Samples of poetry by

John Joseph Jones


Series I Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets is available in a published volume titled Love---Sonnets and Paintings, 100 pp published by Artlook, Perth, WA. This volume is a luxury art gloss paper first edition of 500 numbered and signed copies by both poet John Joseph Jones and artist., Astrid Dahl. It is cased in a slip case. The art plates are in full colour (16 plates) and black and white and each poem is illustrated. Purchase price is $225.00 includes postage and packing. Very limited number available.

No. 8 (Series I Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets)

LOVE IS TIMELESS AND HAS NO DIMENSION

OF loving and of parting from each other,
What measurement of loss and fretful time?
Your lips imply that I should be content,
Fulfilled by rationed portions of your love,
Whilst I demand receipt of all I have.
 
But lovers should not so divided lie
And quarrel over volume, height or length.
Love is timeless and has no dimension,
Cannot be cut, nor weighed, debased or sold
But garnered, shared, enriched and memoried.
 
Unwelcome age does youth's bright day bereave,
And cruelly limpens hard and thrusting blood.
It matters then, I give and you receive,
And query not the inventory of love.

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


No. 49 (Series II Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets)

LOVE'S CHRONICLE

 
LIKE leaves that fall and flowers that fade each day,
Our chronicle of love records our years
In diaries of unbound glances thrown,
By eyes that read unwritten words of joy.
 
How shall white paper and blackening ink
Impress the aspects of our bodies' graces
That flow like warming air caressing us
With adoring fingerprints of loving?
 
Read in the rapid rustle of the wind
More permanence than in the book of love;
And in a melting snow-flake's crystal-white,
A page of time more durable than print:
For lovers love, but love remains always,
Unchronicled and measureless in days.

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


No. 92 (Series III Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets)

LOVE'S OPAL

 
CREATION'S light shines in opal's gouged fires,
Burnt underground, like ruptured, dying stars
Whose cataclysmic agonies disclose
Skeined blue, red, yellow,ultramarine, green,
Orange, indigo, pink and pearly-white.
 
Who loves our cherished Earth an opal keeps,
For golden wattle flowers are in it fused
With pink myrtle and blue leschenaultia,
Purple hovea and brown boronia,
Flowers and feathered embers of robins' breasts,
Flashed rainbow-trout scales, bolts of blue wrens' joy,
Small silver-eyes' soft green, harsh crows' jet-black,
Melded in sunsets and changeable moons
And welded by the opal-glow of love.

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


190 (Series I Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets)

LAUGHTER IS A BUFFER TO OUR SIN

 
WE recognize our faults not in ourselves,
But in the daily grind of other lives
And know that in our diligent pursuit
Of excellence, our ego trips refute
The value of competitors' repute.
And judgement of our peers when they impute
Sharp disapproval in their mild rebuke
We nullify with an outlandish joke.
For laughter is a buffer to our sin
That turns aside the malice of our kin
And lets again the light of love shine in:
For though we value truth, a small mistake
Made in the fervour of desire's fierce quake,
Is set aside, although our lives both shake!

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


No. 220 (Series I Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets)

FASCINATING LOVE

 
IN fascination are love's glances thrown
Against the hard wall of the common air
To one beyond whose inner eyes have known
A deep absorption in their sensual snare;
And knowing that responses take some while,
The lover pauses to let dreams beguile,
Then drawn by an unredeeming force,
Two lovers move along a pre-steered course;
Moving away and yet coming closer,
Love is a seasoned, alert campaigner,
Who chooses in a bed a battleground
And all its sated prisoners leaves unbound:
But fascination frequently conspires
And gaols the hearts of lovers in fierce fires.
 

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


No. 241 (Series I Mutable Moods of Love Sonnets)

THE RULERS OF LOVE

 
THE rule of love is not the rule of law
For those who rule by love shall reign in peace
While those whose regulatory powers increase
Shall find their riposte in a rule-less war.
But rulers whom the people love shall find
A dazzling light that would re-sight the blind
Who though in darkness fumble and are slow
When guided walk wherever sight would go.
And though a ruler's diadem decays,
Love in the crown all other love repays,
For love's bright, breathless jewel lifts us all,
Sustaining us, no matter how we fall:
And those who shall to others give their love
Shall rise as rulers and all wrongs remove.

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


Number 28, Series Seven: The Therapist Of Love

THE CLING-WRAP OF LOVE

 
MANIFEST in love in all its aspects,
A wraparound of insulating care
Stops invasion of love's home by suspects,
Who live by callous thuggery and dare.
For brutal and mean can be existence
Engaged in, when trapped on a subsistence,
Imposed when struggling on a welfare dole,
Which shrinks the stomach and destroys the soul.
 
The roll of cling-wrap made by love is long
And stretches from our birth to distant death,
It seals and buffers us from grievous wrong
A living membrane that improves our breath:
And, like birth's caul that floats us buoyantly,
Love's cling-wrap brings us inner harmony.

© John Joseph Jones 1977---1995


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