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.

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.
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.
HMP Home Page | Back to John Joseph Jones