Happiness

 

HAPPINESS 

can be

for just a moment.

But

 if we're lucky, 

A lifetime.

For some...

 fleeting 

and blanketed, 

in old patterns

and 

drunken words.

joni james

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

Pictures of Life Passed

Our lives are passing Photographs

of remembered tears

and gathered laughs

Tucked away in an old drawer

in a silk scarf

folded in half

Scent rises from glossy finish

memories come in a flash

here to hold

in a hand

Part of Life Passed.

Joni James 1999 

Father

Take a drink from that

Burning that calls you

washing down

us

Pour your life 

from that Bottle

I push it down

Swallow Life

Don't things matter?

Washing down

All of us

Marked your grave with that

Bullet that called you

Took you down

Into the ground

Poured your life

From that bottle

Tell me now

Are you drunk?

Swallowed life

Did things not matter?

It took you down

Drink to dust

Swallowed life

Did I not matter?

It took you down

It took me down.

Joni James 2007