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Best Poems Written by Dennis Jones

Below are the all-time best Dennis Jones poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Explorer

...and then just as suddenly, constellations appeared in a daytime sky, framed by white pines crawling with multicolored caterpillars. So from this day forward, they would search the sky for more star pictures. They then would draw pictures of what they saw with a mixture of ash and spit on their fingers on pink leaves that fell to the ground. They would all participate in the gathering of pink leaves, which they stitched together forming blankets to cover their humble homes, and their village had a pink glow. Their homes were as nests, or more similar to large hammocks, consisting of branches and bark lashed together with vines suspended from the heavy limbs of the tree canopy. Their homes swayed in a light breeze, creaking as they moved, and were festooned with blue, red, yellow and purple feather plumes, floral chains, sea shells and gemstones; along with the pink leaf blankets they resembled some extraordinary species of giant hanging flora, which attracted a variety of butterflies, and many small rodent-like creatures ran about. There was much activity in the trees above as they would hop from limb to limb, and home to home, visiting with neighbors and conversing through animated head, facial, hand and body gestures, with much whooping, or whistling sounds, their whole person seemed engaged in conversation. It was a wonderful and amazing sight to behold, I found the scene so engrossing that I immediately wanted to leave all that I've known behind and immerse myself in their uniquely intimate culture. I felt as though I'd discovered a new home.

Throughout my journeys I had completed several small drawings and paintings of the various sites that I'd seen, and reasoned that this might be a fine way to communicate and introduce myself, as I was sure they would recognize what I had put down on paper. I set down my pack and retrieved my paper and pencils from within. I settled against a tree and began to sketch the scene before me. Soon the noise and activity from the trees above grew quiet, and as I looked up the entire village had come out to the tree limbs and watched in silence as I worked on the drawing. Then, as if on command, they all descended from the trees and surrounded me in an instant. The speed at which they moved in unison startled me, but I soon discovered there was no threat.

As they huddled around me, softly whistling to each other, they held open one hand to reveal a wriggling brightly hued caterpillar. Then they each blew a light breath over the creatures, and it melted into a moving, shifting pool of color in the palm of their hands. They each dragged a finger through the color, and raising their arms, with a colored finger extended; they held it to the sky. In the next moment they each bent over me, and wiped the color on the drawing that I had begun. To my astonishment the color moved across the page completely on its own. New worlds opened up, revealed to me, as their spectral markings merged together into watery pools, then formed drips, streams, rivers with rapids, waterfalls, and gorges emptying into estuaries, seeking their own path of least resistance as gravity pulled this way and that, and then churning, and bubbling up in clumps, oozing off the surface in a tremendous mountain slide. I saw the opened shape of a mouth, or a great hole in the earth, which I looked deep into and could feel and see myself looking back, then puckered, shut tight, blending and separating like ever changing oil on water, flares would rise up from below and burn for a time until they subsided; then cracked into an infinite array of minuscule fissures becoming a frozen ocean, solid and immoveable in a kind of death. As I watched, it seemed as though hours had drifted by, which I soon realized were mere seconds.

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Brain Jewels

Mysterious brain jewel radiation chamber
Prismatic refraction blue sapphire ruby emerald amber
 
Electromagnetic spectrum distribution
Tubular nerve net staccato syncopation
 
Chameleon shape blender shifter
Kaleidoscopic genetic mutation sifter
 
Polychromatic vector generator
Infinite recombination stimulator
 
Reboot jack gray matter rejuvenation
 
Press automatic driver repeat backbeat
Feedback reverb downbeat slack beat
 
Routine maintenance check
Dream sleep mode
 
Shut down

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The Land

There’s something unique about the land where death, ritual and myth are close to the living. Time here is slowed to a point that it becomes meaningless; endless, as though it’s seen forever. The land is beautiful and mysterious, silently enduring; tinged with sadness and loss, but also richness that imbues a sense of familiarity; unsure if it’s a landscape from a memory that leaves a feeling that I’ve been here before or some disconnected dream that I had and can’t say when. The ruddy clay is heavily trodden with deep impressions of hooves, wheels and men. There’s a scent of hay under a dark gray blue sky; frost draped narrow cedars and moss covered old stone walls line an ancient path traveled by beggars, thieves, farmers, soldiers and kings; a common road used by many for millennia for daily tasks and ceremony. Here winter comes early to reveal the bones of the landscape and the ghosts that still linger. Where arcane gods once toyed and ruled over men determining the fate of crops, battles and loves. Ramparts in ruin once held strong against pillaging hordes; where much blood has been shed, saturating and feeding the soil. The weather worn bronze faces and gesturing hands of the local people; the furrowed bark of bare broad oaks and shriveled grapes on thick gnarled vines having grown from the same earth, echo each other in their age old tongues of the lost ways. The land and her inhabitants are inseparable even in death; she takes them in, covers and holds them for eternity. When the wind is just right across the clearing, on a night without a moon, the howls of the dead can be heard. Scars in the land continue to tell their tales.

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Train Wreck

“…know what son, this here trains 'bout to derail, I think I'll be gettin' off real soon. Ya feel this car rackin' from side to side? We're up on two wheels as this here box jumps from one rail to another! I'm tellin' ya, don go holdin' on ta anythin', I don know which way she's gonna go, so when I say jump, ya git yer behind o'er that door there like a hound 'bout ta sink his teeth in ya! Ya hear?!”

As the western bound tracks head into a sweeping arc the right embankment drops away several thousand feet to a verdant green valley below. The engine strains to hold the tracks, but the weight she's hauling is too much and she’s yanked abruptly backward. The sound of metal on metal screams down the mountainside as the first boxcar jumps the track pulling thirty-three others in straight succession into hapless flight, as one man jumps into oblivion.

The other, his mouth the shape of a huge “O” stands frozen at the gaping boxcar door, as he and the stream of loaded cars are suspended, weightless and silent for an eternal moment. In the next moment the cars continue on their downward trajectory and the first car explodes into the rocky earth, followed by five others that plunge and disappear into the first.  The remaining line of cars is stacked up, end to end, as a child playing with building blocks that tries to build too tall.  The snaking ribbon buckles and the last several cars whip forward, spitting their loads of timber, scrap steel and coal high into the air.  The entire screeching stack is crushed together and moves as one in a slow arcing descent as if it were a felled giant ancient tree.   
 
There’s a twelve foot wide, fifteen hundred foot long depression left in the valley floor that runs halfway up the mountainside where that train came to rest.  Nothing ever grows in that scar.  Only thing living from that wreck is the one telling the tale.

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How It Starts

…from as far back as I can remember I have made, “things”. I remember before I began school, at my grandmother’s home in Detroit and working at her kitchen table, where we would spend hours together drawing, coloring, cutting and gluing shapes, making things. Once I began school, Catholic nuns complained to my mother that I was always drawing. My books were always covered with my drawings. Friends would ask me to draw this or that and they would watch me. My father had skills as a draftsman and he passed his training on to me. My mother developed an interest in ceramics and I remember watching her paint the pieces before they were fired. My older cousin, Ron, had skills in painting and drawing. I loved visiting with him to see his latest psychedelic paintings that covered the walls of his basement where he worked, as the MC5 blasted on a record player. A particular memory from the fourth grade stands out in my mind. A teacher invited her artist daughter to visit our class and during her visit she gave us an assignment that consisted of a sheet of newsprint paper that had a single green mark on it and instructed us to draw something that began with this mark. Each student’s sheet had a different green mark. I recall being excited by the challenge of the assignment and dove into it without hesitation! My finished drawing consisted of three one-eyed clowns surrounded by balloons. She gave my work much praise for its composition and color and I was thrilled that a “real” artist acknowledged my ability. Her recognition determined my life course. I would be inspired by other teacher/artists throughout my education, but none so affecting as from this chance encounter from the fourth grade. Art has been a constant in my life ever since.

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The Land Continued

When I was a youth the earth was our friend, as it was our means of escape. We would run and chase each other across great distances, far away from the confines of home and its stifling traditions; we would imagine that we were flying a few feet above the ground following the contours of hills and valleys, crossing streams in a single bound or leaping to treetops. Elsewhere we would dig elaborate tunnels in the earth. We dug in the red clay until our hands were blistered. Sweat and soil mixed in our hands and on our arms and chests; filling the pores of our skin. We could taste and spit the iron colored dust. When our day was done we would recline in the shade until our bodies dried with caked red earth. We would then cover our labors with scrap wood, dirt and scrub bushes to blend with the surroundings. The tunnels were constructed in obscure forested locations to further their concealment. It was necessary to dig around tree roots and large boulders which became integrated into the tunnel structure and provided openings for multiple entries and exits. As such the tunnel passages were never straight, but root-like, turning and twisting following a path of least resistance. The passages were no wider or taller than what we could crawl through, and branching off the passages were multiple chambers where four or five of us could tightly gather in privacy, illuminated by candle light. The tunnel interiors were cool in the summer and also protected us from harsh winter winds. Here we would plot against nearby enemy tunnels. This is where we initiated and observed our own secret rituals and myths; meeting times, passwords, schemes, fears and desires. While excavating, we had discover buried bones and imagined they were our ancient heroes that the old ones talked about. We placed the bones at the entrance of our underground fortress to warn trespassers and identify allegiance to our fallen hero, whomsoever it was. Our heroes could have been anyone that we accidentally dug up.

We learned at some later age that we had dug our trenches into an unmarked cemetery that was taken over by the forest many eons ago. Later, the tunnels were where we first became acquainted with sex, alcohol and drugs; fortunately for most of us, such acquaintances didn’t last too long. This is how we came to intimately know the land and ourselves. We were digging to find; shaping and making with our hands a place to call our own. Here is where our innocence began and ended as so many generations before. We are so connected to the land; always underfoot our lives roll over it, we dig into it and it’s where we finally return to rest to feed the soil; we are inseparable, as a fish to water.

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Some Thoughts On Painting

My ideas for paintings emerge organically from the process of their making. Painting is a continuum and the plasticity of the medium is its beauty; it can be anything, which continues to evolve and fascinate the more that I see.

We are altered in some way by what we see. Affecting the cells and chemistry of our bodies, images flare internally and externally feeding our hungering brains in a constant flow. Our pupils dilate as our eyes absorb images, we may feel our heart race and our desire shapes what we see. Color elicits a tasty reaction in the back of the throat that originates in the gut - Painting begins in the body.

I begin with a black ground, a deep space, an unsteady void, within which I make something from mounds of seemingly inert and innocuous, yet culturally loaded goo. The beautiful and ugly, the imaginary and mundane comingle as I work with various paint mediums and exploit their inherent differences. I am a sucker for the space that develops at an early stage of the painting and I lose myself to the sensations of material. However unsatisfied with the ease of execution, I then let the painting sit for some time and with distance it becomes less precious and more of a “thing.” I can then see the painting objectively, and an irreverent, animated color and deviant, bulbous,figuration blooms from the morass to subvert and mock, but also expand my initial experience. I’ve found that a steady diet of paintings and cartoons are where everything and absolutely - nothing - at - all may happen and when they digest somehow acknowledge the humor, ambiguity and futility of now.

Painting is ripe with comedy and contradiction; it is an unstable process that reveals as much as it conceals, which always leaves me guessing and wanting more.

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She Came Out of the South

She came out of the south, straight up the interstate to find him, on a chrome and metallic red chopper that she inherited from her daddy after he died a year ago.  He taught her to ride before he died.  “One last thing before I go”, he said and so he spent the last six months making sure that she could ride it well, before he gave it to her.  She waited until the weather north cleared and spring came, then she decided to let out.  She couldn’t stand waiting any longer.  The power of the bike and rumble between her legs felt good; she opened it up and the acceleration and wind pushed her head back; pushing her deep into her seat.  The rush of cool morning air against her face was exhilarating; the air smelled of freedom.  Her hair the color of straw whipping in the wind, looking badass in her mirrored shades, black leather chaps, vest and engineering boots.  A thirteen hour ride do north, but she knew that she’d make it in less.  She knew too that he would never expect her to show up at his doorstep and she relished the thought of the expression on his face.  How little she knew his true thoughts about such a moment; he knew all too well that they would meet again someday.  So it was no surprise to him when he saw her turn the chopper into his neighborhood that early Friday evening as he was letting out the dog.

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Ice Fields

The moon, a glowing yellow hammock lying low and lazy in a cold southwestern November sky beckons me to sleep.  I watch as my breath rises behind me.  The cold keeps me awake.  A crisp clarity, a sharp focus as everything has turned to glass.  I hear the cut of my skates digging into the ice, pushing sliding me forward to a distant frozen pale pink horizon.  I settle into the rhythm of my movement, timing my breathing with the thrust of each leg as I glide.  Much drought this summer, rainfall and floods were late, but it is an exceptionally early deep long freeze this year and it came on so fast.  So I strapped on my skates and set out.  I keep an eye on the liquid below, looking for those unlucky enough to have been caught in the flood before the freeze over.  I carry a small ax and torch in my pack to free their rigid bodies and pull a sled to carry them home.  Most are thankful that I’ve recovered their loved ones and will pay me with food, or whatever they have for my efforts.  Some offer for me to stay with them awhile, out of the cold.  I may take them up on their offer and warm by a fire, but their senseless chatter drives me insane.  I prefer the emptiness and silence of the ice fields.

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Just Another Day

Wake up.
Out through the front door.
In through the out door.
Down a rabbit hole.
Then up and around.
Do a headstand on the lawn.
On the roof do a little dance.
Sit in a tree and talk to birds about romance.
Wasting time in every way.
Wasted time in every day.
Diesel fume breeze.
Memory spinning.
Of cars sounds passing.
Less days count out nonsense.
More things to do with time.
Before than ever.
Less so tomorrow.
To never think about.
When we do it all again.
To look forward to.
Put a little here and away.
Save it in some soggy hay.