Jonny’s obsession with literature turned him to poetry from an early age. Through years of honing his craft, Jonny has built a strongly defined poetic voice, one that penetratingly dissects philosophical and emotional dilemmas through a contemplative, cyclical style. Jonny relishes the utilisation of strict rhyme-schemes and compositional structures within his poems, an approach which he has found to encourage a more penetrating creative focus to his writing process. With his roots in theatre acting, the vast majority of his work was created to be performed, something which adds a vital sense of here-and-now to the poems. He isn’t scared to tackle dark subject matter and reveal difficult truths, yet while these truths may at times appear brutal, dark and unrelenting, a great deal of Jonny’s poems also contain a glimmer of hope, a message that hints at the possibility of positive change, however slim
Progress is a bloody scythe, that reaps more than it sows,
And scorched earth ashes set the soil on which the new crops grow.
To let the crops reach harvest, we recarve the river’s flow,
Rip out the weeds, kill every creature hiding high and low.
And if we could, we’d reap the Heavens, shearing of the snows,
Divide the Sun, make all else dark for our own tiny glow,
And hide in boxes, cut off from the screams of fear and woe,
And in that dark, with eyes of pride we’d laud our last death throes.
Then Heaven’s revenge would bring an end to its pathetic foe,
The wind would rise, a single tide, and kill us with one blow.
The reformed Sun returns to ashes everything we know,
And Heaven sets the soil on which the next harvest will grow.
Not the
Not the black sheen of empty
Not the twice lopped off joy
Not the
Not the gathering dust clouds
Not the sting in your ears
Not the
Not the flowers of gong farms
Not the shutters of stone
Not the hands of the first child
Not the suction of fate
Not the
Not the enema
Not the bright lights
Not the casings
Not the sleep
Not the
Not the hard worn thrice torn lice borne ache
Not the upset piss wet glass stepped scrape
Not the
Not the futile laughter
Not the empty remorse
Not lack of the thing to make clay mould itself
Not the shards
Not the growths
Not the prisms
Not the always-one-step-away
Not the sleet
Not the pulp
Not the cyst
Not the heat
Not the rivulets of steam that lap your skin like waves as the last moments escape and fan out through the floor
Not the start
Not the I
Not the
Not the
The Larvae multiply
Feed on my legs, bore through my eyes,
Ten thousand eggs pulsate
“And you’ll never be clean”
The Black Hole cries.
My skin is calcified,
My bones are stone, my cheeks a hide
Through which the wings break through and fly,
Ten thousand holes of puss and life.
The Black Hole laughs,
“No more, no more,”
And flies on to another shore.
I smashed and burned your little blackboard heart today,
The message written on it was a lie,
It said our love could never be wiped off like chalk.
In truth it took one gust of wind to die.
And as that final remnant of you burst to flame
The fire spat out and burnt my hand with tar.
I gave my brain my soul my heart my mind to you,
And all you ever left me was this scar.
You said you’d help, you said you’d give me therapy.
You drugged me up and dragged my secrets out.
You used my words to take my cherished one from me.
I saw it all but couldn’t even shout.
I trusted you, now I can not trust anyone,
Go fuck yourself you motherfucking liar!
Tonight I’m going to cut you out my memory
And then all that’s left of you will be a scar.
I heard you speak of voices, visions, endless pain.
I saw the light fade from your bloodshot eyes,
But your shattered mind cut through my skin like razor blades
So I didn’t help, I didn’t even try.
I tried to burn that section of my library
But the books remained, their pages only charred.
And now I read the words contained within those walls
And add a branch to my tree of twisted scars.
We scar ourselves, we scar each other every day,
We rip and tear and break and burn and bind
And to annihilate the roots of guilt away
We bleach the dirt left on our barren minds,
But the roots remain, holding a truth that they proclaim
To every broken soul both near and far:
Some people are so desperate to leave their mark on the world
That they don’t mind if that mark is a scar.
Why aren’t there spiders in our shoes?
Why don’t those little creatures choose
Their cold dark home within a boot?
Are they aware of the great foot
That uses it as transient home?
Perhaps they’re told in spider poems
Spun on their webs in silver strands
That tell of danger close at hand.
“Great beasts with four gigantic limbs
Who kill our kind, whose hoards do brim
With endless ways of ending you,
these are the owners of the shoes.”
Perhaps some spiders misbehave,
Climb in the shoes to prove they’re brave,
Keep climbing till they’re at the toe.
If they were there, how would you know?
Perhaps a shoe carelessly worn
Ends spider lives, which friends must mourn.
So here’s a clear message to you:
Please check for spiders in your shoes.
Have you noticed the closeness of laughing and crying?
The euphoria felt both at birth and when dying?
Some view crying too painful and therefore a curse,
But to have no safe outlet for pain feels far worse.
Fresh wounds scar your heart from which black tendrils grow
But your empty void visage means no one will know.
The tendrils burst forth, each one bars to a cage,
But your only relief comes in words on a page.
Your eyes are just dams plugging rivers of tears
Forming lakes in your mind that drown all else but fears.
The fears exhale poison, melt your joy with each breath,
And you recall the bliss that is said comes with death.
“You cunt!”, screams a voice from what’s left of your brain,
“You’d trade momentary pleasure for others’ vast pain?”
“Beast begone”, you reply to the voice in your head,
“And just leave me to unearth the peace of the dead.”
“D’you think I chose to live here, d’you think I got a pick,
to inhabit the mind of some soft selfish prick?
Oh I’d love to move in to a fresh, happy mind
But I’m left showing you of the pain left behind
When you quit, you just give up, it’s fucking absurd!
Don’t you know this could be solved with one fucking word?”
As you utter the word, the dark bars start to fade
And an angelic figure comes straight to your aid.
Her words heal your heart, spreading light as they fly.
Her eyes pierce your own so that, finally, you cry.
The lakes of your mind turn to streams down your face,
Each channel competing in one glorious race,
To rid you of poison, to rid you of fear,
To make your existence feel needed, feel clear.
And as those last remnants of affliction drain
You hear that voice stirring and calling again,
Yet the voice bears no hatred, no final attack,
It utters just two stunning words:
“Welcome back.”