Lois Jones

Long an avid supporter of the arts, I only recently decided to write. I have been involved in music promotion and production for a successful film composer/recording artist as well as managing the career of a virtuoso concert pianist. I believe that artists can never receive enough support, validation and encouragement. After five years of solid contribution, I decided to cast my own artistic lot to discover what impact my ideas could have on others. Poetry became the natural partner. I know I will never again be without this perfect form of self expression; a home from which I can forward my spiritual purpose-- to imbue the world with aesthetics.

Photo by O'Ross

The Cell

I am not responsible.
I am a chemical
a chromosome
a gene
a brain

When I take the right pill
my head floats
it bobs correctly
at the right time

I see my head
at a great distance
smiling
wearing interest
it looks right.

In the meantime
friends and family
noticed my eyes
diamonds became
F-Stops
click
click
shutter closing

When I was young
I wanted to be an astronaut
I wanted to fly
to Mars
meet aliens
Prozac is a good substitute
I fly into nothing
It tastes like cotton

One day, I heard voices
they came through the walls
they said evil things
I couldn't sleep
At 24 this was a problem

My doctor told me
just take this pill
come to group therapy
and they'll even give you money

He made it sound so easy
I didn't have to talk
or look
or change anything about myself
because it really
wasn't me
it was my chemicals
who were telling me what
to do

He is very religious
almost like God
he gives every person
the same treatment
we are all equal cells
in his eyes.

It's not a bad gig
I've been doing it for three years now
I don't sleep much
but I watch television
All 160 stations
I eat very well and often
I look like puffed cereal

I don't hear voices anymore
I don't write
I don't dream
I
don't

I am very happy
I know that when I leave my body
one wonderful day
I will float away, one big fat
soul chemical
I will meet all the other
chemicals that have died before me
Won't that be nice?

Lost

(for Kim Sun-il)

Your name was burnt
in the sun

pulled like a shrunken tent
too tightly to cover the impossible.

Fate has buried you
in the sands of Fallujah,

but the wind carries
the frightened drum of your life

I don't want you to die.

If we lay our heads
firmly against your heart

will we hear the dead weep?
If we plant our lives firmly

against yours maybe then,
we'll feel you burn
in every drop of our days.

Ghost Town

When poets leave town
they leave behind gray cities,

fluorescent lights buzz
like steel flies on industrial streets.

Dark pools in alleyways
reflect empty buildings,

clothes lines hang themselves
on battered posts. The quiet

concrete of no footsteps, sounds
of no children, no barking dogs

echo in the distance. Underneath
all color, there is only black and white.

You Know

I won't read your poetry today
Your white rooms

whisper insanity in
empty corners, where
a Russian doctor is drugged
while you pretend not to

read her eyes,
help me, I don't belong here.

I know you live in a world where
people make up lives

like recipes. Tasting their
loneliness, chanting their

pain into empty chairs
while psychiatry pops

in another pill, smothering
the truth in its cotton pillow

keeping life quiet for
just one
more
day

Senyru

I am an inchworm
measuring the marigolds
what's it to you?