fog roll in
On an island surrounded by kelp
Where plum blossoms covered with snow
Come unbidden upon us like an absinthe dream
And strange and sparsely lit is the ocean view
That has all the shrouded loneliness
Of a mournful train whistle
Built with the cinder blocks of midnight
And sounding pure and perfect
Like a pink conch shell
Never wavering in pitch nor timber
Even as it waxes and wanes
Like the moon tiptoeing like an elf in the darkness

Ken L. Jones has written everything from Donald Duck comic books to dialogue for the Freddy Krueger movies for the past thirty plus years.  In the last three years he has gained great notice for his vast publication of horror poetry which has appeared in many anthology books, blogs, magazines and websites and especially in his first solo book of poetry Bad Harvest and Other Poems.  He is also publishing recently in the many fine anthology poetry books that Kind of a Hurricane Press is putting out.