Visitation
By Shawn R. Jones
Last night
I saw your image
relaxing in the green
suede chair
legs crossed
barefoot shaking
cigarette in right hand
drink in left-no ice
blue jeans-regular fit
dark jaw tightened
brown eyes fixed
and thin lips parted
by smoke escaping
a ghostly kiss.
for my husband, Jeffrey
In twenty years of respecting love’s art,
Between us some things are never discussed.
There’s a silence we both know we can trust
Beyond simple words that cannot impart
The emotions from which love’s longing starts.
Strong feelings I struggle to readjust
In the complication of love and lust
For a true man who has mastered my heart.
You’ve claimed and sustained my intricacies
In quiet moments I’ll never forget
So anointed by our sweet faithfulness.
Thus, in the midst of pure delicacies,
A fire reflects two dark silhouettes
Entangled in love’s unlimitedness.
Shawn R. Jones (2007)
revised (2012)
Woven
When I reach over
and touch your hand,
our fingers entwine,
and loose segments of me
begin to mend
and adhere to
broken segments of you.
My past, your past,
our defeated fathers, dispirited mothers,
sickle-celled self-hatred,
and disquieted memories dissapate
as our wan hearts swell
and we become whole.
No trite phrases can explain
how we regain virtuousness through love
and become all we were destined to be
in each other’s arms.
Shawn R. Jones
Often times I combine my love of poetry with my love of dance. I wrote this poem for my African Dance instructor and friend, Melanie Kelly, a few Christmases ago.
Doundounba
by Shawn R. Jones
for Melanie Kelly
Unbind blood of new creations
Let your body go.
Beat drums of liberation.
Feed the overflow
of rhythms under condemnation-
movements they call sin.
Swagger hips in your frustration.
Let you body win.
Jerk your neck out of oppression
till each braid whips loose.
Wipe sweat from pent up affections.
Feel tensions reduce.
Swing your arms in opposition
to everything you know.
Batter bones of your temptation.
Bang your body low.
Melanie, thank you so much! I miss you!
Music is soft sheets
still in the quietness of sleep
with two bodies of potential music,
a morning heartbeat, a tender breath,
and the rise and fall of a sleeping chest.
There is music of possibility
like slippers dragging
across a wooden floor
to a shower’s hard stream,
an occasional sigh, harmonizing
through a soapy mist,
with yesterday’s songs
hip hopping down a long drain
of ageless, desirable music.
Shawn R. Jones
In memory of my close friend, T.G.
I would have cursed all of Port Author’s town
If I had darkened the clear Texas moon
To change the fate of that November’s gloom
When bereaved loved ones had to lie you down
Dressed in your untimely burial gown.
Before you had a chance to fully bloom,
T’was love that delivered to you such doom,
But love will be sure to restore your crown.
Your husband is the one who breathes in shame
And his marred conscience will loosen what’s sane,
But his crime is not where you dwell.
For visions of you dancing were not slain
Nor were sounds of sweet laughter that remain
To live on more beautifully than you fell.
Shawn R. Jones (2008)
I want to see God
in the dividing light
of shadowed branches
that drop twisted leaves
in swirling blue currents
of green and black earth
and watch his smile multiply
in ripples that ride
cool autumn downstream.
Shawn R. Jones