Picture of a Ritualist
Literature & Cinema by Jono Borden
Jono Borden is a Canadian poet, novelist, lyricist, screenwriter, and filmmaker known for transgressive lyricism, occult symbolism, gothic æsthetics, dark eroticism, and experimental narrative forms.
Provocateur-Poet ⛧ Disturber-of-Shit ⛧ Maker-of-Myth
«Poëta non grata» or, a person with a persona?
“We travel packed in the bodies of mummies / with all the coruscating splendour of a jewel / in the abyss, pissing away in hell’s ditches / eternities…”
“I’m tempted to use / as many exclamation points / as there are days / I’ve known and loved / you, but—heaven forbid— // I’ll keep the numerology / trinitarian …”
“Grief is the god of / long journeys, whose heat heaves, / breathes ashes onto flesh across / which tears bleed, leads you / through the garden you gave…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“Wordlessly scored, stricken by unbiblical / chords, you follow me the / way catastrophe always follows prophecy, / enticed by the fragrance of / your own musk, hard to…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“Deft-defiant, dining in candle-light while / dying, adepts dance with your / doom out, crying, you can’t / erase the spoken word’s glamour, / our wedding bells were funeral…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“The headline read, / ‘Narcissus Dead, Drowned / in a Pool / of His Own / Tears,’ I said, / ‘Who really cares / how he went? / I’m not the / curator…”
“Beaten gold-intentioned, the hammer-hewn deal we strike / with loving wild things is knowing that / one day they won’t return. Promising depth, / love is a death…”
“Witnessing wishes vanishing, abandoning / vanity’s fulfillment, exiling to / an oft off-grid figment / of an Amazonian imagination, / redolent with fragrant neon / tickling perception in flickering / purple…”
“These are new / pornographies penned to / offend those gods / others threaten their / lovers to become. / Ask your Self: / are you Pro-Me / or here just / for…”
“Boot-leathered, musty, anonymity flourishes, neon-haloed, / glows viral, denies trust its / virus, Vitus-Dancing upon desire plaguing / minds with pulsating vibes of / thrusts fantasized, actualized by spitting…”
“Assassins and adulterers, / follow me through / exile to my / eclipse and return, // cloaked by the / heart on my / sleeve, the setting / autumn sun showers // in…”
“I can’t tell the difference or the truth, awake, / waiting to be remade, craving an urn-shaped man I / want to phœnix my Self against until…”
“Origin-story teller in the / kiln of my skin, / smouldering heat-on-istic, a song / followed into dark, am / I the colourization or / the restoration? 4K or / a…”
“To fall into a / plot-hole the size of / a grave, no need / to wait for an / ache to wink, to // interrogate the meaning of / sex…”
“Do you want // what I don’t / have, or what / I can’t give? / The grief is // built-in which, in / a sense, references / Catholicism, pain paid / for…”
“Life-spanning, but not life-explaining, I— / memory longer than my beard—had / to write, not why outgrown, / but how much so, now the / virtuoso, once an…”
“Best understood through my fires, / disasters which trigger the rhythms / of my instincts, excoriating and / excruciating, the wrought and the / ruined, reigning bruise-dark and blood-bright…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“De Civitate Angelorum: read it / as if everybody will understand / everything, and that makes them / understand, opening our doors to // unwed mothers, for them to…”
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. / Integer ultrices arcu semper ipsum dignissim, nec eleifend lacus auctor. / Nunc non risus fermentum, posuere nisi eu…”
“ A confession in wet cement, // written in whispered breath with / tidal force, softens mirrored shards / washing across windowless façades gawking / gossip, sponges away love at…”
“Grief is an art / composed of reappraisals, a / moment, a place, where / strangeness prevails and strangers / convene, whose escape absence / conveys, a pain made / greater…”
“All the whores are in their / finery tonight, immediately sacred in the / velvet cry of a throbbing brothel, / growing moans filling a glove, blown / loads…”
“Shut me up in a house of pearls, / blaze me easy as a star, // you’re too expensive and I’m too explosive, widower / away with window…”
…or, is it…?
Remember, kids…
Never give the audience what it wants. Make the audience want what you give.
Upcoming Events
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Sorry.
10.20 ⛧ 5:45 P.M. ⛧ HALIFAX, N.S.
There are no appearances or events scheduled at this time. Do check back soon, though!
SCOTIABANK CENTRE
-

Apologies.
10.20 ⛧ 5:45 P.M. ⛧ HALIFAX, N.S.
There are no appearances or events scheduled at this time. Do check back soon, though!
SCOTIABANK CENTRE
-

Regrets.
10.20 ⛧ 5:45 P.M. ⛧ HALIFAX, N.S.
There are no appearances or events scheduled at this time. Do check back soon, though!
SCOTIABANK CENTRE
Shop Books
Loud volumes to keep your library stocked with shock. Definitive editions of lurid lyrics and wicked lore to haunt your thoughts long after your heart stops. Pick your poison: print or pixels? Everything Jono's written is here, (meta)physical and digital.
A holy man praying to his own reflection, or an alchemist awaiting your perception of his latest concoction? Transmutations await your opinion of his most recent happenings.
“After a year largely surrendered to celluloid phantoms, Jono Borden returns—ink-stained, half-electrified—to the page. Much of last year was consumed by executive producing…”
“A new ritual unfolds this night. Jono Borden’s Bullets in the Temple (To Open Closed Minds) has been summoned into the world, a collection where…”
“The alchemical fires burn brighter tonight. With the unveiling of this digital realm, Picture of a Ritualist, Jono Borden extends an invitation to all who…”
“Available now for those eager to collect manuscripts of Borden’s work is the offer, in his Store, through his Library, of a Handwritten Poem. With…”
“Borden notes to those interested that, available today, are the three idents (animated logos) used by his production house Ritualistic Pictures. Intended variously to introduce…”
“Published today in Ablanatha is a reprint of Borden’s poem, ‘Ablanathanalba’—written by Jono in 2018 and which, in part, inspired the literary and arts…”
