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Paul Jones

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Mellow Gorillas

Who gave the gorilla a doobie?
Who showed him how to inhale and hold
the warm smoke in his lungs? Hear the slow
sigh through his magnificent nostrils
as the cooled grey is released? His mate
sniffs him trying for a contact high.
Wide-eyed, wild-eyed, their love-filled eyes, rare
as four eclipsed suns at a spring noon.
They are laughing. They clasp each other
chest to familiar chest. Like comets
taking new orbits as they enter
a deeper space, they find each other
in new ways. New gravities pull them.
Is it all illusion? Some herbal
disorientation? Some celestial
prank? Just some dumb weed burning brightly?
In its burning, weed frees these lovers.
For a moment, theirs is the cosmos.
Friends, who try to live a purer life,
please don't judge this moment of escape.
Love, like meteors, falls in many shapes.


Paul Jones has published poetry in many journals including Poetry, River Heron Review, Red Fez, Broadkill Review as well as in cookbooks, in travel anthologies, in a collection about passion (What Matters?), in a collection about love (…and love…), and in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 - Present (from Scribner). Recently, he was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Web Awards. His chapbook is What the Welsh and Chinese Have in Common. A manuscript of his poems crashed on the moon’s surface in 2019. For more see: http://smalljones.com
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