WORDS/POETRY

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When death loots all your fine -tuned plans
leaving nothing but truth to tell.

Take up your deep honey bass.
Feel its pleasure in your big hands.
Plumb the depth and grandeur of your heart.
Play it naked, play it blind
gleaming bright
as a moonscape.

Deliver the voice robbed of its future;
denying deaths silence, every note breathing.
Thrill through the rustle of luster rich strings.
Make them quiver and sing.

Then flawlessly play the cry in your soul
wounded in flight,
bow bending low
your dark plumed
epiphanies.

Night lifting high your unbroken wings’.

Elena Jones / Copyright 2016
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I found you in my dreams the other night.
The warm skinned Southern boy you were
when we lived in Washing D.C.

That city parcels memories. Some visit my dreams.
All the more real for their valiant tenacity.

The way back when of it.

Youth’s heat sill sticks to skin like languid
honey pouring humid in summertime.
But our past is found through that multi-cultured hybrid
town, its streets webbed with bridges, the richly flavored
late night people, sweet soul music melting in our pores.

When the sky turned dark, the White House looked
like a wedding cake. Fireflies dazzled, they’d rhythm
through the breeze as we made our way to that great
apartment on Biltmore Street, with its wide
living room, tall French doors, a hall of mirrors
and hard wood floors; and fellow pagans,
friends, crashers, dreamy lust mates and carnal
mistakes; a scatter of books in every room:
Miller, Nin, Ginsberg, Jung. A sly Lenny Bruce
poked the spine of a dour Schopenhauer.

There was fine music brewing at the One Step Down.
I can still see your face bending close to mine in
the dim lit luster of after hours, in the poetry
of that distant life of jazz, and drink, and all
night talking intense in some smoky place.

How I loved you then.
My vagabond.
My unrepeatable troubadour.
With your gypsy scarves and violin.
That unerring gift of mimicry.

The wander lust that spanned three continents.

Then crashed and burned on the loneliest night

Yet I conjure you still, you spirit my dreams
you lilt like the Pipes of Pan.
Your musical step, carnival soul
springing to life that warm fuchsia night when
we crept on the grounds of the Chinese Embassy—
vast, green as a meadow… Stardust lifted our heels;
we danced
spinning over the Moon, till a guard chased us down
and we dashed out of reach feeling hopelessly sure
that we’d beat all the odds, and never get caught!

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Full moon lover,midnight dancer
Gypsy free and on the prowl
Cruising through the sleeping city
With your wide coyote smile
Flush with love, hashish and flowers
Your touch is sin, your voice
A crime, singing dusky deep
adagios neath a 1000 neon stars.

Eyes of smoke and winter’s kindling
You plum the dark to reach the fire
And wake the night with sodden kisses
That drench the lips of errant wives
You are the jewel thief in the boudoir
A dark duende, the secret vice
You are a satin sleek beguiler
Who fashions love songs out of lies.

Sly seducer, smooth as roses
Your voice can melt the frozen Moon
Sate the dreams of starving housewives
You are the cookies in their jar
A wicked angel steeped in absinthe
Pearled and gemmed with beads of sweat
You make the ladies thirsty pores spread…
Like tiny city flowers, lapping your breath
An opium kiss and husky sweet tongued lullabies.

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Sacred
neon
music
opens whisky ears
trails of cigarette ghosts
swirling round a tall bass
plucked deep for rich tasting
sweet molten jazz surging
sliding through the cosmos curving
reckless drums
cymbals splashing silvery
fast as light
gymnast hands
springing agile
midnight dancing
wired straight to heart’s
quick ticking
chasing rhythms
melting listeners
drenched in music’s smoke and gold
holy hymns of backstreet angels
bathed in fire burning Soul to Soul
rushing fingers
spiriting piano keys
blue note epiphanies
peeling off gravity
ravishing silence dangerously loud
wild cat saxophone screaming God
all over The Universe
jamming on hot ruby nights

Dedicated to Mike Smith and Terry Plumeri and John Coltrane
(first published in The Jerry Jazz Musician 2009)

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1) Jattle boxes,
windows built to tumble run.
Chatter time clocks
and jog seeds inscrambling
Crust crue blocks, crux clocks

2) The wind tells of bay leaf brides
in your sleep, singing child.
Sheep in white, plant your heart
to root in due season, olive greens.
The chariots will proclaim with high cymbals;
the gold awakening arises.

3) giraffes we ride
through lightning spilling

4) The dream in a bronze iris
Snapped to the taste
Of birchbark citruses

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1) The king’s cage spins pale blue meridian walls,
and amber moons sign morning.

Reflected in the first mirror, archetypal symbols-
of- process vibrate subconscious image-seas.

Inevitable commonalities flow through us as we
create together.

Symbols, juxtaposed, define symbols as our role-
functions manifest.

We are washed away, then closer by dynamic seas.

Subtle rhythms transport our dreams to reality.

We communicate enlightenments.

All feel our flow.

2) New London, Conn. May 31, 1974…..Neptune Park, filled with spring rains.
A lightness permeates the atmosphere. The music flows out easily and quietly at first.
Nature sprits and tar box take life quickly. The e flat is an embryo at this point-
it will take a long time to grow to euphoric bells.
The summer sees death coming and then the incantation appears in the october air.
rusti joins in and soon images are taking form.
Days, with snails and bird cages, then joh leads us into the celtic dance.
The road pulls us to the midwest. We plough through snow and come back
with space needle intact and neptune rising as the new year begins

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