February 9th, 2024 — Borden announces today the arrival of yet another 10 new poems en masse, the second release by Jono of current work since this year began. Unfazed by what distaste this phase of outrageousness committed against page may stir, incite, or inspire to create, these are words thrust forth by the Tortured Artist™—ever “on-brand,” clever tragedian, et cetera—toward honouring by voicing, before detractors can torch them, thoughts of vice otherwise unheard: 120 hard, disturbing new poetical works anticipated for 2024.
Set to appear across 12 distinctive cycles—one series of verse released per month, and scheduled by the provocateur himself to publish online in five-minute intervals at three-of-the-clock through 3:45 a.m., successively, on every New Moon of the year—this morning’s blitz of proposterous pixels comprises the monstrous “Cycle II. An UNWASHED CYCLE of LOST CAUSE a POLYESTER DECADE LONG,” following along on the path already scorched across your backlit screens by January’s initiatory “Cycle I. DECIMATING an ANNIHILATION CYCLE ONE DECADE of SONG LONG,” each section of which is, at once, a standalone poem, and integral segment of the whole circuit whereby lyrical lies are purged; provocative myths destined only to be revivified as truth permitted to survive, if not live on and thrive, in the minds hiding behind the eyes of those fools whose skulls these misfit madrigals reach deep inside.
Hinting, perhaps with perversity given the subject-matter’s inversion of purity, at beads of a rosary—groupings of 10 of which on their strings are, in the tradition of the very Catholicism against which Borden’s pen transgresses at every instance, called “decades”—and in this case, thus far referred to as a “DECIMATION” (as, in its Latin origin, to break evenly into 10 parts or provinces or sections or segments, not destroying them, referring, more than anything, to deconstruction, not destruction) and “SPIN” (as in returning again to an origin), respectively, within each revolution of verse birthed by this project thus far.
Replete with heat he dares you to kindle while you read what scenes these cycles illustrate—subconscious conflagrations from which no complaints of obscenity can guarantee any hope of retreat—Jono is confident these monthly offerings of progressions, of beats, of successions, of zodiac chains in literary rotation, will meet or exceed your expectations of his twisted psyche’s exploration of damnation you have long been anticipating.
Those seeking to read him can glimpse each of the poet’s most recent sequences here, and on his website’s Home page as they splatter their smear.
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February 14th, 2023 — With no shortage of breath to voice his creative fire or characters to inhabit the shadows its bellow throws, Jono today announces his return to prose with a seventh book burning to be birthed, and Borden’s first ever of short stories, Cor Hydræ (Heart of the Snake): Twisted Tales.
Forthcoming this Fall, the tome is a tiny gut-punch of nine yarns one yearns to spin into and cut through, or listen to spun for them by some bard, such as Jono is, in those moments when seeking growth, seeming too small in a world too broad becomes more possible to bear hearing words read which another’s pen gifts life, and license to live, large.
Cryptic, gothic, and caustic, this garden of dark goings on blossoms knots of memorable thoughts best encountered at night. Each story wrought from the mind of a hermit protagonist, Alphard, whose presence at the fringe is the thread which binds these eldritch things he witnesses and describes. Stories linked by sinister whispers echoing chains of events each tale paints in dim-lit vignettes, these are curious literary footsteps to be followed with another’s chosen solitude as your only guide.
Fleshing out bones, that the fight to survive its vastness might not die and this infinite, huge Universe we inhabit, if not vanquished, might relent and let be loosed some clues as to our purpose within it, the stories we throw on them in our collective effort over centuries and across cultures to impose upon distant stars our illusion of knowing them, are the close-read myths constellations wear as clothes that we might see in flashing lights so far off something beyond the darkness of our Selves.
“[T]hese absurd stories would best be classed among those defying classification, better exiled than at home alongside[…]yarns defying definition by rewriting it, if not exceeding expectations then conflating them[,]” their description promises. As the synopsis waxes in kind, “These succinct curiosities weave in and out of Borden’s well-known, labyrinthine psyche, not so much consolidating but extrapolating on Jono’s many and varied esoteric interests which thread and pepper the book with a dark flavour those seeking to scorch an alternate path toward the light will savour.”
With a tongue digging a love out of these holes each story holds, each seeming an immersive vessel those seeking not to be held but fulfilled by thrill will revel in their suspense.
Cor Hydræ (Heart of the Snake): Twisted Tales is available everywhere in print and electronic formats on October 17th, 2023.
Jono Borden 