Jewel's Poetry

Jewel has included some of her poetry in Pieces Of You, Save The Linoleum and You Were Meant For Me.

She also read some at JewelStock.

The following poems are available on this page:

  • Me
  • Faith Poem
  • Leaving Las Vegas
  • Criticism
  • Untitled
  • Upon Moving Into My Van
  • Untitled
  • Las Vegas
  • Hommage To Home
  • Flight #364
  • JewelStock Poems

  • God knows what time it is
  • This Cigar
  • Infatuation
  • Sunbathing
  • What I Wanted
  • Fat
  • Taking The Slave
  • Lost
  • I am not from here
  • As A Child
  • Pieces Of You

    Me

    I
    I have blonde hair
    I pluck my eyebrows
    I have my father's nose
    my mother's hands
    I have crooked teeth
    and green eyes
    I play guitar
    I used to get sick alot
    I like the color of wine
    I've cheated on boyfriends
    I've owned fake ID
    But my hair is still blonde
    and my teeth are still crooked
    and I probably won't always like
    the color of wine
    
    II
    I have firm breasts
    I have lips that always smile
    I have veins that bleed
    I laugh when I'm nervous
    I feel the pain of others
    but cry for no reason
    I like open flame
    I've been selfish since a child
    I'm from Alaska
    but hate the cold
    I've cheated on diets
    I've faked applications
    But I still bleed
    and my lips still smile
    and my breasts won't
    always be firm
    
    III
    I have strong shoulders
    I have olive skin
    I have a Swiss face I
    borrowed from my grandmother
    I have long nails on my right hand
    which break regularly
    My little toe is strange
    I write
    I used to make wreaths from dandelions
    I brush my hair before bed
    I cheated on tests
    I faked flirtatious French accents
    But I still have gold skin
    and my nails still break
    and I probably won't always have
    strong shoulders
    and I may not always write
    But maybe I'll start
    making wreaths
    from dandelions again

    Faith Poem

    (a poem about Faith)
    I don't know how to do anytthing
    I am trying to move mountains with words
    But I am an ant
    I scribble
    I drool
    I move like a worm
    whose world
    (words)
    encompassed a mile
    How do I rise above?
    Where will this worm
    find wings?
    I look in the mirror
    and I see filth
    Who is that?
    Where did The Angel go?
    Why is there dirt
    staring back at me?
    Why is the soil of
    incompetence beneath my nails
    Why does doubt paint
    blue rings
    beneath my eyes and
    stain my skin
    Why does my spine assume failure
    Why do my lips
    flirt with they sky;
    why do I try to lasso
    Beauty with such a
    pitiful rope?
    Where is the hair of Rapunzel
    or Samson?
    Where is my sling
    Where is my stone,
    My gun?
    Where is the weapon with which
    I may fight this apathy
    that feels like sleep
    in my limbs
    that loosens my brother's smile
    That kills my neighbor's daughter
    This pen is scrawny and hardly
    seems able to ink out
    or erase this plague that
    infests my
    Generation
    This Giant, This Ogre
    This Beast, This Death
    that assumes a million faces,
    that borrows my own.

    Leaving Las Vegas

    Bill, Butch and Bart
    Swapping penis size
    in the front seat
    while Thelma, Theisel and
    Lou Lou up there
    bouffant hairdos
    and secretly go
    where Blue eyeshadow
    has never gone before

    Criticism

    The savages are upon me
    and I feel my flesh
    Burn
    beneath the teeth
    of their indifference

    Untitled

    I saw a woman
    whose teeth were
    straight like
    White picket fensces
    Until she looked
    at her husband-
    They they looked like
    Shattered windows

    Upon Moving Into My Van

    Joy, Pure Joy, I am
    What I always wanted
    to grow up and be
    Things are becoming
    more of a dream with
    each waking day-
    The heavy brows of Daily Life
    are becoming encrusted
    with glitter and the shaking finger
    of consequence is
    beginning to giggle
    Grumpy old men
    have wings
    Burns sport Halos
    and everyday dullness
    has begun to breathe
    as I remember the
    incredible lightness
    of living

    Untitled

    There is a pretty girl
    on the
    Face
    of the magazine
    And
    all I see
    is my dirty
    hands
    turning the page
    
    Little breasts attached to
    skinny ribs and hungry bellies
    determined legs
    	persuasive swing
    careful hands
    she stands
    a greater threat to herself
    than the cigarette
    she consumes

    Las Vegas

    Women who suck
    their cigarettes
    as though they were
    giving their
    hatred head

    Save The Linoleum

    Hommage To Home

    For the sweat of my father
    and the tough nails that broke his heart
    
    for the sun on our backs and
    the water on our brows
    the heat on our minds
    
    for the silent miles of dirt roads
    Our eyes busy reading the
    signs (on the days we took the car)
    
    for bad meals turned good
    by hunger, everything beatiful
    in the red hot heat of our coal stove
    
    for an honest sleep in
    an old bed in an old house
    built of hand and log
    
    (had nothing been said all day?)

    You Were Meant For Me

    Flight #364

    I
    i miss you
    my teeth ache
    my bones are confused
    	they'd grown so close
    my flesh cries like children
    i speak to them in hush
    it's not fair they say
    	bring him back!
    	beg him stay!
    it's not up to me. i try to explain
    but mind can't make heart understand
    
    	it does not whimper
    
    its one lashed eye keeps blinking
    it insists simply with quiet disbelief
    
    LOVE IS NOT WITHOUT YOU
    
    II
    
    I go back today
    back to where I must move from
    my toothbrush no longer welcome
    
    my clothing canker sores
    
    my altar a wound
    whose bleeding can only stop
    when there's nothing left
    to remind him of me
    
    (I don't wanna go)

    JewelStock

    Jewel wrote these poems one night when she could sleep because she was sick from smoking her first cigar.

    I added the titles for most of these

    God knows what time it is

    God knows what time it is,
    and I awakened by what?
    Perhaps a noise unsettled me,
    or a fitful dream filled with sour grapes and snowstorms.
    I could have sworn it was all covered in ice,
    limbs torn at the joints with a heavy and translucent burden.
    
    He was on my lips again, haunting me.
    Soiled linen, bloody and tangled, about my intestines.
    I want to get out.
    So I sit, in a sweat, a blonde flame of a refugee
    throwing up words like gravestones in the bathroom.

    This Cigar

    This cigar will not leave me
    and I too lazy to get my book
    write on random pages
    to further dizzy and dilute 
    any scrap of discipline I had dreamt I had gained 
    by this silly age of 22.
    
    Not even coated in nickel, or copper.
    Just a harsh brass, that stares me down, in the mirror.
    On nights like this, while my lover sleeps
    His razor-sharp princess dissillusioned by falling stars.
    And hunted by tulips at three am.

    Infatuation

    Infatuation is a strange thing.
    A bony creature thin with feeding on itself.
    It is addicted not to its subject, but to its own vain hunger
    And needs but a pretty face to fuel its rampant imagination.
    It's humid couch and sweaty palms. 
    It's fleshy carpets ablaze with conquest.
    But when conquering is complete, 
    the blood leaves its limbs and it becomes disenchanted.
    Disappointed even to the point of disgust
    with its subject, who sits then, like a hollow trunk,
    emptied of its precious cargo
    and left to fade like defeated naval ships.
    A seed relieved of its transparent husk,
    to dissolve finally on a rough and impatient tongue.

    Sunbathing

    I read a book, and the man thinks I cannot see
    the wrinkled posture of his son as he is nudged.
    He thinks I cannot sense four eyes upon my flesh,
    as the father tries to bond with his teenage boy by ogling my breasts.

    What I Wanted

    I guess what I wanted was to hear
    you'd stay with me always.
    I guess what I wanted was to see
    those hands vowing never to leave my own.
    I guess what I wanted to know was
    I am not loving in vain.

    Fat

    There she sat, a mound of flesh
    with just two eyes to comprehend
    the extensiveness of her being.
    She made a mountain of herself,
    so no one could look down.
    So no one would miss or fail to see
    the tiny woman hands that talked
    desperately of delicate things.
    Through a fist full of rings
    to all who would stop and listen.

    Taking The Slave

    Burn her eyes, without hope of understanding them.
    Kiss her mouth, that you may fathom its strange tongue.
    Indulge in her brown skin because it reminds you of mother.
    Rape her mind, because it is not your own,
    but so sweet, so familiar.
    Like coming home to a native land
    your pale and inbred hands can only faintly fathom.

    Lost

    Lost is a puzzle of stars
    that breathes like water
    and chews like stone.
    Alone is a reminder
    of how far your acceptance is
    from your understanding.
    Fear is a bird that believes itself
    into extinction.
    Desperation: the honest recognition 
    of a false truth.
    Hope: seeing who you really are
    at your highest
    is who you will become.
    Grace: the refinement of a soul through time.

    I am not from here

    I am not from here,
    my hair smells of the wind
    and is full of constellations,
    and I move about this world 
    with a healthy disbelief.
    And I approach my days and my work 
    with vaporous consequence
    a touch that is translucent,
    but can violate stone.

    As A Child

    As a child I walked with noisy fingers
    along the hemline of so many meadows of back home.
    Green fabric stretched out, shy earth, shock of sky.
    I'd sit on logs like pulpets,
    listen to the sermon of sparrows
    and find god in simplicity
    there amongst the dandelion and thorn.
    Now I frequent hotel lobbies, 
    like a chain smoker having a bad day.
    A nasty habit that breathes itself.
    Delivering each day to the needy next.
    Each with the promise of glitter and glory.
    But how my tiny heart aches to return.
    Like a daisy rooted in rot and rubbish 
    asked to grow in strange rooms.
    Fed neon and cold pizza.
    I fear I may wither with forgetfullness.
    So I pull these pages close about my ears
    Tiny, leafy limbs pale with impression.
    My pen a single flame to keep me warm
    like a beacon holding memory.
    Until I am able to go back to my lovely mountains,
    or until I am strong enough to bring their essence
    to the rest of these hungry people
    who long to remember the simplicity
    which lies beyond the cities inbred streets
    and the godliness which resides in us all.

    Poems transcribed and converted to HTML by Aaron Walker.
    Corrections are more than welcome.

    Back to Everyday Angels


    This page maintained by Aaron Walker. Comments are welcome.
    Last updated July 8, 1997.
    This site Made with Macintosh