Hear no, see no, speak no. He will?

Hear no, see no, speak no. He will?

Not exactly deaf, but what is that you say? 

Not exactly blind, but aren’t the flowers pale?

Not exactly lame, but hey! wait for me!

Write the exact words, the ones that will say.

See how the exact words, how they colour the pale.

Take the exact words, come on, run with me!

Run away now, with me, what ya say?

Never let the mind’s eye pale.

My words for you, your words for me.

fatty catty

the cat grows fat

the sparrows return

to lead her lead a merry dance 

you black heart you

you black heart you

nurture locks our blackest hearts away,

and there they stay, festering until the day 
we die; yet some fly! and in the deepest of 
night’s flight, the dark blood bites; 
and fresh blood flows. 

What the deadly night said

What the deadly night said

The crows clack to roost down the darkening day,

settling in amethyst, long and seaward drawn,

how this paling light lies long upon the springtide bay.

See, all the lights of Southend, moth-drawn and wriggling, 

preen with winsome gloss across this raven sea, long-

domed with a clichéd moon that milks the lovers’ angst;

see how the tide fills with our tears as hand in hand we

walk this promenade where time rushes away from all this;

back to the days when we kissed the stars, and we shuddered, 

remember when we promised, come what may, 

we would get to be here at the closing of this day;

even if we are poleaxed by the longing of the shadows

that depart with the last ship’s light over time’s horizon. 

Cry no!   No!   To the shroud, bone-drawn across the moon!

Cold is this my goodnight kiss,

   cold under these too late dreams.

      Wait! Do wait; for the tide must surely turn?

See, sea here, look see ...

See, sea here, look see ...

Break the rock and show the child,

all of what is hid inside. 

Their eyes, as wide as the ocean shore,

I’ve done this to pebbles here before;

and it never fails to work,

it never fails to raise a smirk;

I can do that the child exclaimed!

Run everybody before we’re maimed

by a wildly aimed - biggestest, giantest rock

that you ever did see held high and smashed amok. 

And when the day is done and the rocks are broke,

the sea will provide the punchline for the joke;

will take them all in its mighty hand

and grind them into teeny, weeny, weeny sand. 

SAX

SAX

the mother-of-pearl music swaying

from the blue’s own sax has me corralled 

along the smoke road of a night’s stalking

tiptoe on neon on rain that runs along

the gutters of a blue moon’s never and so

there i hang on every smarting note and so

there i bleed the every tears of no avail

all over the place

a dearth of earth

    a dearth of earth

for i am no longer listening

to news of global warming,

about wars and pestilence,

about your ... ‘or else!’    so

yes, allow a dearth of earth

to darken my empty purse;

allow that a sun may shine 

on the loneliest of days   so

besotted this belonging lies,

drying under the skies of an

acceptance hanging to dry

on a penultimate cry of ‘time’.

Crushing defeat

              Crushing defeat

I will carry her away on a cowboy horse        

           (my schoolgirl first love) 

       remember this was the 1950s

                           or

I will carry her away on a helicopter

           (Whirlybirds are Go!)

               remember them

                            or

I will carry her away on my motorbike 

             (Harley Davidson)

             roarmember them

I will show the lover boys who’s boss

But why not take her as yourself

            (looking back asks)

           but that’s daft ain’t it

                    just daft

   Although I did kiss her once

                      I did

Over-worded worthiness

Over-worded worthiness 

There is this cliché of a poem crawling through my veins;

its words clotting in the fibrin of thoughts gone septic;

the frisson in anticipation of a vesiculating verse

is sinking in the dread of an oil rag threaded thought 

gone waste. Oh, do please stay with me through the

refractory of a mind on its road through the salt marshes

receding on the tears drained of every poet who hammered 

the sign ‘beware of the bog’. That the dropped stitch of the trawl net 

will let the silver-scaled words escape back to the deep dark oceans

of mind - or slither down the blind fish caves of thought - 

does not bear thinking of. Oh dear god of syntax 

grant me three verses that will bottle the genie of 

immortality in words, so that I may exsanguinate slowly and

adjure a eulogy that will deny the everlasting pallor of the page. 

Amen. 

Mariah, Mariah

When I was a wee child, and too small to use the outside toilet on my own, my mum used to sit with me and we played a rhyming game.

Mariah, Mariah she peed in the fire

The fire was so hot she peed in the pot

The pot was so low she peed in the snow

The snow was so white she peed in the night

The night was so black she peed in the sack

The sack was so rotten ...

... but now I have forgotten.

But of course, I have not.

The Seventh Quarry - poetry in emotion

The Seventh Quarry - poetry in emotion

There, in a slash of hill, lies the lines of the veins 

that drip the bloody tears from mines quarried 

deep under this heathered hill. Heather, tired and

dusted, mauve between the warm knuckles of

rock that asks of the sea, come, just this once,

and wash away the fossilised words; tumble

them into the oceans of the people of a world

trembling with a need to know, how was it for you.

Each quarry getting smaller and smaller as,

what seamed deep, was in fact risen to the surface

of understanding. No need to dig deep here in the

Seventh Quarry. The pollen is ankle deep in words

both seminal and lotus upon the pale blue sky 

at the sea’s awakened horizon. The poets emerge 

from the Seventh Quarry, straightened from their toil, 

to lay the words teased from beneath the mons, behind 

the hymen of the hill, and thrill that upon your reading 

they might consummate the seed of an understanding

that what is written here is the lodestone of all their golden days.

https://www.peterthabitjones.com/the-seventh-quarry

There

There is a series of words calling to be read in the book 

away away away in the hand of my outstretched arm. 

After I read it I know that nothing nothing nothing will ever be the same again. 

Why my darling poet? Why? Why? Must I read it?

The cyanide pill - spit it out?

the let’s be mating game

the let’s be mating game 

in whatever fashion(s)

   she is looking for the seed

in whatever fashion(s)

   he is looking to fulfil the need

Exposure for my poetry - still looking for a publisher

Exposure for my poetry

I have read my poems on Radio Wales

1.       Interviewed live by Jason Mohammad (February 2016)

2.       Lynn Bowles show (live in Radio studio) (June 2016)

3.       Wynne Evans show – interviewed live by Jason Phelps (November 2017)

I have read my poems and been filmed on BBC Wales television

1.       Weatherman Walking Derek Brockway (November 2018)

I have read my poems and been filmed on ITV Wales television

1.       Coast and Country Ruth Wignall (February 2018)

Numerous poems published in South Wales Evening Post

Also, an article in South Wales Evening Post about ‘Jim the Pebble Poet’

Poem published in 7^th Quarry Press (Spring 2019)

Poem published by American Diabetes Association – Diabetes Forecast magazine

Circulation 260,000 !!

Poem highly commended by PoetryPlus (online 2019)

Poem accepted by apathypress (2019)

Poet in Residence Croeso Lounge Mumbles for four months

Poem about Dylan Thomas displayed framed in a public house in London frequented by Dylan Thomas – pub owned by a chain of public houses / hospitality company

Three books of poetry self-published on Amazon

1.       Remember Pentrechwyth

2.       Collected poems 2016 & 2017

3.       The poems 2018

the class of yesteryear

the class of yesteryear 

he did this or she did that running

down the line that switched points at random

from the ragamuffin school photo

chalked with class 4A of a year dismissed to

gather as names on the leaning gravestones

looking back with lichen eyes

streaked with the tears of a 
‘do you remember when’

No harm mageddon

No harm mageddon 

So the insects are heading for extinction,

and it presages the end of Homo sapiens.

So what? 

                We are all going to die.

Are we not? 

What frightens us is that 

there will be no tomorrow

for those we leave behind. 

Because

                no one will be left behind 

to remember us. 

To read us and read about us.

That is the news,

        there will be no news!

ego sum mortis 

<THE END>

And this alone

And this alone

Lighthouse keeper. 

When I was a child I wanted to be a lighthouse keeper. 

A Shepherd. 

When I was a child I wanted to be a shepherd. 

Now I am a poet. 

A light flashing across the sea of words;

ghosting the bloomers of the moon clouds;

thrashing the rocky coast of understanding. 

Aloud now! I want to be! 

I will be! I damn well will be!!

But I was not. 

Turn out the light, 

please?

the old songs

the old songs

skipping along with the teenage songs;

a sharp, yet golden syrup of

the bright hopes;

bees in the sunshine,

all in all in a crystal ball - look!

the pollen is watering my eyes again.

turn the music off now,

it’s all in the past you see,

it’s all in the past.

stiff upper lip

and all that stuff?

a summer snooze

a summer snooze

and why did you kiss me long and deep

upon the summer waters limp asleep

on the butterscotch lemon of the jazz

that flows in the sunshine of a dozy-doze

along a spidery sunbeam that slowly slinks

onto the lids of my closing eyes so creep

the itinerant clouds of a forty winks to

wind down the long razzmatazz ways 

of these endless snoozy daisy days

It is now the time

It is now the time ...

... when poems, written for all time, have run out of time?

How to write for now, and know now that it will make no difference.

Is the smartphone text the now and forevermore of the never no more?

Who will listen, and for how long, before the end of the end of time?

On the bare wireless of the night

On the bare wireless of the night 

The big band fades away with the day,

glissando on the radio dialled to a static tear

dried on the sip of a tea cup held aloft, 

grasped deep in thought of the dance era; 

and although I was never there, 

I am transported there now.

How strange is that?

The voices ride trenchant on the

music that flows over me along the

airwaves, to swirl around the loneliness 

grit on this dark night of the soul. If soul

be permitted, to be the burning in my eyes 

squinting for bed, longing to sleep in

the silence of a memory that never was.

My new poetry page on Facebook

My new poetry page on Facebook:

https://m.facebook.com/JimsPoetryWales

first time - the transient eternity of feeling

first time - the transient eternity of feeling

being where we knew everyone went and now we were there 

in a place we suspected existed your turn now

we cannot capture that moment again

intensity inverted into vacancy

falling into the mountains 

the lakes that open up

the unknown seed

settles to grow

in afterglow

of a smile

so that

was

it

And a cold angst it was

And a cold angst it was

Twist, turn, stop go, swerve;

the road goes straight on

to the horizon that runs away;

to the horizon that runs away.

16 and the gallows tunnel vision

sees that it sees no future. No

escape from the loneliness

from birth to death, unless,

nearer to death’s door I pause

to shout back, hand in hand with you,

stop! Permit the blood of youth

settle back to earth. Think man,

where in the great game does it deny 

that never the twain shall meet?

Turn from chasing the horizon, stop,

and settle in the prairie fields

and raise a gingham crop. 

morning sparrows

 morning sparrows 

       sparrows

as flit as commas

      chirrup and

          chide

       chopping 

             up

the pro forma lines

 of this changeling 

         poem

    slowly musing        

   on the sunshine

of a lonely February

        morning