JILL JONES

Five Songs Ardent With Difficulty

Embrace

Awake with me, embrace the difficulty
of opening – questions, projections –
we learn what we are.
Our wine has a savour –
form in its recall
limbs & reverse of bodies, remainders
a day’s accounts, costs that add up
between women.

Our fluency blossoms into shape
angled in light’s flash, rouge
smears of the real
though day be cloudy, details written over
intimate vapour.

Everything touches what is changing
dreamed as a song or scene.
This is our movement together, in gravity
which is not simple under the air –
breathe of grass, feather, dapples, scars.

An ardent geography works us
paragraphs of longing
throated gold. Our sides gleam
flecked with night’s candour.
We are beloved, equitable, lucky
as is our bed, green in shelter
valleys & shades wake us.
I know this place
longing for the other place, that speaks
out to the edge.

Uncertain love geeks, we hack into
each other’s codes while day splits our paths
along days of love traffic
flagrant afterwards, depending on
hope & tact in difficult times.

If we were trees, we could burn in air
hot eloquent flowers.
Or learn to be animal
translation from estrangement.
voicing this art of clefts
as we surmount irony & supply candy
rather than worry through causes of flavour
and play among rapid vixens
which render us unto exhaustion
till the breach of day.




Abandon

Abandoned in myrrh, your hands
the spill, river’s eye, milk & branch
flowers edge screens
bellies shine ready.
There is nothing simple about an eyelid
or the incessant thump of the distance.
As if it was ever that simple.
Apprehension. Arrival. A dubious price.

And who is right if we are ruined
among wires of scarlet, & a grip
powerful in the cut of the day.
Those chains of eyes by the fence
do not distinguish differences
spices, lips, honey & salt
while sweeter languages
behave as if this was a garden
as if this was spring.

Is it too late to correct our imperfections
with passion?
Is freedom in our way
are storms enough, & torrents?
All feeling has been pulled
at surface
into pressures of dawn
an extremity – pleasure & anger.

Outlines of roofs delineate cliffs
should I decide to go here
rather than trace sweat patterns
that translate us
more than this simple economy
the voice of my beloved.
It demolishes me, scales me
is part of the support, wall & window
my ascension over low winter
where rain exceeds us
where flowers paper the earth.




Impoverishment

Derived from the city, emphasised by morning
I was once sick, love did not like me
I could not be honest with myself.
Maybe I am becoming ill to you
scary or clownish.
Maybe I darken in movement
my colours of dread
congratulate thin moons & wastes
seeking all the addictions of life, the veil
of consumerist gauze, fears of vertigo
night clubs, the public gaze?

Maybe it is a trick.
Still, I would kiss you
and not be despised
drink you within this embrace
go in my ways through this city with wide senses
trying to learn the nocturne that guards
the one I have left.
It may be quiet now, though I am behind fields
through avenues
though I am neither wide awake
nor exactly mindful.
I come back with my taste of world smoke.
May I not be caught
in retails of impoverishment.

Or my other fear – one day to walk out
on a great plaza where transports are loaded ahead
and discover you packing
the heart of the matter, escaping this fortress
where we are inoperative as women.

Will I be cruel in jealousy
that overthrows us with vehemence
and in flooding, drowns us?
As though in a dream, a fainting legend
rather than this life – here.



Determination

Is every day in this city a death
in the face of sleep?
Fast currents run out their research
no longer confidential.
We become customers browsing caves
lost, uninstructed, alone without respect
for any other love that walks on by
so hard an aloneness that may capsize
or close down lives.
We are no longer confident but outdated
mere soap bubbles
in a pool of broadcasting corporations.
We have no hands which can bear this force.

Tell me if I have shifted, if I have merely posed
and my fingers grasp tenuous locks
opened for my liking
if I have failed and you can give me no answer
if no-one could find me
no one carry me
to your spread of shy waves
as sky & light disappear ferried by the hours
by manufacture & blast.
How hard it is
learning to handle the weight.
Is it the price? Recording our inner longing
outside boutiques of pleasure.

Even within decrease
or whatever must be postponed
a dubious night that could be our ruin
or a morning flowering with grenades
when great hulks turn over
stacks of a system
even if we are woken by storm
we still eat our fruit
as if undefiled by ropes, locks, court orders.

We publish our pulse within
each other panting, the heat.
Our determination skates the hours
skinning low on night
uncontained.




Grace

Desires are daily, consolation
sufficient as suburbs
where we walk by night, past unstoppered gardens
through degrees where edges kiss
but not ostentatiously.
When night’s thigh gleams
its covers pave us
we will go ahead, daughters of a day’s espousals.
Our shining adjustments make us
thankful as hands.
When a sky bowl so dark is placed above us
even the moon’s conquered surfaces
can steer our disparities
our repetitions, like magnets, like iron.

This wanting is almost a substance
bright as our silver vestibules
lithe as postcards scripted by hand.
We anticipate the approach of rivers, wars
damage, orders
arrested at times like an expended flame
unplugging sky from its dark retinues
shattered jewels, unmoored as desire
comes into us, between order & license
and lodges along a path of blossom.

Curves & poles of love cannot be replayed
across stolen distances of light fields.
Can we leave ourselves without
so many barriers
soft beds, gifts in our bodies
our constancy?

Though we are determined by difficulty
time demands we travel with our senses
widened by contact
all the collected arguments
uncertainties that thwart our silence.
Something agitates our fluidity
confessions, disturbances
we make openings darker
than we imagine
find we are more resilient against
the manners of each other’s body.

We dabble our feet, shudder
as though there’s a hole in the door.
But what we have said is amongst plenty:
navel, liquor, neck
thighs, jewels, eyes.
Taste the crimson galleries.
I will go here, within a circle
even if nobody represents us
this graceful art, yet difficult in effect.

What we return to – stature of pleasures
palms, beams, boughs
perfumes our sleeping lips.