Jill Jones
　

Out of the Car Park

Do structures bring together
in high lights or dark
an overlap of foreign affairs
and trade in failure?
The mesh over the car park
entrance catches the brown leaves, but
lets cars go forward.

What do we expect, a political voice?
When the glass is half full, who's
tripping on the level playing field
keeping a little shine on the ball
less spin or a medium pace
anticipating the gaps, the stamps
a big boot, no support?
　

Far-Off Blue

Here's a heat that's borne
far from the clouds, down
where images are blown
among horizons, onto noon
where waves finally crawl
on street glass and frame
over skin remembered cool.

We edge a little, some
glint in the blue spar
or fade at the doors
opening breathy disrepair
wait for the hours
dreamt cold as we rose
clear and far off paradise.
　

Demands

Perhaps the grip's become less firm
life not lived than might be
as if I'm no longer living in my room.
I've lifted, lied, made things fly
out of mornings into flarish noon.
All the leaves in the garden burned.
Where's the example when there's none?
All spare minutes are consumed.

I talk my way out of possession
and settle in the bland square suite.
How light feels when things are gone
even if windows are obstinate.
When the future knocks on its demand
I can imagine ways I'll be found.
　

Breathless In Season

The glistered heat becomes banal
as names shimmy on the memory shrine.
I attempt a wishful clarity that orients
the heart, tho' my two-bit memoirs decline,
retreat or erupt as if sudden interior bacchanal
could work amnesia or prevent
struggle with hills. I want to survey
clouds, in hope rain would bestow

its soft sting, or something braver
than logic's need to know,
that useless regret cease its parley,
or I'd act beyond my own behaviour.
A fear of nothingness begets unrest
and breath that never was, now expressed.

-all previously published in The Drunken Boat