Mark Jones - Peaces

What is this mithraic rain?
A polyphonic echo, a choral flame?

The silence on my skin
The Moonlight my naked twin.

There is a bullet that dances
Instead of kills
There are circumstances that he wills

Instead of us
In spite of us

I know not my own mind now

Not why
Not how

Notted togather:

Silence on my skin, the Moonlight my naked twin.

Dog Star

2006-06-20T07:38:00.000Z

“Writing is first a search for obedience”

Today when my left hand
Was bitten by light

I stood and watched
The red footsteps in the water

Each one a star
Being born

Today the pyramid of stones
I laid in the foothills of my beloved’s absence
Became but a red flag for the mind of my enemy

Today I squeezed my essence into the basket
And allowed myself the fall

Among the garden of reeds
Each shade but a blade
Cut from his scythe

Each feather I won
A walk into the kingdom
Of the Hawk

Have I failed here?

I have been faithful
My brothers and friends

But today I have come to the place
Where one day even the stars will die

A Wing and a Prayer

2006-06-20T07:36:00.000Z

Information in my mind
The intricacy of signs

Like a necklace the flickering
Lights on the cave wall

Like a cortex boddice
For which I am too large…

Suddenly sunshine
Budding now

On the springtime of my willing
The wingtip of my love

O firefly
In the dark coal
Of my heart’s night

Fire and fly

O shepherd
Of the dark shapes
In my mind

Light my way

There is a call
A call

If there is an answer
Is it forgiveness?

Forsaken For
Given us to ourselves

Myth

2006-06-09T14:03:00.000Z

The hundred hands held it all
For a moment and it was gone
Scattered throughout language
Hunted by the keen archers of sense

For they had touched the side
Of the god as it lay bleeding
They had scratched his name in
Red on the stones of the first temple

For this they were treated as
Thieves have often been treated
For this they were cast into the
Heap from where language came

It is this bloodied trail that I
And my kind walks through the night
In search of the first hand
And her brothers in blood

Story of the Scythe

2006-06-09T13:58:00.000Z

The curved night holds dreams
As if they were drops of blood
On its blade
As if wild berries in its many baskets

Outside the moon circle
Is shining like an illuminated
Manuscript of the cross

The harvest of memories has come
And I can only remember
The shape the blade left in the air

As it cut me from myself
Left me just a piece of the night

Left me a rune in the shape
Of all that was to come for me
As I left the world I knew

The shape of every gift
I made to give to you
As if love could be permanent

As if language could ever
Hold the shape of the curve
Of the sky’s dark flight

The peace in the night
You shook my word

Nothing remains but the Moon
A white rose-cross

Goddess of the Arrow

2006-06-09T13:57:00.000Z

Hunted for what he has seen
-Fleeing the seeing-
As if the scene sticks like dirt
In a wound.
As if our eyes are but wings
Of sharp truth bent back
Against us.

Hearing so acute, a polygon
Razor against bow-tight sinew,
An explosion in the chest,
Blood in the mouth-

The truest sword drawn from my
Stone heart

Given to kings
Taken from kings
By her singular flight
Bright feather’s light

The swan sailed
Silver ship of moonlight

Shining over
The unwed water

Midnight bursting
From every pore

Silence bathed
By every noise

As she washes herself
In the mysteries of the world

So is the world washed.

Nail

2006-06-09T13:35:00.001Z

Did you know of the concentration of the stars
As they gaze down upon you standing there?
Can you conceive of the patience in the ocean
Depths where he left imprints of his subtle body?
Is it patience
That endured
The Flashing
Metal sunlight
The gaze of
Man and Angel
That day of all
The days that
Men will look
At other men
And burn holes
In their Sides?

In His Pocket

2006-06-09T13:35:00.000Z

From the dust I buried my father in
From the dust he carried his life in

In His Pocket

To the dust we carried to the water’s edge
To the dust dancing in the sunlight of our memory

In His Pocket

From the dust they made the stars in
From the dust they caught laughing in

His Pocket The beauty of creation’s wing
Bright and delicate
With a father’s love

Left like so much dust

In His Pocket.

Parapraxis

2006-06-09T13:34:00.000Z

Is it glove or fox cote?
I know only that I can rest there

With wings that physics only knows
Cannot fly

I am flying.

Windflower.

Wind hover and play her like a flute
With the music born

From the burial chambers of the ancients,
The sound waves of the planets,

For I love her,
With my slip of a tongue.

Penelope (In Love with Christ)

2006-06-09T13:33:00.000Z

In the darkness at the centre
Of her eye, she can see
The loss in the world
Held in her supple thread.

In the spaciousness deep
Inside the warp and weft
Of her heart she feels
The pain of he who travels.

Every day the tapestry of life
Must be named
And unnamed every night
Until he returns.

Scabbard

2006-06-09T13:32:00.001Z

Star bright blade blinking in the night
I hear you sing the song of tongues

Caught by the power to dream right
Through this world of nets

Our inaction a torch for the world
Our giving but a drop of hot wax

On the uncertainty of ever really
Loving another

Forged in the ancient fire
Of a human ear bone

Forged on the anvil of the Tenebrae

-Will-

Here it is!

Not in the Sword
But in the shining darkness
Where it rests.

Story of the Scythe

2006-06-09T13:32:00.000Z

Telemachus (the Magician)

2006-06-09T13:31:00.000Z

Like an understudy
Who has waited in the wings
For all the world to evaporate and
Condense again inside him
As the pure water
He has longed for all his life

Seven summers gone since you sailed for the other shore
Seven years of learning
(The part a part of a strange dream in which we were apart)

Seven years since you sailed away into the shadows
All the fathers leave
And we follow them in their wake like porpoise

Seven years and the dust has settled on the space you left
In my life

Seven years to the day
Closer and closer to the hour
The very moment
You reached out and beyond yourself

Seven swans the last with a song for its left wing
Seven worlds inside this world and the last world we both knew
Was true

Seven words to say with all of myself open to the wind
That carries voices from other there to over here

In your absence I am learning presence

The Sea As

2006-06-09T13:30:00.001Z

1

The Sea as independent surface, impenetrable
Ageless skin.

The Sea as time washing over us, each day
A new attrition:

Each second a grain of sand from the rock of
Our shared life

We are battered clean by time.
Time as a poet and a fisherman:

Each sliver of the all radiating
Sunlight from the scales of a mackerel.

The Sea as a sickle, time as joy.
The World as fickle as time is joy.

See the sea, seam the seeming,
Endless blue becoming

A million Krishna’s the waves roll into our life.

2

The Sea as a million deaths,
The Sea as a perpetual rainbow in the ultraviolet spectrum,
The Sea as mystery,
My story as but a wave upon the Sea.

The Sea as all of the times I have managed
To move beyond myself.

The Sea as imaginable other, larger than all
I have known and have not known.

The Sea as one second of true sex
As imagined by a child.

The Sea as protector, firm against
The enemies of the infinite.

3

The Sea as a choir of all that was ever wished for
Ferocious and unforgiven

Singing blue shift truth to a world long past
Listening to the Sea

As our hearts shared life
Washed clean by time

Bled on the sickle Sea
The Sea as true seeming

As our hearts shared life
Blue in its contemplative fervour

Destroyed itself upon
The Gaze of a Seer.

The Porpoise Book

2006-06-09T13:30:00.000Z

Perched on the water’s bright edge,
The dark smudge carves,
With great care,
The letters of our name.

Porpoise moving through the sea
The mind’s dance with eternity:

Held as if on a tight ledge,
The pencil scratches,
Sticks of words,
Of the burning name

Mantra moving through the sea
Tabla rhythm of the blue city.

Everything that is alive has a name that was called out to you in the one true dream – do you wake up wishing you were still there?

Everything that has died has a name that they called out to you as you lay sleeping - do you wake up knowing who they are?

I ask only this:

That when in your openness you shock across
The beautiful movement across the water’s

Clean surface, the moth’s fin burning against
The ultimate light of this summer’s day,

That you record your moment in the book.
That you take a moment to have a look.

The Spider Altar

2006-06-09T13:29:00.000Z

1

Ox blood – Winged head – Snake in the river
Ram’s head – Horns upward pointing – The death posture

From the conflict of what we deny and what we assert
Flies the wing that grows from the skulls’ ivory page

The Neither-Neither
Tongue of Fire

Bark – Slide – Chase – Scent – Unite

Ear – Lynx –Eye – Silence – Owl – Ajna

From the reflection in the waters’ diamond edge
The sparks of the altars’ insight dance –

From the conflict of what we deny and what we assert

We create

2

From the lord or the word-hoards’ stables
We ride nightmares of glorious misdeeds

“I stretch beyond the bounds of the world
I am smaller than a worm – Clearer than the moon”

By the head of the sleeping lion
The dwellers at the gates of silent memory

Eyrie – Eye – Owl – Ajna
Dark beak cutting through the minds’ leash

Watching its flight now further than the farthest dream.

Times’ Younger Brother

2006-06-09T13:28:00.000Z

Wheel of tomorrow (turning turning)
River of time rushing towards the rapids’
Eye movements:

Dream of time dancing cadenced,
Multi-rhythmic with sinuous precision as to the exact
Moment you decided never to return to your birthplace,

The exact moment you found the steps of the past
Walking down to the cellar
Where all my childhood possessions
Play together without
My knowing why.

So here we are in the moment, gone, into the moment, gone
Where all the moments go when we are asleep,
Where all the sleepers go when we are in the moment,

Alive, for a moment given by one who will take all away
The harvest has surely come and the kings and queens of men
Wait as surely as we must for the sound of his coming

Death, like the sea.
Death, like the million million voices of morning.

Death is riding the black raven the size of night
Through the towns and gardens of our intimacy

Through the back door of our shared memory
The hallways of our combined joy

As if a vast wave had come invisible through everything
We built and left it without breath

As if unlimited locusts swathed through the mind’s hoard
Leaving but a broken trail through memory.

Will we dream all of the dreams?
Will we break into the dream shared by all?

Will we have long enough to walk our children to the well?
To set them down and watch them drink in the safety of the dawn?

12 arrows poem link 2

2006-06-07T12:13:00.000Z

The 12 arrows poem link 2

12 arrows file link

2006-06-07T12:10:00.000Z

The 12 Arrows poem

Fenekh

2006-06-06T08:18:00.000Z

O burnt one

Bright as the coal is bright
Inside the mine.

O black one

Fierce as the night is fierce
Inside the mind.

Guide me in the vast
Interiors of the world’s labyrinth

Where measureless caverns of ice
Melt in tune to a midnight sun.

Set me to the task of following
The Hawk that flies arrow-like

Before the desert path
Of your only brother.

I never wish to leave such captivity
As I have known here.

In escaping I may light the fire
Which I never wish to escape.

Hold the hand that I
Have left for holding.

Behold the land I left
To which I am beholden.

In the opening of an eye
The exodus, the red quick flight,

The sly life revealed
For a moment

As it is leaving.

Crossroad

2006-06-06T08:11:00.000Z

Crossroad

2006-06-06T07:54:00.000Z

The burning
Axle-tree
Of the turn
In the world
Odin’s rose sweet with the scent of destiny
Flowering in the heat of a god’s red desire
For the creation of an immanence so present
As to spear the fantasy of immortality forever
Everyone I
Know seeks
The point
The moment
When space
And Time
Meet inside
The Open-
So that all
We all are
Can Give in.

Blue Crow

2006-06-06T07:52:00.000Z

1

Purple wing tops, a bright trace on the wizard’s back,
Brightened by the glimpse of midnight’s stolen eye

The Butterfly expanded to fill the entire night sky
Unraveling all but the silver sentinel’s dark pack:

Paraselenae – bright halo in the small moon
Like a thin eyebrow raised for a hidden tune.

Eastern moon far above all the sickle of death
Reminding us of the summer’s last breath.

2

The butterfly expanded to fill
the entire night sky

Our eyes walk together on the wing
dust of the stars

Shooting far
Bright buttons of night’s coat
Ashes of the remembered dream
Embers of the real

The tides of time walk with us
As with Iris we reach
Back into space

Uncertain of its milky ways, always allowed
To go only with our gazing

3

The wings of a butterfly grazed by moonlight, a shiver of a wing,
Tired broken thing glazed in its glass light, filed away in the draw of Childhood memories, the un-naturalist and his cages:
But a fly caught in the amber of our grasping stare….

4

But a flight into the world of seeming named…

From the memory of its life on the wing
We can turn the thing into wind and rain

All so fierce against the face of our shared imagination.

From the dictionary of the sea, the compendium of storms
Vanquished before a single thought about them could occur…

From the note torn from the lips of a copper statue
Lining the parade grounds of the capital…

From the trombone of mud, the ganglia of desert dunes
That switches places in the night wind to confuse travelers…

From these have come the butterflies that are ever trapped,
Ever free beneath the great sky divided and patterned with forever.

12 Arrows

2006-06-06T07:35:00.000Z

Once again we are borne on a thought alive – In an arrows’ flight
From the cradle of night

Everything has its seed in the desire I hold – For everything shines
That day spring aligns

Every name we were given a given name – Hidden in a name
The worlds’ secret pain

The home we have made carved from the Cosmos – An early shoot
The tree route

Every day the star of Horus burning alone in sky – Red as flowers
Blue like showers

The Lady of the Sheaves cuts me from the field – With great assurance
Simple patience