Messages from the Dead

 

What if every song ever written

Contained the words

Passed on from the dead

With a guarantee that they find their way

Back to the one

They were written for again

In the glaze of the living

The only truths we know

Are the messages that are sent

From the mouths of the angels

So you’ll know what was really meant

To be said

Resting in the songs of the dead

They’ll find you again

In your end

Joni James copyright 2024

 2024

Anguished

 

photo: jjames

You were the lover I never kissed

You were the friend that never grew old

You were the father that never did hold

You were the brother in the small dark hours

You were the child I watched like a flower

Now,

like a star, you watch from over head

Knowing all the questions you left

And I 

like an unborn seed

Walk this earth instead

Anguished

and Spirit 

dead

jjames 5/97 in memory of Joe

Dancing With the Waves

 

I have danced the edge of this vast ocean for some time now

I have let the waves tempt me

And lap at my feet

I have been weary and have hung my head

But, I have seen the beauty in the grains of sand

The perfect white sea shells

And the tiny air bubbles popping with life

At times when I was strong

My whole being felt the warmth of the surface

The miracle of the sun

Seagulls singing above me

And the wind on my face

And now

The touch of my loved ones

Has surrounded me and given me strength

And for all that I am thankful for

in this amazing world

I now surrender to the mysteries of the Great Sea

No longer will the waves lap at my fragile feet

I will be that fantastic dolphin

Smiling at the sun

And remembering

The sparkling sand

For Doreen

My Beacon of Sorrow

My beacon of sorrow

looms in golden stone

reaching high on a city hill

making false promises

of my father's happiness

that never came~

Each graduated sculpture

of its tragic peaks

brag in grandiosity and hope

and of possibility in healing the past

But not for me...

And so she looms

With a history in her walls

Only her surface glows in the sunset

Of society's madness

And within me

May a dawn emerge

in truths.

Joni James 2006 

The old vet hospital where my father received psych treatment in the early 60s

Guns Make Holes

Outside our streets are crying
Young babes are dying
When you hear guns explode
Then freedom's just a word

There's a girl who's lost and frightened
There's a boy not afraid of dying
Can you hear? Have they stopped trying?
Is freedom just a word?

There's a man who's lost his son
It's a mother's only one
Do you hear? Have we stopped praying?
Is freedom just a word?

When a Child has fallen
Where have all the angels gone?
In the streets
Nobody has won
When freedom's just a word

Joni James 1995