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Best Poems Written by Jon Hopwood

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Madonna Lionessa (Part I)

--Before meeting with her father & sisters, Cordelia is dealt a card depicting Woodwose by
Mor-Ríoghain, in the guise of a gypsy hag.

As my sister's once-beautiful gray cat looks at me
She wasted now by a thyroid condition
I wonder what she sees in me today.
I think it would be nice to have a cat
Too bad I'm so allergic
Worse case of it we ever seen
They said at Walter Reed
And they'd given me just half a dose
On the arm during the allergy test
As I had warned '˜em.
I wouldn't want a house cat
A cat should be out-of-doors
In a barn killing mice and vermin
Stalking song-birds and eliminating
The timid humor of the chipmunk
A tiny lion.
Predator.

The sweetest thing I ever saw
Was a particoloured tabby
Crouched on a lawn
A tiny lion for sure
A beautiful hunting stalking machine.
She had a bell around her neck
And it was funny
This middle class hausfrau attempt
To deprive Tabby not of her powers
But of her reward.

They belled you, my tiny lion
So they could claim your rewards.
But you are courageous, nimble,
And you fear no pain.
With your jackrabbit hind legs
And your fierce forepaws
You manipulated the
Constraining leather collar,
Yanked and pulled and pushed
Yourself away from the executioner's yoke;
Impossible but that's your genius
To do what can't be done.
And when it was over
Claws cracked
Your neck scratched and bleeding
Drying blood stiffening the matted fur
Your coat no longer lustrous due to the
Enormity of your labour
You lay in the grass on your side
One eye glancing a peal-less heaven at an oblique angle
Over the tops of trees dancing together in a flying grove
Their purpose forgotten by the once-born.
They thought they could defeat you
And you vowed after surviving your small Shoah
'Never again.'

Details | Jon Hopwood Poem

Madonna Lionessa (Part Ii)

ii.

And the glands beside your heart
Some secret of evolution they couldn't understand
So they never troubled themselves to puzzle
Out why you, their sphinx, remained silent
Now begin to purr.
It frightens you.
You had purred after they scratched your proud head
And petted your belly after you had been collared,
The jingling of the bells firstly sounding delightful
Until they became the tolling mournful keening of
The jester's hat, Lear's Fool, sitting sadly at the
Stage Door Canteen in a new costume, 
Half-drunk on weak yet cheap well scotch,
Waiting for the sound of the buzzer
To go on as Cordelia, another cat at the end of her rope
Who forfeited a crown, was hunted down, soon to dance
To the satisfied grunts and faux horror of the groundlings.

And now you purr against your will as you 
Look at your new owner; you had been
Discarded, abandoned, dumped,
A sad case, this cat,
Who would no longer hunt 
But lay in the grass motionless
While mouse and chipmunk and songbird
Who once feared her now jeer her
On their way to larder and nest; 
She did not care and was cast behind 
Prison bars among contemptible cats 
Driven reasonless by indifference
Which was never the source of your problem.

He approaches you at the shelter now;
He has friendly eyes and a soothing voice
But he approaches you with an encompassing hand
You can imagine around your neck 
Like a constricting steel collar --
You won't be garroted again.

You hiss, rear back, ready to strike, would strike now
But for the confusing cacophony inside your pricked ears from 
The audible purring beating seducing quickening inside your breast.
Can you ever be free of him?

Details | Jon Hopwood Poem

Berlin

An Excerpt from the Poem "The Man Who Sold the World"

ii.

Meanwhile
In the American Sector
A small cermaic 
Statue of The Christ
Hidden by muscular
Candelabra arrogantly
Thrusting toward the vault,
A post-war knockoff
To replace a priceless
Treasure survived the
Allied Bombing to fall
Liquidated by the 
Battle of Berlin
Begins shedding real 
Tears of
Blood.

And the assistant
Sacristan: 

Young priest/Father 
Confessor,
Believes
And keeps the secret
As his Soviet handler
Has taught him:

"Never talk.
Think, but don't speak.
Never trust, but 
Believe in me."

He keeps his trap
Shut.

A sign from heaven
Yes, he believes,
From heaven above:

Just for him
To comfort this
Judas on the 
Journey to the Tree
In the orchard.

Best Poems Written by Jon Hopwood

The Druid & the Bard

Amphibians

Madonna Lionessa (Part I)

Madonna Lionessa (Part Ii)

Berlin