Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

A Garden Full of Serpents

I remember how you grew into a stranger
In the lonely midnight that turned to morning
Where you gathered flowers more numerous
Than the babies you would never have by me
While the rolling endless clouds danced at your command
Until nothing but my dreams remained
On that day born from a guitar
Made of butterflies that only Orpheus could play
By a singing seashore that we once rode like a seesaw
Where I tarry not now that all those painted summers are gone
And disappeared into an ungentle bay of cruel waves
Near the sweet milk of a forest where acorns
Crown the snow of days now grown so short
Recalling how the rusty roles
We once played became broken mirrors during the saddest hours
Which any human has ever chosen to report.



Continues to Blur

The night before the atomic age became timeless
Back when heartbreak was a brand new bag
Back when she was as pretty as an arcade video game
'Neath the Chinese lanterns in the notebooks of the fluid decades
That were such an autumn feast
Back before her soul wept only pirate anthems
That dangle like my favorite novel's passages now in front of me
But then I always knew that I would be awkward in heaven
Back then just after my rare and antique childhood evaporated in front of me
As she hung it up like garlands of when she was a little girl
Back before we became two fearful strangers
Rubbed raw by over forty year's turmoil



Faintly Narcotic

I wake up in heartbreak at the tip of an island
That is like a black widow spider's kiss
To a sound of waves that are like melted chocolate chips
But all of its spectacular unspoiled beauty has at its center a heart of coal
For she is forever and long denied me
And gone except in thoughts that I can no longer control



For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.