JIMMIE R. PENNINGTON - POEMS

A writer and self taught artist from the Appalachians of Kentucky. Writing  has appeared in- Pegasus,Promise magazine, The Crucible, Staylight Literary Journal, White Ash literary journal, Common Ground Review, Bryant Literary Review, Breath And Shadow and others. First poetry collection released in December  2018 by New Plains Press. First full length novel scheduled for release in latter part of 2019.  Art and writing online at http://frogonery.simplesite.com ​

​To Rock & Roll

When I have time, or allow myself the time
I dive into a sea of vinyl,and swim in forgotten
waves of verse. Like a riptide each track
of the treasured keepsakes pull me outward to
the decades lost.The bending notes of fuzz driven

strings carry me to the crest of a new wave,

and like a surfer I fall into the tube that is the
euphoria of Rock & Roll, and I ride it until it is gone
each time even more satisfying than before.
I stare at the shelves where hundreds of albums are
lovingly stored in their artistic sleeves and I think;
"I still believe." I close my eyes remembering the passion, 
the voices of that time, and I am thankful that generation
was mine.​

​Roads Unknown

​We traveled roads unknown
into unrelenting Summer days,
guided by our adventurous hearts
we discovered youthful love.

Free from the ties that bind
we soared above the world;
fueled by sweet wine and song
and peace which echoed the times.

The strains of Rock and Roll
pounded out our destiny;and
paved the way for beliefs we knew
would lead us to our own nirvana.

We pondered words of wisdom
written in a time of peace and love
we fell into the eternal passion
of freedom born in a time of need.

Soulful and  forever young
we journeyed toward our dreams
those which lay lost and scattered
along the many roads unknown.

(Those days and you are gone.)

​Untitled#14

​I am of life; of this earth,
A creature of creation,
brought forth by the breath
of our creator.
I am of a thought
both discovered and provoked.
My mind is relative
to presence absent to prescience,
and infallible as I may believe myself to be
life endures to prove me wrong.
It wraps  itself around me
and carries me forward
at light speed
blinding the vision of perception
into a mangled  mass of intrusion
illusion, and confusion.
We hold our will
in the palm of our hand
and surrender to the demands
of the perceived existence
which is bestowed upon us;
we are shackled by trust.
With aging we bend under the strain
of our toils and labors
and we brave the defined destiny
which awaits our ending;
but the years are condescending
and offer little relief for the pain.
We love and we hate,
we laugh and we cry,
the emotional peaks and valleys of life
fill us to overflowing,
and the joys and heartaches come from
within the unknown and
the surprise of discovery
only aides us to rise
further with each day.
We possess intelligence
and we expect it to transgress
us to perfection but we are
blinded by our own perception.
Humility falters and sways
as we stumble into the thoughts
of reckoning we face
and we pass through leaving
little trace of our existence
other than pretense of time spent
in the whole of life.
Is this a cruel perspective?
Minute by fleeting minute
we gather life around us
we hoard time within our mind
but we are clueless to the
reality of that small space we call time.
The whole of our life is a minute speck
in the total of all space and time
a flash in the eons which have come
and gone and the eons yet to be seen.
The only aspect of time we can actually hold
is that brief moment in which
we have a single thought.
The past lies unreachable
as does the future.
With no promise that the next second ahead
will even be known by us,
why are we hell bent in believing
that we can relate to time?
In our ending time is just that space
which we occupied in a brief
period of infinity.
There is nothing left of us
other than a distant memory
within another's thoughts.
We exist solely to exist.
However....
the fact that we “do”exist
makes everything we contrive
in that minute space of time
worthy of being alive.