October 19, 2021 — “Two vagabonds—utter strangers[…]trace in three cycles of verse the same thing each craves without shame: to be the one the other needs.”
Diamond & Dagger—Jono’s sixth book—is birthed today. In Borden’s words on the occasion, he encourages his loyal readers—and newcomers to his work, alike—to “Get a little nec-romance-y with some tarot and poetry.”
No stranger to high strangeness, Jono—himself a practicing ritual magician and cartomancer, regarded among many other things for his occult library—imbues his latest collection of poems with the strength of personal experience encountering coincidence and the unusual.
“Though not immediately autobiographical, there runs through the text—as a thread follows a seeker through a labyrinth—a string of seemingly unrelated events that shape the lives of the book’s two protagonists, whose fateful day these words trace. It all begins with these two very different men who have been going nowhere in their lives, and entirely unknown to each other, drawing three [tarot] cards on their own as they set out on their respective, divergent journeys which then converge—where else?—at a crossroads, figurative and literal.”
Speaking on his motivations, Borden continues, “My father gave me my first tarot deck—a Marseille, major arcana, which I still have and use even though I now have several hundred—and encouraged my study of everything paranormal, esoteric, dark, weird. Though not about him or about my Self (for once), the idea of that unseen current that runs beneath our existence—which can only be felt and often during pivotal changes in our lives—that primal, powerful pulse into which we can tap and from which we are gifted a potential to learn using certain tools or practices—is what I sought as a force or theme to unite these standalone poems, to weave them into a concept.”
According to Jono, “That concept is a question of fatalism, whether we direct our courses, or they direct us and our conduct. Speaking of ‘courses’—of course—it is also very much a cycle of lyrics about our appetites, cycles of desire and how we can let their hunger control us, unravel our fabric of sanity and sense of safety, security. As a gay man, and someone fond of finding deep romance—and often less-profound affection—in unexpected places, these ideas guided my pen. I am proudest of this book most of all, of the several I have yet written and published.”
Diamond & Dagger is now available in print and electronic formats.
Jono Borden 