These pages were
dog-eared
but,
really I was amazed
that they were still
there at all.

If I told
you the truth
I’d have to say that
I was flabbergasted
to see that the whole
bookshelf  hadn’t
combusted.

The pages with
folded corners,
those were my
favorites.

The words set upon
those leafs,
those single,
gossamer surfaces
taken, culled
from all the reams
in the world,
those were firebrands
to me,
to my soul.

Even thumbing through
their undamaged brethren
those incandescent selections
generate a glow
that is felt
as noumenon,
worldly, real,
yet ethereal
nonetheless.

I read on,
savoring
the
warmth.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

935

This is what it says
on the front
and
on the back
of
my newest
bookmark.

On one side
the number is green,
the other side
shows a
red number.

It used to hang
from the rearview
mirror.

My car was in the shop.

The problem was minor,
but set me back by $65
nonetheless.

So,
I paid $65
for bookmark
#935.

The cashier swiped
my card and didn’t
look me in the eye.

I swiped
my new bookmark
and felt just a
microscopic
bit better
about
the
money.

Not
really
though.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

At this point,
life feels like
A table set for
20.

There’s only
one
lemon ****.

Everyone wants
a piece.

Someone’s going to end up
with a mouthful of blood.

(Spitting out teeth.)

Chew,
while you still
can.
*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2019

From Journal: September 2019

Some things are simply a matter of midnight melancholy while others are a direct result of the full moon. Sometimes a wish gets made mid-sneeze, mid-yawn, or mid-sentence, getting somehow ruined. Who really understands how all of these things work? I know that I don’t. I probably never will. But, I keep trying. Don’t we all? One way or another.

Some nights have teeth, fangs that sink into flesh. Other nights sing sweetly. No one really knows which night that the given day will lay upon their doorstep.

What most people tend to forget is that they can almost always exercise at least a modicum of control. This is neither fate nor destiny.   It is simply life and it happens to us as much as because of us. This line of thinking is easy to let slide. I try my best to remember.

Apologize when you must. Never say that you’re sorry for something that is out of your control. Be as kind as you are able. Make your mistakes. Learn from them. Hell, just learn. Keep learning.

We’re all out here, following our own humanity around. Like something we keep on a leash. We walk beside it. All of it is lost art. A sonnet. A painting. Something Michelangelo or Aristotle left abandoned in their basement.  A statue, somehow alive. It scratches its ***** and ***; giving its fingers a sniff. It won’t look you in the eye, but neither will it apologize for being what it is. It may very well be more human than you.


Soundless, except for my clicking. Alone. Walking the streets of Downtown. I parked at The Corby and just walked. Today was noisy. People talked to me at every turn.

Earlier today, I was at a bookshop. A lady and her young daughter stopped me. The little girl just had to know all of my ‘why’s’. (Why do you walk like that? Why do you use those things? What happened to you?) I really didn’t feel like going into it, but I couldn’t see any way out of it either. The little girl was earnest as hell and her mom seemed fairly insistent. I felt like I was on display, a lesson in a classroom. However, I couldn’t get the chip to stay on my shoulder. I don’t like being that way anyway. It’s a drag. People mean pretty well most of the time.

As a side note: Pops saw much of this interaction and sat in the van looking rather smug. He looked like he knew that he had raised me right. He did so, but I really wanted to be a **** right then. I don’t think he’s ever seen that much of ‘the thing that happens’. He liked it way more than I did. The lady made her daughter thank me for answering her questions. I felt like an employee.

Lots of depressive times and thoughts. Most of these are still tied to the passing of my mother. I’m not really angry these days, just frustrated. Nothing except home time seems like it’s going the way that I want it to.  
Something needs to change and I’m not sure what it is. I want to do something different. I want to do something that doesn’t force me to care about others so much. But, even that feels wrong. I love doing what I do. I love people. I like the distance though. It keeps me even. I need distance a lot. I’m no  good if I have to go for long periods making people feel comfortable or whatever you’d call it. I get wound too tightly and have to get away.


-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2019

It was said
that I’d received
an education here.

Survival seemed
the only curriculum
as far as
my young boy’s brain
could tell.

Ellison’s red bricks,
yellow/green floors were my own hellscape,
no escaping the addition,
or multiplication
of small angry fists
into soft stomach,
chubby cheek.

The respite of recess,
I recall the lowing
of unseen cows,
the smell of manure
on a breeze,
wafting past the swingset.

Milk cartons,
emptied,
filled again
with earth and seed,
milkweed.  

Butterflies,
adult lies.
blackened eyes.

Grasshoppers humming,
buzzing,  
the plink and plop
of  
gravel-rocks
tossed one at a time
into the storm drain.

This bench wasn't here
40 years ago,
yet the ghosts of my childhood
find my lap nonetheless.

As my own children
now swing, climb or
otherwise enjoy the equipment,
I remain haunted by memories
of people lost to me
for what feels like centuries.  

They unload their baggage
(and my own)
at my feet.

Was I ever a child,
A schoolboy,
Really?

Bessie tells me
it was so.

I suppose it’s time
I believed her.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2019

In the places where
the water moves swiftly
over rocks,
under sky…

While not cloudless,
it is perfect nonetheless.

The clouds present
are sparse,
scattered like seasonings across
the endless blue,
served up sashimi-style
raw, cerulean,
just for me.

There are ions
in these places,
released by movement,
mist, mineral.

They fill lung
and eye
with prisms,
a freshness not
consumed in
ages.

So,
I find a seat
at God’s supper-table,
pick up my fork,
begin to eat the air,

which is enough
right then
to sustain me.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

it is strange
to look into the
mirror of our
upbringing,
and
start a staring
contest.

we looked at us
for a few hours
and
these turned into
days
faster than we
realized.

months passed,
then years,
and still we stared on,
into this mirror of
ourselves,
of our lives
and
our own devising,

our own separate
togetherness,
like wheat and chaff,
like milk
and
cream.

it has been akin
to a quickening,
a molting
a rapturous unbecoming
and
all the while,
a rebirth.

the decades will
continue
racing by,
and
elope with what is left
of our eyes.

we will be left
stumbling in the dark,
yet seeing
everything.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

It’s the Tuesday night
of your life.

Soon enough,
Wednesday will be
looking at you,
waiting for you
to cross it’s name
from this week.

Thursday will be
here before you
realize.

Stooped,
shallow of breath,
thin of bone,
milky-eyed.

“I’m so tired”,
said Thursday.

Friday is a second wind,
a telephone call
that announces
ourselves
to
ourselves,
reminding us that it’s all
over so quickly.

Saturday,
a celebration,
merrymaking
as we remember
who
we
are.

Sunday.

Resting.

Maybe a book,
a short nap,
an afternoon
at the cinema,
a steak
dinner.

Monday comes back around.

What if our hours
were days?
What if our days
were decades?

This week is almost over,
isn’t it?

My knees
hurt.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

In this bluest blue
of the first morning venture
I can hear a helicopter
or a C-130 from the airbase nearby.
Yet, despite my squinting, I cannot see it.

I avert my gaze from the sky,
moving it to my front lawn
just in time to invade the dog’s privacy
as she performs her morning necessaries.

The skyward sounds intensify,
I attempt to find their source once more.
Still unable to locate said airship,
allowing my eyes to follow instructions given by my ears,
I spy a hawk riding the thermals,
perhaps looking for a rabbit to invite over for breakfast.

Able to still hear the warbird or rescue chopper,
my imagination stirs these sounds,
the vision of that sleek, hunting raptor.

How tiny his goggles, his helmet.

How deftly the hawk fires rockets from under his wings
while strafing the rabbit village with his machine guns.
They scatter
as the burrows that nested them warmly, safely in the autumn are destroyed
in flying debris and fireball.

Breakfast is served,
our thunderhawk dives to inspect the results
of his latest scrambling mission.

The dog and I weep softly as Taps plays for fallen lapin infantry.

Our own breakfast is griddling,
we turn our backs to this  morning’s madness.

The omelettes are ready,
the bread,
baked,
pulled from the oven,
the coffee is hot.  

Like rabbits we retreat
to safer quarters.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2019

My mother is a password,
my father is a desk.

I am a pen that moves across
the blue lines of this page
or
the clatter of the keyboard
on which these words are typed,
transmitting their collective zeros
and ones into the blue-black light of
the text that appears unabashedly unmonitored
on the monitor, the screen, the scene
of this machine
that wages wars on my melancholy,
destroys the depressive states,
guerilla tactics,
computer-guided, cruise missile
ordinance.

Ordinary?
No.
A one-man Civil War.
An opinion-piece, op-ed
megaphone manifesto.

Rights?

Rites?

Writes?

I’ve got ‘em all,
down the the most
microscopic minutia,
a miasma of Most-Holy
**** or Shinola.

My mother is a password
my father is a desk.
I am a pen,
the mightiest of swords,
a war within a warrior,
no better
or
worse,
just different
from the
rest.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

We’re the heavy eleven.

Think about that number for a couple of seconds.
It’s a pair of ones, side by side.
When people talk about couples,
significant others, they often say something about
two people becoming one.

I’ve always liked the idea of two ones.
Two single and separate entities becoming a
recognizably different thing, yet still able to be
autonomous.

What an enormously human achievement.

And,
the achievement in no way has to be relegated
to romantic partners.

We can all be friends, right?
We can have each other’s backs, yeah?
Support one another?
Thick and thin, and all that kind of thing?
Home team?
Visiting team?
Does it really matter?

I’m one.
Me.
Alone,

You’re one.
Alone.
Independent.
Relevant.
Real.

Like the ones
in the number eleven.
One. one.
Two ones.
Side by Side.
Each holding the other up.
Supportive.
Encouraging.
Together.

The heaviest
of
elevens.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

My wife
and kids
like me better
these days.

The doctor
gave me an
Rx
for an
antidepressant.

I’m not much of a
tough guy,
my anxiety
presents
as anger
and
I tend to
take it all
very personally.

I cried a lot
this year;
missing so many
dead people.

Those little blue
pills make everything
a little more difficult.

But, there are less tears
and more future
in the windshield…
looking toward,
moving forward.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

the miracle
of a little
girl rising
from her
wheelchair
is
such
a rare
thing
that all
else
perhaps seems
ordinary,
maybe even
meaningless.

it is not.

miracles
are everywhere
and inside of
everyone.

Look!

You’ll see them.

in every sunrise
or
cotton cumulonimbus,
in every hummingbird
or the flour-covered
apron of that lady
who works at the
bakery.

there are miracles
in the eyes of
every child,
sparrow, leopard,
or
squirrel.

This line is miraculous,
as miraculous
as you.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

I held the smallest fragments
of what had once been my dear friend
in my hand.
Never had I held the cremated remains
of another human being.
I found it to be rather benign, physically.
Mentally though,
I imagined that I found it distasteful,
but not really all that much.
My mind softened the scenario further.
I imagined that I was holding in my palm,
what was once my poet-friend’s thumb.
Now, I had this ethereal thumb
to further, fashionably so,
guide my own pens or pencils across pages
yet to be written,
upon verses as yet unknown.
I took great solace in that thought.

David William Thomas’ thumbprint
is on these pages,
smearing,
ever so gently,
the ink that lays across the face
of this simple piece
of my own soul.

We spiraled what remained of our kindred
across the open spaces
of a modest Missouri wood
as the moon rose above;
the woodpeckers,
the coyotes heedless of our intrusion.

Gates locked against us,
we circumvented their blockade
in the names of sage-smoke and brotherhood,
of mentors and men bent on Buddhist
benevolent remembrance.

We set fire to kindling,
remembered our fallen friend
in a way that he,
above all others,
would have appreciated the most.

In a place called Sunbridge,
a path of passage to a greater plane of being,
poets held sway over all but nature.

Our altars were The Earth,
our robes,
vestments of denim, canvas, and leather
were holy.

Even the invading Conservation Agent
deserved less than the truth,
because he was inherently ignorant
to this event’s significance
in our collective lives at the time.

So,
lies and half-truths were served;
we escaped unscathed.

The lilacs knew,
but remained silent.

Only the tiger spoke.  

*
-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications 2019

we are servants
yet expectant,
not yet ready
to give,
perpetually ready
to take.

this seems to be
the way of things
now.

what a shame.

the Buddha
and the bridesmaid;
we are both
at
the
same
time.

seeking peace,
conflicted,
never
satisfied.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

There was egg salad in the fridge,
half a container of that store bought,
neon-green guacamole that nobody else
likes but me,
tortilla chips too.

So, we sat together and ate
this hodgepodge lunch,
the dog and I.

She never once complained
that there were no crackers
or a few pieces of soft, white
or even dark, crusty
pumpernickel bread.

We thought about whatever
it was that we thought about
while we chewed thoughtfully.

I looked up the word: tincture
in the dictionary that I keep in my
office,
right off the kitchen.

A friend of mine had used the word
in correspondence, and I was rather
embarrassed that I’d not known what
it meant.

But,
I found that embarrassment wanes
when one is scraping the last few globs
of guacamole out of the container with
one’s finger and is saddened because
the accompanying tortilla chips have
been reduced to crumbs.

The dog wasn’t embarrassed of me.
She was busy cleaning the remnants
of egg salad from the inside of the
old butter dished I’d packed it away
in.

I’d already packed what had been enough
for a decent sandwich away in my guts
using tortilla-chip spoons,
doing my best not to ***** more
silverware than I had to.

The hour was almost up;
I had to be back at the office
in about 15 minutes.

We,
the dog and I,
took this small measure of time
as an opportunity to listen to a
couple of songs…

one by Iron Maiden.
the other by John Coltrane.

While the discs spun,
the dog wiped any excess
egg salad or tortilla chip crumbs
from her muzzle
onto
the living room carpet,
by sliding around
on her face.

It was funny to watch.

I’ll have to be sure and not
tell Angela about it.

Soon enough,
it’s once more around the yard
dear doggie,
a Marlboro for me,
another few hours at the office,
little friend,
and I’ll sail back home
to thee.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

We were both either in the right or wrong place at the same time, the old codger in the straw hat and I.

And, I’m not looking to write, tell, or think of any other stories about my mother, whom had died.

Nevertheless, here we are at the FastGas on Frederick Avenue.

And, as he pays for fuel he starts telling the clerk and myself about the trouble he has with numbers.

“I just lost my wife of 47 years,” he says.

“I’m sorry to hear this,” I reply.

“I remember looking at the clock in the kitchen just after she had died. I couldn’t read it.”

“Hmmm…”

(Because I couldn’t think of anything better to say.)

“It was like it didn’t make sense anymore. It was like nothing made sense anymore.”

I could relate, but didn’t say so.

“Yeah, I’m 74 years old, and if I died tomorrow that would be just fine.”

“You miss your partner fiercely, yeah?” I asked rhetorically.

He nodded reverently and handed the clerk three $20 bills.

“I don’t know what pump my van is on and all I did was pump til it stopped…
Take whatever you need for us to be squared up.”

The lady behind the counter did as she was asked.

The codger thanked her, collected his change, turned to leave.

“Your partner will wait for you. You still have some stuff to do here for awhile.
It’s okay that numbers don’t make sense anymore. It’s okay if a lot of **** has stopped making sense. You’ve got people that’ll steer you right, I’m sure.”

The clerk nodded.
I winked at her.

He nodded, sighed, stepped into the cooling air outside.

I stopped to light a cigarette.
I smoked and thought about how, in spite of everything, it all still made sense.

When I looked up, all that was left of that old fellow’s van was a plume of exhaust.

Even that made sense.

At least I hoped so.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2019

I don’t like knowing
that there’s a YouTube
channel out there for
gun-nuts called “The Warrior Poets”.

I’ve looked at some the videos.
None of them have anything to do
with poetry.

I guess that’s okay,
but,
I still don’t have to like it,
so I don’t.

It does give me a reason
to write down the fact that
I believe that I,
in fact,
am a warrior-poet.

My friends are too.
John, Hans, Larry, Kristopher,
and Josh…

We’re a gang.

We’re a conclave,
a klatch of bare-knuckle
sophists, street-wise surgeons
of verse drunk on our own power.

Beautiful bruises,
pooled blood,
split-lipped
ripped pages
broken pens
shattered lenses.

We’re the dogs of war.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

They are called cowbirds.

I did not know this until
just a few weeks ago.

The neighbor-lady told me.

I told her that they made me think
of those fish that you see during
documentaries about the ocean;
the fish that cluster and move
and
bend the shape of the whole school
so that it catches the light that is just
visible below the surface
and
is just
bright enough to scare the sharks or
dolphins enough into thinking that
the entire school is one big fish that
might do well at fighting back against
dolphins or sharks,
so they end up leaving that particular school
of fish alone and look for easier prey.

“Yeah. They’re called cowbirds”,
she said again.

So, I asked her if she came out to look at the pinks
and purples  and oranges of this sunrise and I asked her if
she thought that the ***** snowdrifts looked like coral reefs
now that they’ve melted in the sun that we’ve had in the afternoons.

I told her again that the coral reef snowdrifts and the way that they’ve melted
are the reason that the cowbirds made me think of those fish from the ocean documentaries and I’m sorry I can’t remember what those fish are called,
but
aren’t the colors of the sunrise beautiful?

“So, yeah, they’re called cowbirds”, she said one last time as she turned to go back inside.

“Now I know what a cowbird is”, I thought.

And, in spite of the black and grey dirt on them,
I still thought that the snowdrifts looked like coral reefs as they melted,
and
I still thought that the lavender sky,
with its pink and orange laser beams
was beautiful while the cowbirds swarmed
and
their inkblot flocks
coiled
and
spooled through an ocean of blue ,
my brain wandered around the ocean
and wondered if those same types of silver-scaled fish
made like the cowbirds while avoiding
the dolphins and the sharks
as though they were seafaring
raptors.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

Sometimes there’s nothing left but the wolves.
cornered
confused
concussive silences
broken by howls
rivers of bile
iron filings
choked upon truths
landslide mind
sleep apnea
retinal scan
unidentified
alone
rivers of isolation
mercury tears
that don’t fall
they well
stay in the sockets
waiting for the next wave
numbness
sterilized
mechanical
depressive state
mauled.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

Guy told me that he was sure that Michael J. Fox and I had the same disease.
He wanted to know why I wasn’t shaking and convulsing all over the place.
Was it because of some new medication?
I tried my best to explain the differences between Cerebral Palsy and Parkinson ’s disease.

None of it seemed to make much difference,
and that,
in itself,
was okay too.

Guy was apologetic,
not for getting his information wires crossed,
but for my troubles as he saw them.

“Man, I’m so sorry that you have to live like that.”

I told him that it was what I was used to,
that it wasn’t that big a deal.

“Man, I just think it must be so hard.”

I told him that it was not easy some days,
that it was what I knew though,
that I was okay,
doing my thing,
just out seeing a band play
some music.

Something must’ve gotten through whatever haze he was in,
because he began to apologize for talking to me
about what he called,
my problems.

“No, sir.”
“A question is just a question. It never hurts, it only helps fill in the gaps.”
He said that he was sorry anyway.

I told him not to worry about it.

He asked if I liked the band that was playing later that night.

I told him that I did,
very much indeed.

He said that he wished he had a ticket,
but was trying to hear whatever he could
standing out in the cold,
next to the tour-buses,
smoking.

I finished my cigarette,
said I was going back inside.

He apologized,
‘for bothering me’,
he said.

“Nah,
you make the world
more interesting”,
I said.

And,
it was
true.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

In the midst of a memory
that is not much more
than a wisp of smoke
after the candle has
been blown out.

The scent of the candle,
once extinguished,
is pallid compared to
its acrid brethren whose
tendrils ache for the ceiling.

As the exhalation
escapes the lips,
the small
flame winks into nothingness,

the smoke reminds us all
what a monstrous adversary
fire can be.  

Fire,
like the pain of this
incendiary,
if fleeting memory:

The raven-haired
librarian,
her tresses now streaked
with fine, silver filaments,
spoke of children
long ago buried.

(mine)


“You know, your daughters hold a special place in my heart.
I think of them often”, she says.

It is easy to speak truths,
when they are so honest and real
that they hang in the air like smoke
or cause a minor burn
like a palm held over a candle
for too long.

“I named one of them after Holden Caulfield’s sister”, I say.

“But, her middle name is all yours.”

That second sentence may have been a spark
in my mind,
that never was combustible enough to
issue forth as spoken,

but it remains true nonetheless,
librarian,

as true as smoke,
as true as fire,
as true as…

you.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

I’d like more
than one death knell,
I’d like a
personal
bottle of lightning,
that I’ve caught for
my very own.

I’d give up that
little **** of a
rat-terrier if
it could,
somehow,
transmogrify
into a wolf
or
a panther.

I’d like
a jet-black
Camero,
with tires
made of fire
and seats made
of smoke.

I think that
a little toxic-waste
is good for you.

(keeps ya sharp, yeah?)

I think
that a man,
a woman,
hell,
any human
worth a ****
ought to be able
to ride into battle
on a goat, a *******,
or a *******
llama

and

know in their
hearts that they are the master
of their own destiny.

It’s a rough sea,
it always will be.

That’s life.

Be sad,
mad,
a little depressed,

but,

stay here,
because there’s
kielbasa sandwiches
with mustard and
onions.

There are people
that love you,
there are books,
songs,
flicker shows
to see.

The sharks bite,
the octopi might
squeeze,
the rays might sting.

None of it means
anything,
if you don’t…


Take off the floaties
and swim.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

Move the chains,
shift the paradigm
in such a way
that it might shift
tectonic plates,
alter the *******
coastline!


Change the channel,
alter your state!

(shift, alter, change!)

So,
what now?

Cut ties with
all your life’s
toxicity?

What’s that look like?

Under the covers?
Staring at a screen?
Petting your cat?

Paddling
the online ocean
of lazy lies.

It’s safer to swim with sharks.

At least their teeth are honest.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

I am neither kept nor caught.

Not a rabbit in the snare,
not the fox in the chicken coop.
I am here, with her,
not fooling her,
myself,
or anyone else.

If anything,
I am like a shark.
I have to keep moving
or I can’t breathe.  

Hunting stories;
an understanding of humanity
that continues to elude me,
in my shark-state.  

She lets me swim
these streets and alleys.
Hunting ideas for the notebook.
Telling all of the other fish my stories.

Sea lions I’ve bitten,
stingray tails.
How they might’ve tasted.
Their terrified eyes.

These are good stories.

They’re not always true,
but it’s always a little more fun
when they are.

I’ll just keep moving.
Swimming the currents
of this municipality’s ocean.

Sometime later,
I’ll feast.

(Blood is always in the water.)  

Pen and ink.
Tooth and fin.  

It’ll be a frenzy.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

It was one of those black,
crystalline
winter mornings.

There was no moon
or
stars that could be seen.

The coastal storms
had harried our
Midwestern weather pattern,
dosed us with perhaps,
a little more winter
than we’d previously
been ready for.  

Out the door,
on the street,
just before five o’clock
in the morning.

The air is not still,
but doesn’t have much movement to it.

This breeze has teeth though,
they bite hard enough
that everything in me
says that it might be a good idea to stop,
turn around,
get back under the covers,
hideout for a few more hours.

But, I’m already out here.

I’ve chosen the Phillips 66 sign
as my adopted moon,
letting it guide my steps.

I pass by that mechanic’s yard.

The yellow IROC Z-28 stares at me
with her dim headlights,
reflecting the light of that
‘not-a-moon’ moon
we’d both elected to go in for.  

“I used to go fast”, she says.
“Me too”, I say and keep walking.

There was a time that I wanted that car
like I’d wanted women I had known
during years and versions of myself
long gone.

Really though,
I don’t know what I would have done
with those yellow fishtailing hips,
those screaming tires,
that black vinyl-wrapped steering wheel.

Yeah,
that car was very much like
those long-lost lusted for women,
in that I’d have been flummoxed
as to what to do with them after a while.

There are only so many
red lights to run,
so many hairpin turns to take,
holding that yolk for dear life.

There are only so many mindless rolls in the sack,
only so many beers with bourbon sidecars.

I keep walking.

That yellow Camaro winks at me
a few more times
under the light of that gas-station moon.

I keep walking.

Nowadays we’d both make
that same quarter-mile run
to the Phillips 66
in the same amount of time.

However,
she’s all caged up
in that chain-link lot.

I’m not.

I’m free.

I’m cold,
but where I’ll end up,
I’ll fill up on biscuits and gravy,
sit in a warm booth,
hope that someone
has already left a morning paper behind,
and stare into the inky, starless pre-dawn sky.

Likely becoming
hopelessly infatuated with my
adopted moon.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

Looking back at photos of Christmases past.
An action shot of my youngest boy,
testing out his new hula hoop.

I can see my mother’s feet.
She’s sitting in her chair,
watching what must’ve felt
like the magic of the day
unfolding before her very eyes.

And, it was magic.
For a while her pain had subsided,
her knees didn’t hurt,
and she simply enjoyed her small,
nucleus, family as we unwrapped
the wonders laid out before us.

Her shoes,
the ones she deemed the most comfortable,
were yellow and black little tennies.

I called them her bumblebee shoes.
And, there they are in the bottom left corner of these last three photos.

Now, she’s gone.
Somewhere, around the corner, we say.
To the other side, we say.
But, she’s always near, we say.

And,
as I think of her now,
I imagine her as a drawing,
a cartoon,
like something that Bill Watterson
might have drawn up.
Bumblebee shoes,
looking a little bit like dinner rolls,

(That’s how Schultz described Watterson’s drawing of Calvin’s feet.)

her capri jeans,
showing her little birdie-like ankles,
and her comfy, orange Kool-aid Man shirt.

(I still have it.)

She’s still a bit wobbly,
unsteady on her feet,
but she’s doing okay.

So am I.
(Angela too.)
So’s Pops.
So are her grandkids.

We miss her.

And,
this Christmas is different,
that’s for sure.

But,
she walks into my thoughts,
coming from the kitchen of my memories,
carrying a cup of coffee
or
a plate of something wonderful for me to taste.

And, she’s always wearing her bumblebee shoes.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

“You tell that man that I’ve no more desire to speak with him than I would the devil himself!”
“You tell that man that I am very upset that he would come in here and interrupt this afternoon’s bingo game!”
“I mean, honestly!”

The administrator of
the nursing home looked at me nervously.
I looked back,
apologetic,
but undaunted.

“I just need information.”

“I need to know if she has any plans to go back home.”
“I need to know that if she does go home, she’ll have the proper equipment and support system in place, waiting for her when she arrives.”

The administrator walked back
toward the facility’s dining hall,
where the bingo game was in full swing.

(The executive whispered into an ear.)

A pair of elderly, cataract-laden eyes rolled,
then glared at me with a hostility that I could feel,
even all the way over by the nurse's station.

“The lady says that she plans to stay with us.”

I nodded, said my thanks, and walked back out into the cold.

This part of the job is always a bit surreal.

It makes me think of my mother.

She was the director of several nursing homes over the course of my youth.

The smells of these facilities is assaultive.

(Industrial cleaning products,
boiled vegetables,
assorted liniments and balms,
the faintest twinge of ***** in the nostrils.)

To me these places smell like memories
that go for long periods,
unrecalled,
unrecounted.

(School-age summers
spent in supply rooms,
marking supplies,
stacking them neatly,
like troops ready for deployment.)

Often the nursing home
is thought to be a horrendous destination.

I can understand that.

But, she wanted to stay
and I had interrupted the bingo game,
hadn’t I?

Tonight’s supper was roasted chicken,
mashed potatoes,
pickled beets on the side.

(I’d read as I’d entered.)

Maybe her sons and daughters
didn’t want her anymore.
Maybe they’d visit every afternoon at 4.
There was no way I’d ever know again for sure.  

But, I know why this afternoon’s task
made me smile,
stinging at the same time.

Because I’m Cynthia’s son.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018

“What do you like about me?” he asked.
“I like everything about you. You’re my very best friend.” came her reply.
“Yeah, but what specifically, makes you like whatever it is that you like about me?”
“Okay, okay…” she said, her brow furrowing thoughtfully.
“I like that you’re smart, and funny, and that we talk a lot, and that you love me the way that you do, as much as you do.”
“Well, thank you, babydoll.” he said grinning at her, still somewhat dissatisfied with her answer and not sure why he was.

Later, she came into the room that he was writing in.
She said: “You know that I don’t have the same type of thoughts floating around in my head that you do. You know that my words don’t come as easily, as effortlessly as yours do, right?”

“I do know this.” he said.
“But sometimes it just feels really good to hear good things about oneself; to hear reasons why you are someone’s other half.”

“Fine, but you should know that it has always been this way, you have always stood in the very same light that you stand now. You are me, and I am you, and we are we. It’s this way now, and has been for the better part of two decades. It will always be so.”

“I know.”
"I do know.” he said reassuringly.

And, he did know.

She turned, his beloved, to leave the room.
“I’ll leave you to your writing then.”
“I can’t wait for you to show me what you’ve been working on.”

He called her name, just as her foot had touched the threshold.

And, so she came back to him,
this poet,
this writer,
with his artist’s self-doubt,
his constant worry
as to his worth,
his being ‘good enough’.

She wrapped her arms around him,
he allowing himself to be enveloped,
felt secure
in her embrace.

So,
with a wink,
a contented sigh,
and a brief pat
of her magnificent
left buttock,
he released her.

He was already
thinking
of
the next
stanza.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018

The car and I,
we made our way
into the downtown
portion of this Midwest
mini-metropolis.

The sun was out,
snow melting,
and it sounded a lot
like rain as everything,
everywhere
dripped and plopped
creating a slurry of
grey road juice
that hissed under
the tires as we
passed by.

At the intersection
nearest to my friend’s
shop,
there was a refrigerator
box that had been
tossed in the street.

It,
like most things,
was on its way
to disintegration.

The red letters
that were inked to
the sides of the box
had started to run,
making the box look
to be some kind
of suburban roadkill.

I wondered briefly,
as the next holiday
rounded the corner
if the contents of the box
might be a gift.

Or…

Maybe a:
“*******! The fridge is shot!”
kind of unexpected
expense.

Either way,
the car and I
had other destinations
to reach.

So, I let my thoughts
wander still
as the tires turned
underneath.

“What would it be like to climb the steel stairs
on the sides of those buildings nearest
the scrapyard?”

Someday,
I’ll find out.

Surrounded by the steam
that comes from those buildings
doing whatever it is that they
might do,

I’ll smoke a cigarette,
count the pigeons that land nearby,
and think of the best way
to tell you all
about it.
*

-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

Waiting for what?
Nothing much is happening here.
Still, there’s nothing wrong
with waiting around for a while.

The air is amazing tonight.
Damp,
cool enough to make
the earthen odors
mean a little bit more
than they might otherwise.

There were two ravens
on the street lights
earlier this afternoon;
we looked at one another for a minute.

They had their sodium lamps
to roost on,
passing judgement on us below,
but there were other errands to run,
no time for further inquiry
as to the harshness of the gaze they leveled.

Still, we looked upon each other,
it was like they knew something unknowable
to anyone else at all.

We ate a tripe supper,
with beans and onions.
The smell of the tripe was a pleasant,
but readily acknowledged
barnyard smell.
As I chewed, I knew doubtlessly
what I was eating.  
It tasted fine.

After supper came a pair of cigarettes,
some time to walk.

There was no real destination.
The only task was to avoid the torpor
that comes all too readily
once the belly is full.

Now,
the house is asleep.

All but me.

I can still smell the lingering smells
of fried ***** meat and onion.
Now harsh,
a bit unpleasant.

I’ll make enough use
of such a small displeasure,
so as to stay awake just long enough to finish these lines,
take another short stroll
into autumn’s savory fragrances
before sleep steals what’s left
of tonight’s living wage.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

I need you to stay with me.
I need you to understand.
It’s not just this room,
but me,
when I’m inside of it.

You.
You’re the only one with
a key.

You.
Not me.

I only have the room.

And, you.
I have you.

But, sometimes your key
doesn’t fit the lock,
so all there is
is the room and
what’s in there
waiting for me.

Most of the time
it’s just work stuff,
frustrations that fade
by the lunch hour.

Sometimes it’s these
****** crutches,
this crooked spine,
the soreness of the
knees and ankles
that I’ve been born with.

Sometimes, the room pitches or
sways.

Haunted.

By the ghost of my mother,
her love,
the smell of her kitchen.

By the ghost that my father is not,
yet.
That day will be here soon enough.

I’ll be locked in this room.

The lock will be broken.

No one will have a key that works.

The room will be ablaze.

The only thing that will save me

is this pen
and
paper
not yet burned.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

she was one of those things,
a person yes, but a noun too,
a thing,
animal,
alive,
warm.

she brought about that
innate desire to touch
or to taste
that all humans have.

putting your mouth
on something
makes it real,
right?

her tiger’s
tail swishes
behind her
and
no one else
can see it
but me.

how’d
I
get
so
****
lucky?

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

In the interim,
I will continue
despite the fact
that I don’t know
how to do this
without you.

There are still
moments of
the day that
pass
like
an oil-slick
eclipse
*******
the light out
of the room,
the air
from my
lungs.

It is in
these
moments
that I feel
the
most alive,
because I
really wouldn’t
mind
dying.

Knowing
that there
is so
much more
that needs
done;

the sorrow lifts,
the lungs refill,
the rage
returns,
lights the fire,
and I
advance.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

We,
all of us,
stood out in the lot
of the greengrocer's.

We looked upon
the pending sunset as if
we,
ourselves,
were birds ready
to take wing
into that auburn horizon.  

We looked at the clouds
as they became
majestic brushstrokes
placed strategically
by a great unseen artist
whose name we all knew,
but was different for each of us.  

There were brilliant purples,
pinks,
and oranges
that our eyes
might have been seeing
for the first
or last time.

(None of us knew for sure.)  

The sun shone
through a great bank of cirrus
like the beginning of
some great onslaught
by a giant dragon
or
the first flash
of a nuclear holocaust.

None of us
would’ve minded
either scenario
for the beauty of it
and
our presence
therein.  

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

On October 2nd a local high-school teacher invited me to her classroom to speak to her students about writing and poetry. More specifically, the lesson of the day was one in which the exploration of a subculture took place. Subsequently, the questions that were posed to the students in the beginning were: “What does a poet look like?”  What would a poet sound like, conversationally?” “What kind of clothes would they wear?” “What do you think makes someone want to be a poet?”   As we got set to go forward with what became an easy and enjoyable group conversation, it all seemed a bit esoteric to me and I began to wonder if I was indeed the right person for this particular gig.

I started to wonder if I was a poet, if I am a poet.  What does a poet dress like? How did I come to be a poet? I know my backstory, as it relates to the when and why I write what I write and way that I write it.
But, in the end, we talked about the subculture of poets and poetry, the need for more human interaction, the thrill of the live poetry reading and the fact that this particular subculture that I am a part of also tends to be sought out by those from other subcultures. I explained what The Thunderbird Sessions are and what they continue to mean to me. I explained that we have a regular attendee whom is very obviously wracked with anxiety, but that he comes to life under the lights and through the PA-system at Unplugged during a Thunderbird Sessions event.  Additionally, I explained that we have, often, subcultures within subcultures represented at a Thunderbird Sessions reading.

It seems that the fringes, the weirdos, the people who don’t quite fit in anyplace else, fit into the robes of the poet or the writer, because people that write have an escape hatch, they have a valve that releases the pressures that they feel every day and in almost every way.

I have done my best to make sure that my subculture is as accepting of any other subculture that might step through the doors of anywhere that I might be reading, writing, or otherwise existing. Because, really, the only culture that matters is the culture of kindness.  

Before that roomful of high-school kids was done with me, I told them that despite the fact that I didn’t know them, I loved them unconditionally. I told them this, because no one told it to me outside of my own childhood home and family. I felt like I didn’t fit on the planet. So, I found music and books that made for good companions when I needed them. Records and books are often quite a bit more reliable and dependable than people. People will let you down at every turn.  It’s a pretty rough room out there right now, so I’m trying to be one of those people whom you know will absolutely not let you down. I hope I’m doing okay.

A few days later, I got a thank-you card in the mail. It seems that I failed to communicate thoroughly enough on the subject of subcultures. No one wrote: “Hooray! Now I know a real poet!” “Now I understand how a poet should dress!”  “Now I know how to talk like a poet!”   Instead, the teacher wrote something like this: “Those kids remembered how you told them that you loved them unconditionally despite the fact that they were strangers to you. That really meant a lot to them.”

I want to do more of this sort of thing. It’s the only way I feel like I’m doing the very most good that I am able to do.
*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

Feeling like
a calculator
with a decimal
key
that sticks.

Always incorrect,
missing
the point,
a fraction
of the
actual,
misplacing the
factual.

The letter-opener
laughs
at me.

Sees
my inaccuracy,
my inadequacy.

The thumbtacks
gather,
whispering into
the corkboard,
memos written,
regarding my
misaligned
mathematics.

The desktop
dings
the arrival
of an
email.

The office-supply
order
has arrived.

The scissors,
held
in an X,
slice through
packing tape.

Right there,
on top
of the steno-pads,
rests
my replacement,

new,

plastic bubble
intact,

decimal key
moves free,
better than
me,
no need
to see
to believe,
calculations conceived,
bourn correct.

The decimals
rounded to
the nearest
hundredth,

I’ll find
rest,

my long division
meeting measure
of
its remainder
at the bottom
of an
office
wastebasket.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

The yellow dog was dead,
starting to bloat on the side
of a more rural stretch of 169
hwy.

It was easy to see,
despite the brevity of
our time together,
that the yellow dog had
belonged to, was part of,
a home, a family.

Even in death,
the dog looked like a
Dutch, or a Butch, or Jeb, maybe Roscoe;
like a dog that belonged
in a setting such as
this.

Not,
however, on the side of this
two-lane piece of asphalt,
but in this patch of fly-over
country that he had, just a
while ago,
snuffled.

Or,
living in the horse barn,
sleeping on the loose caroms
of straw, maybe catching a rabbit
for his supper now and then;
his master bringing him into
the house for a warm bath,
some table scraps, when the weather
cooled.

However,
today is warm,
the sun glints off of the white fluff
of a rabbit’s **** and the chase that
ensued was magnificent…

Unfortunately,
it led the yellow dog
to his less than enviable fate,
lying near the sweet summer grasses
with a look of disappointment etched onto
his face.

Upon my return,
passing the same spot,
I see that the yellow dog
is being given a wake.

The vultures,
their congress having voted,
their kettle having stirred,
landed near this fallen hound
and prepared to feast.

Though,
again my investment in the scene
was brief,
I couldn’t help but notice that
the yellow dog still wore a sturdy-looking
collar and that his tags shone brightly
in the late afternoon sun.

So,
I found myself hoping
that as he’d lain at the edge
of his last green horizon,
he looked up at the clouds
and thought:

“This isn’t so awful. I made the best of it.”

Then,
as the wake of vultures
began to feed,
I hoped they too might consume
some fleeting memory that the yellow dog
had about chasing rabbits, thrown sticks,
rolling in mud, or perhaps even this particular
misadventure,
the one that had led to
his wake.
*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

How do we get ourselves
back from the lost places
inside our own minds;
the places where self-doubt
swims like a school
of sharks,
a school of thought?

The page,
tells the kindest
lies;
doesn’t always have
to be true,
however, it should
be honest.

It should hurt
A little.

Like…

a cage fighter,
like razor-wire,
like a coffee cup,
like a broken bottle,
like suede,
like the left wing
of a hawk

or

the right wing
of a vulture.

Like the backfire
of an old car,
the roar of
a shotgun;
the tink and plink of
buckshot on
an old 50-gallon
drum.
like a saw-tooth,
like a lion’s roar,
like a warm blanket

or

a war machine,
like something sweet,
that’s become something
else,
something obscene.
like a sonic-boom
rattles a pane
of glass.

Nothing is really,
like anything else,
we’re all simply
figuring everything
out for ourselves.

We’re fettering,
ferreting our own
truths from
betwixt the
lines, our own lies
so,
keep a
keen mind,
a watchful
eye.


*

-JBClaywell

© P&Z Publications 2018

I miss you.

I think about you
every single day.

You’ve always been
one of the most
powerful
human beings
I have ever
known.

To be nurtured
by you
was to be saved
from drowning
preemptively.


To be loved
by you
was equivalent
to having a
corner-man
in a title
fight.

It was not soft,
but it was kind.

It was often angry,
but never intended
to be mean.

Your heart was
always a forge,
a furnace,
the surface of
the sun.

The fire
is still
alive.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

memory is an odd thing.

recall makes us and itself
into amazing animals,
leaning toward the primordial.

we remember that time;
those precious last few seconds,
or that night that felt like
it just might be endless.

either one of these
can be a soft, warm thing
or a cold-blooded killer.

the ***** of it is,
the memory itself
the day of the week,
the time of day,
the way the light
might fall;
could make it all
interchangeable.

imagine it…

a teddy bear
with raptor’s claws.

sounds about right.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

I remember being young
and not feeling much
like a person,
but more like a shapeless,
formless, amalgamation
of emotion and thought
that barely made sense to
myself,
couldn’t possibly make sense
to anyone else.

I remember that very odd,
stilted,
self-awareness lasting the
whole school-day,
the whole school-year.

Sometimes,
at home,
while the record player
hissed and crackled its way through
a stack of 45s,

I’d feel a “pop” and become
something more akin
to human,
less apparition or automaton.

I’m more or less the same
now as I was then.

My arms and legs are held
in place by the pages of
beloved books, photographs
of my children,
the feel of my wife’s fingers
pressed into the small
of my spine.

I still go ghost now and again,
sitting in a room,
in the back of the house,
the albums on their shelves,
or spinning faithfully,
the texts that surround.

“Pop”

Really, I can almost hear
the realness of myself as I expand

into a more artful being.

I’ve learned something.
I’ve become something.
I’ve attained something.

I’d rather, for the most part,
be in front of people,
than with people.

When I am with people,
I don’t know how to behave,
I become anxious,
a visitant version of
myself.

In front of people,
I am comfortable,
content,
contained inside
of my own
art.

None the worse
for preternatural wear,
I’m allowed
to
pop.

*

-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018

Standing under a lavender sky
looking up at a waning crescent
moon.

It looks like God’s thumbnail
bitten anxiously off,

set adrift inside the evening’s
celestial ceiling.

I try to wish her back
into existence.

Alas,  
I am unsuccessful.

As the sky deepens
into more desperate purples,
I become attuned,
acclimated to the fact
that my wishes will fall short.

Solace comes in knowing that
my love did not,
neither has hers fallen short
of the stars,
of the heavens,
of the desperately purple sky.

As I was then,
I am now.

Surrounded.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

No one ever tells you
that your momma is
going to die
one day.

Well, really they do
but to believe them
is to believe in the
monster that lives
under your bed
despite the fact that
your momma has told you,
over and over,
that monsters aren’t real.

(You want to believe her
so badly, but are never
quite convinced.)

But,
then comes the time
when she is gone,
having passed away
in the smallest hours
of Monday morning.

Today is Wednesday;
so you’ve  come by
to check on your father
who’s not lived alone
since before you were
born.

The house is empty,
dark, still.
You call out,
worried.

His voice calls back
from the bedroom.

You walk the hallway
expecting to find him
sitting on the edge of
the bed,
tearful,
sorrowful,
fidgeting with some
small thing that once
belonged to your
mother.

Instead,
you realize that you’ve
interrupted a nap.

Though, perhaps 20 minutes
before you arrived,
he was indeed
sitting on the edge of the bed,
head in his hands,
tears on his face.

Now, however,
he lay beneath a blanket,
on his side of the bed,
alone.

He’s nudged up
next to the pillow
on the other side
that waits patiently,
cool, smooth,
for her.

Yet she remains alive inside
of that dark, sleepy house,
and you can feel her there.

Perhaps she is nudged up
next to the man, who is
nudged up against that
smooth, cool,
empty
pillow.


*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

The potter and I had arranged a barter.

So, I went to see him and complete our business.

This same potter is also a painter,
and so, when I arrived,
he was in the middle of a deal that would put one of his paintings on someone’s wall
while putting more money in his pocket,
right then,
than I make in a month and a half.

Rather than impede a more artful capitalism,
I left his shop so as to pursue
some time inside of these pages.

Purchased of some small food,
a cold drink on a hot day,
I sat down to write for a while.

Having paid my own art some attention,
I made my way back toward the potter’s space
so as to complete our transaction.

On my way there,
I felt two pairs of rather wild eyes
upon me.

They, those eyes, pierced my side,
with the intensity, authority of a Roman Centurion,
stared at me with the zealousness
of The Old Testament,
fell upon me like the weight of The New Testament;
King James edition,
and I knew it.

I felt,
strangely obligated,
to acknowledge this weighted gazing,
asking these ladies how their evening was going.
My efforts were polite,
rhetorical.
I left them sturdily in my wake.

These women faded from my thoughts.
And, I wish, retrospectively,
that I had vanished
from their minds as well.

Alas, these missionaries
had been set to their devine task
by none other than
Yahweh Himself.

And, their mission,
it seemed,
was me.

They tracked my progression to the potter’s field.

“Can we pray for you?”

“Sure, you can do whatever you feel compelled to do.”

“Do you not have a relationship with The Lord?”

“I have a relationship with the entirety of The Universe.”

“Do you not seek salvation from sin, the wickedness of Satan, and the evils of men?”

“I do not. However, I do know that you seek the ability to feel good about praying for me, a disabled man, because you seem to believe that because I have legs that do not work like yours do, I must be fundamentally lacking something that you can bestow upon me.”

“Have you no faith at all?”
“Have you no relationship with Jesus Christ?”

“I do have a faith. I have a faith in my own humanity, in my inherent ability to commune with all that is honest, true, and good in The Universe.
I do not need your self-serving prayers.”

My friend,
the potter,
the painter,
sang these ladies a song;
played his guitar.

The ladies swayed in time to the music,
just a little.

Together, we bestowed,
upon this pair of zealous women,
kindness and patience
that they seemed to accept
along with our collective faithless, heathen, message
of goodwill;
love for their humanity,
if nothing else.

“Well, we didn’t come here for this,” they said.

And they left us,
none the worse for not
having been prayed over,
or preyed upon, to commune,
in each, our own way,
with each other,
The Universe,
The Great Spirit,
The Buddha,
or Whomever.

Once they had gone,
I traded three books that I had written
for a very nice vase that the potter had made.
The vase was gray,
spun with earth tones,
was flecked with robin’s-egg blue,
sits beautifully on the shelf.

It is now part of The Universe
with which I commune.

I pray
that it
is always
so.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

Having done a lot of driving,
my tank was almost empty.
But, in other ways,
was as full as I could want.

We had gathered,
those who had asked for stories,
and myself.

We had spoken of the tasks of putting pen to paper,
of putting one’s own thoughts
onto the pages of composition notebooks,
of how doing so had saved my life,
and had potential to save theirs,
if they ever found themselves in such need.

I had driven also,
to the next small town over.

There was the promise of music,
hawkers selling food and drink,
a street fair,
on the town square.

I sat with my friend,
her family,
in the civic center park
of the town that lives
just to the north of
the small town
I call my own.

It had been a hot day,
but the breeze was nice.

My thoughts wandered to the week’s earlier journey.

The eighth-graders whom I had spoken to,
had their own stories,
from Mexico, Libya, Iran, Morocco, Palestine, and Nigeria.

They told me those stories
from their summer-school desks,
in Kansas City, Missouri.

Really, they didn’t seem much different
from the stories I could have found
in this sleepy little village
just fourteen miles from
my own driveway,
that tonight was electrified into activity,
by way of the evening’s festivities.

I don’t come here all that often,
except, on occasion,
to visit my friend,
her family,
maybe one other.

Every time I do though,
it feels like a different planet.
Or, like I’m the alien,
having never seen people before.

We would all do well
to get out more.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublucations 2018

On Sunday afternoons, I go to the Hy-Vee gas station and write up journal entries and/or just whatever ideas are floating around in my head.

In doing what I do for a living, I hear a lot of stories. Some of those stories are pretty tough. So, writing about the stories themselves or writing about the way those stories made me feel at the time is pretty essential. It keeps me clean, so to speak. Writing about work lets me keep the stories, so that I might learn a lesson here and there, while letting me let the pain, hurt, or other dirt go. Plus, as a bonus, I don’t get too worn out in the doing of the work. The writing staves off any empathy fatigue I might feel.

Also, I tend to wander around town in the evenings. I do it so that I might people watch and so that people can check me out.  That sounds a little odd doesn’t it?  I know. But, here’s why I do it…

My dad used to ask me, when I was a boy: “How many handicapped people do you see?”  “How many people that have an obvious disability do you actually see in St. Joe?”  “None. Except for me, I don’t see any.” I would answer.  And, at the time, at least for me, it was about 99.9% true.

“So”, Pops would say; “Be the one that people see.”

What he meant was that people are often fearful of what they see as different or don’t understand. We all know this to one degree or another, I hope.

So, in doing what Henry Rollins has taught me, at least while working all over Northwest Missouri, I try to put as much mileage on my crutches as I am able. While I’m out there I try to meet as many people and shake as many hands as I can.  I check people out and give them an opportunity to check me out. And, I write about those interactions.

I am a huge fan of the travel writings of both Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain. (I’m so sad that Tony left us. Really, it has been like losing a pal.)  However, while I don’t disagree with them that every American should have a passport that is well used, I know that for myself and a lot of Americans travel like those guys do, is a financial fantasy.

But, I can go to City Market in Kansas City, I can go to Cameron, Missouri, I can enjoy and ask questions of the other parents and patients when I take Alex to Children’s Mercy for appointments. I can and I do.   And, no one person has ever been anything less than kind to me. For each other, we are the “one that people see” and I think we’ve done ourselves and our stories as good a service as we can.

Recently, I opened up The Ritual a little. It morphed a bit when my pal Josh would join in. Both he and I would set up like we were going to write our next batch of poems and then we would start talking. We’d bounce around conversationally, just like two pinballs in a machine; there wasn’t a topic that either of us could think of that we couldn’t rail on for the two-hour parameter I’d set.  Neither of us got any writing done. I don’t think either of us cared.

That said, I’ve left The Ritual as it is now. I’ve put it out there on social media that I’m sitting at the Hy-Vee plaza, in Caribou Coffee writing on Sundays.  Sometimes Josh shows up, sometimes he doesn’t.  But, I keep the idea of conversation at the forefront of The Ritual. Sometimes, I think it’s more important than the writing that either does or does not get done.

Why? Because now, in this era of social media, we isolate too much. We feel like we really do have 547 friends or followers when really, we’re alone in our rooms with our smartphones, tablets, or laptops. I imagine if the only socialization I got was online, I’d be horribly lonely.

I’m not putting down Facebook or Twitter users. I am one. But, I want to talk to as many human beings as I can before I kick off.  

So, if you need to talk, want to talk, or like to talk...

It’s a Sunday Ritual soon and it’s all ours for the taking, and talking.

Both of us were frightened
by tales of blindness,
rare,
but if it occurred at all,
likely permanent.
We were stoic as we watched
several small vials fill with blood.
We hurried here and there,
always stopping to hold elevator doors,
to offer smiles,
reassurances where we could.
Having not now,
perhaps never asking him
to give up his personhood,
I reminded all of these geniuses
that my boy, despite his nuances
and need for simpler explanations, was indeed,
a man,
a maker of his own decisions,
and very curious,
in his own way,
as to how it all worked.

(He studies his x-rays with a seriousness
that astonished us all.)  

In the end, his signatures graced all the paperwork,
his mind was clear, focused,
despite some nerves.

But, my thoughts came back
to that bald little boy in the Radiology waiting-room.


How would his story end?  

There wasn’t any doubt in my mind
that he was at least seven years old.
No boy of that age chooses a slick pate like his,
even in the summertime.
No, that was cancer’s gift
and his momma’s curse.

We’ve endured
Cholesteatoma and a curved spine.
An aortic anomaly corrected almost 5 years ago.
He’s run a gauntlet,
no lie.
We’ve seen him seize,
called for ambulance assistance.

But, I’d never doubted that he’d get an 8th birthday.  
Not once.

(Not like her, the bald boy’s momma.)

The boy,
not mine,
the one in Radiology,
he looked tired.
His mother looked exhausted,
but spoke to the receptionist of her little one’s excitement,
looking forward to picking his older brother up
from school on the last day.

It signaled an ending
to my eavesdropping...

My own son came back
from his session of x-rays.

The bald little boy and his momma
followed the nurse back toward
their own appointment.

We gathered our belongings,
turned to leave.

A weak smile caught my eye.
The small fingers waved.

I waved back.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

Like the last few seconds
that the filament
inside of a lightbulb
lasts.

It is not
surrender,
but,
strain,
struggle,
a summoning
of will.

To continue
to give as much
as is left,
the very last.

Not expiration,
explosion.

Because even the subtle
pop of that wire,
is not a death knell,

it is a warning
against the
remaining heat.

A reminder
of the light
that lasted
until
just
now.

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

I wonder if this old grade school
understands that I steal little
bits of myself back from it
even all these years later.

Despite the fact that
this building stole
a lot of my childhood,
leaving me with ******
noses, blackened eyes
instead of  good memories,
I come out here,
to write poetry.

The sun warms
the steel bench;
its  heat
softening the muscles
surrounding my crooked
spine.

My boys,
possessed of energy,
boundless,
climb monkey bars
or
slide down spirals,
maybe swing
for awhile.

I’ll do the same,
inside of my own
mind.

(Never forgetting the blood
I’d left inside.)

I write the line,
the lie;
“...stepping into silence.”
and think it a grand thing.

Recalling the morning,
standing outside
with the day’s first cigarette,
feeling that ‘connected to everything’
feeling.

Soon enough it
had all gone to hell.

Because, the more I thought
about whatever I’d meant
by: …”stepping into silence.”
the less accurate it seemed to be.

While outside smoking,
I’d gotten a message from
a co-worker.

The poor *******’s mother had
fallen down the basement steps,

So…

“I bet that fall wasn’t very silent.”

sloshed around in my skull for
a minute,
then,
the woodpeckers
started in on the eaves of
my neighbor’s house,
their machine-gun beaks
strafing the silence even
further into ruin.

Soon enough,
“...stepping into silence”
ceased to be poetry
and turned simply,
into some
jibber-jabber
that I’d scribbled
into a notebook
earlier this week.

Nevertheless,
it’s mine;
silent, screamed,
or otherwise.

I’ve stolen it back
from this monument
to my terrorized youth.

Here in the sunshine,
by the slide, the swing-set,
the dandelion baselines
of the diamond behind me,
my sons kicking yellow
with every step.

I am grateful for the noise.

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018