Jonathan Jones - man in the rain

It’s not without some harshness and brutal honesty that poet Jonathan Jones lays out all the discomforts of reality in his poem “man in the rain”. Long prose-like lines flow quick as the nihilistic statements dealt out like ammunition. “No revelations here” begins “man in the rain”, before readers are faced with weighty possibilities of an existence of toil, violence, illusion. In The Dewdrop, we present all facets of spirituality, including, in the case of “man in the rain”, the possibility of nothing at all.

man in the rain
——

No revelations here. Your behaviour is merely a possibility,
not an outcome. Dogs bury bones. I do not claim to know anything,
frankly. You should not base any decision you might make on
the voice of Christopher Hitchens speaking as your conscience.
Rather try and imagine I may have been pleasantly surprised
to discover that there is a God, whose perfection resides
in our imperfectability as a species. Content to witness genocide.
Love only has to penetrate. The way I would argue that everything else
is the gift of free will. Faces just as keen and likely to sell content.
It’s all an act. We are all simply byproducts of a shared neurosis.
There is nothing in common between us except for this state
of nervous anxiety posing as natural selection. Make your morality
a claim to reason. Go on living in a world full of people as lonely
and as terrified as yourself. That man in the rain’s an illusion.
If you can write a hundred words that’s a hundred words
you did not have before. Convince yourself for all the mal –
adjustment you are still a human being, if you’re chosen.
New Spring will lead to bigger screens for savagery. Conclude
it keeps you safe to shave their heads. Mistrust such rabid insulation.
That man in the rain’s an illusion.