~Mi Pequeña Amor ~

My alarm rings out
And I shuffle my way
Into the kitchen, longing for
The melodious call that
Sings of the coffee maker’s drip.

The innocent Spanish rhetoric
Drifting through the otherwise
Silent bedroom speaks of your still
Sweetly slumbering growth.

As the last drop of cream laden, sugary
Coffee
Descends from my still steaming cup
I hear your tiny voice calling for me.

With a sharp creak of the decades old hinges,
I step into your presence
Joy-pure and untainted beams-across your sweet face
Your brilliant eyes connecting with mine,
You call my name in rapid repetition
As I lift your petite, Johnson’s smooth person
From the cherry wood crib.

Cleansing the soil from you,
I change your Sesame Street Pamper
And adjust your one of many
Dora! pajamas
While you ripple with laughter
In vain, attempt to wiggle to freedom.
The excitement and love
That flows in invisible waves
Crashes over me
Every single day.
The hours flow freely
While I increase the number of
Tools to cultivate
Your life.

A life that someday
I will no longer witness
From this Earth.

How great the impact
We have on one another
Individually
Taught
We have taught each other
Love
You and I
The old
And the new.
~Shawn N. Jones

Setting

All I could see was inky darkness behind the dull grey adhesive of the duct tape. My heart was pounding the beat of a death metal drummer, my lungs operating at full speed as short panicky bursts are expelled while my slowly numbing body lies on the well-worn beige carpet of my sparse living room. I am trapped. I hear him shuffling around in the kitchen that is just a few short steps away from my ensnared body. A lighter strikes the flint as he lights a cigarette that spews pungent puffs of smoke into the air. He is enjoying this. I can tell by the calmness of his breathing. This man, who smells of stale tobacco, who has invaded my personal life and taken me prisoner, is going to hurt me. It is inevitable, just like the young and pretty girls in the movies, he is going to rape and torture me. But no, it’s much worse. My attacker is a sadistic bastard. I feel the reverberation of his determined steps as he strides to my numb and quaking body. I catch a whiff of a semi-familiar scent. I can’t place it at first and then the memory is ripped out of the file bank of my mind, Hugo. Panic rips through me as I think to myself, “Oh no…please no, not again.”

Poetry of Hands

The tan, gnarled knuckles crease
As they are forever bent
In the constant state
Of a subservient life.

The veins strain through
The weathered skin
As if trying to escape
Their vigorous pumping.
Like the well
That water has been drawn
So have these phalanges
Been the primary source.

Great the number
That have benefitted
The difference they have made
To many
Or to some.

The lives they have molded-
Shaped into being
The impact
Ever unseeing

Who will ever know
What these hands have done
Will it have been all for nothing
No.
It was all for the glory
Of His only begotten Son.

Brain Triggers

A crisp-linen laden waft of essential oxygen breezes into my double hung and I am swept away on a soothing cloud of memories. With my eyes wide open I am transported to a time twenty years the younger, in the midst of an expansive Kelly green, cashmere carpet of discards from a revered John Deere. The subtle chugging in the oh-so-near distance gives promise of a harmonious tune between the dueling snapping linen and propelled blades into the drifting breeze.

The referee stands tall and broad amongst the puffed white and baby blue backdrop in all of her lilac glory. Her heart-shaped face bursting in the bright warmth of the late morning fire ball, brewing a fairly innocent bouquet of heaven amongst the Earth.

Across the flat, desolate expanse of dissecting asphalt, a dull, metastasized International Harvester drones along a furrowed path, spouting fetid puffs of diesel fumes. Putrid remnants of wasted laughing gas from a once steaming pile ensconced within the barn assault my senses. The decaying grass, the leftovers of their once lush dining experience invigorates the black swamp clay. In a long listed process providing sustenance to many and more importantly, my gnarling stomach.

The fragrantly filled breeze transports yet another obscure miracle to my proboscis that wrenches my heart, nearly bringing forth sorrowful lachrymation. The rancid sulfur drenching a regular that patrons the shingle my Mother has hung, dissolving the securely wrapped tissue encasing their tresses wound about the rod of my Mother’s trade. Unappealing to most, the rank--somewhat distasteful—is alluring to me like no other. It draws me back into a swirling burst of emotions that are rather elapsed in order to facilitate procedures of stifling pain.