John Clare Stokes
Again I'm sitting out beneath the new sliver
Of a moon sinking
I'm not too all knowing
So it's not too certain if you passed
Across my thoughts
Some of you did
Your impression is as acid bitten
Upon the intaglio zinc plate
Others erased number two pencil
Marks faint but there
As the month ensues
The moon grows larger and later
In its setting
I'll be forgetting
The moment you flashed before
My mind
And you
You shall be so bright I will wear
Sunglasses by night.
John Clare Stokes
It was Preachers favorite lounger
Long May Saturday's in Sopchoppy shade
He sat and pondered the sabbath sermon
Ants working in the sand providing the text
Long Mays since the dry rot took its toll
In March 2011 pappa went to the shades of light
The empty lounger to dark dauber homes
But toward the end of one May
When thoughts of Preacher held sway
We re-webbed the old lounger
Knocked away the dirt dauber nests
And fed them to the ants
That had come
From ole far away Sopchoppy.
Then one day in a recent May
We searched for Preachers lounger
But the metal men had carried it away
We ordered another and set it up
In the new grass above the fire ants
Not the gentle kind that used to come
from far away Sopchoppy.
We miss Preachers lounger.
We miss Preacher.
JohnClare Stokes
We are told early on
In the second command
Make no graven image
But we long
For worship grand
And go about graving
Images to our liking
Worshipping them
Praying deliver us
Praying prosper us
Praying heal us
But they do not hear
They do not answer
They do not care
Yet there is hope
Perhaps they will
So by morning
We fill
The sacred oil
Light the flame
And bow again
Thinking
If I'm sincere
If I persist
If I believe
Then it is so.
JohnClare Stokes
Good ole Monday
Good day for delivering
final notices
We shall no longer be
Bothering you
We shall now be
Turning you over
and over
to
Collection
Who will call you
cut you
Stab you
Kick you
plod you
goad you
roast you
baste you
Shoot you
Bleed you
stuff you
hang you
Til you pay
Have a good
Monday
JohnClare Stokes
Told my shadow
I am going swimming
If I do not surface
You are on your own
After about two minutes
He began worrying
Coaxing me to surface
After three minutes
He was in a panic
But all he could do
Was watch as I stayed
Beneath
Refusing to join me
Choosing rather the
Coming evening
Night to take him.
We hear of mysterious things, how come the gloam, the Magnolia take wing, and memory flies to long gone home.
There are those
In love with woes
No matter the grace
Find it a miserable place.
The ability to raise words from the dead
The ones never read
Flee from this country
You bearer of lost words
Go to the restless swine herds
The Gadarene he rattles
Chains hold him to the tombs
Come poet, there is room.
Rusty latches to unloose
Spikenard to pour on the scar
Memorial of the poet from afar.
There is a palm
At Oak Lawn
Separating Lilly and James
The palm stronger than stone
Pushing their graves apart
There was the time
Rev. Eubanks stood as that palm
Separating at Hopewell
The hearts of stone
From the hearts of flesh
In my verse, I told of the palm. This is the palm I spoke of. Rev.Eubanks was the founder of the Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church in Northern Columbia County,Florida off Road 6. Rev. Eubanks and his wife are buried in Lake City at the downtown Oaklawn Cemetery Northwest of the Confederate graves.
It seems we dwell in primary
Of red, blue, yellow
It's fine for most fellows
It's the pathway to tertiary.
John Clare Stokes
Ground itch
Is both a symptom
And condition
Our flesh reacts
To grass
We are allergic to
Grass
And yet we are
Drawn to it
The world of grass
We do not want
To leave
As grass
It is our being
It takes a supernatural
Burn of the grass
To sooth the itch
To direct our love
Beyond the lawn
