Looking through the window,
there she was,
behind the bar,
tending to the locals.
She herself,
my friend,
had become a local.
I wondered
if she begrudged
Hiawatha Kansas
the local-ness
that it had ****** upon
her.
I decided
that it would be better
if I didn’t ask.
Because my own hometown
was still home;
still feeling like someplace
That could be,
maybe do better,
but would rather not.
Choosing instead
to smoke cigarettes,
drink ***** and Red Bull,
while waiting for tomorrow.
Tomorrow would always show up,
looking just a bit more hopeful than yesterday;
remaining less motivated than we’d anticipated
last night.
I drove 39 miles with a belly full of
ate-at-home food,
leaving the house in favor of the blues band
playing downtown.
After their set,
I lost interest,
seeking something beyond the proffered
Friday night loudness and parking-lot
Mexican food.
I decided to see my friend, Abigail.
39 miles of ink-black nothing,
speed-trap smallness,
a couple of Casey’s
with
their lights shut off;
pizza ovens and donut fryers
gone cold for the night.
Red’s Alehouse looks like
It could actually be a house.
(there’s not much to it.)
The Budweiser sign,
neon.
the OPEN sign,
flashing.
Peering,
entering;
she screams in delight.
we laugh.
I sit.
we talk.
She dutifully fills new glasses,
washes those abandoned.
Someone puts a twenty-dollar bill
in her tip jar.
It was a good night,
a fair adventure.
I drove home again in the ink of the Kansas night.
36 HWY,
through the same speed-trap towns,
those convenience stores still
locked tight.
It was fine,
there in the dark.
Neither hungry nor thirsty,
I was sated.
I’d met ****
Steve,
Jared,
and
George, who’d wanted a sandwich and some potato chips
where there were none to be had.
I laughed with my friend, Abigail.
We’d spoken of dreams long-abandoned
to work and changing circumstances;
finding satisfaction in simplicity and our own
intellects;
sometimes feeling that smartness
is in short supply in our
separate Red-State lives.
I pulled into my driveway
grateful for minutes spent,
memories shared.
I’ll stop in again
saying hello sometime
before the winter sets in
to stay for a while.
Maybe George will be there.
Perhaps I’ll stop by one of those Casey’s
before it’s shut tight or gone cold.
We can tell more stories,
sharing slices of our lives
along with
greasy pizza.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Sep 3, 2021
Sep 3, 2021 at 10:18 AM UTC
I came back to the bookseller’s counter
advising that I wanted to utilize the new
nook.
As I’d sniffed pages earlier,
we’d spoken of plucking guitar strings and
the benefits of
retreating into one’s office to write for the afternoon.
I used to do that.
No remorse, no regret, always cared what it meant...
after the clientele was seen, observed to be secure
in their homes,
tired eyes, hips, knees and backs noted
as required,
I left houses that didn’t belong to me,
slipped outside of lives that were not mine;
lives that I’d invested in anyway,
as much as it mattered and for what it was worth.
Slipping back into my office,
the blonde wood of the door shutting the hallway noise out
enough so that I could concentrate
on something other than the safety of some old lady,
retreating to the memory of what I’d just done
with the eyes of an outsider.
Write.
Write the sadness of that lonely old girl
out of your guts.
Write.
Write the misery of a 65 year old veteran
who’s fallen into homelessness after serving a country
that appears ungrateful but we both hope isn’t.
Resources, in the vernacular, are a slow go SNAFU,
a ***** that shows up
just as the fall breezes begin to bite
with December teeth.
Write.
(I tell myself again and again.)
So as not to cry
and do it here,
in this quiet,
paid-for space
so that you can feel like a writer,
not like a fraud,
a failure with a heart too big for your chest;
a devil in your brain who drives so fast that everything’s a blur,
a car-wrecked,
attention-span grab,
an emotional ambulance ride to nowhere good.
Write.
So that when the tears fall,
You can publish them,
Taking ownership before they dry.
*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Aug 29, 2021
Aug 29, 2021 at 11:57 AM UTC
They ask me about words
and
I forget that they often
don’t know the same words
that I do.
I forget that sometimes my words
and
their words are mysterious
and
often not as profane
as they might be used to.
Then, I remember
that there are countless words,
concepts,
ideas,
and
beliefs that I am totally,
sometimes shamefully,
unaware of.
(all of these based in vernaculars unfamiliar)
None of us live the same type of life.
None of us
have earned passage
through hardship
any more or less
than anyone else.
Ours are circumstances,
unshared.
Not luck, not fate, not grace,
not inherent anyway.
No different than my last name being Claywell
and
my typing that very same name
into the system of The Department of Corrections;
seeing that name,
the same as mine,
unowned by me,
belonging to faces of men
and
women that I have never
and
likely would not ever meet
in our respective lives.
What does it matter?
It’s a name,
no different
or more or less special than Jones or Smith.
The name is mine and theirs,
as unique to us as we are to one another;
poet
or
prisoner.
Person first, second, and third.
Like a story,
a book,
a treatment plan,
sitting on a shelf or locked inside
a mind until the proper moment
providence or provisional,
authored by the judiciary or just
some guy.
(like me)
We live by words,
are released by words,
are transformed by words,
frightening, fitful, fretful or foreign.
Words give us our humanity,
allow us to encourage or enrage,
engaged so as to establish
a renewal,
reestablished ability to
manifest,
to actualize
the abracadabra
of
our own magic act…
our lives.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Jul 18, 2021
Jul 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM UTC
You typed out
your lack of desire
to keep the charade going.
You proffered
a predicted end to this existential
ebb and flow
of day by day
madness and miasma.
Yet, I could not abide
and
rest assured that I am no savior
nor saint.
My robes are terry cloth
with sequins, none.
No cape,
no boots,
no symbols of better than whomever.
I have only an unwillingness to stop.
Because stopping is
to ensure that the darkness
and
the demons prevail
and
I refuse
to allow that to occur today.
Together,
dear unknown one,
we will become as phoenix;
being reborn
in the flame of overcoming.
Tempered we will be,
in the forge of discomfort
and
disquiet,
knowing still that we can be better,
we can do better,
we can become better than what is now,
doing so for our future selves
and
those who call us
by names other than our very own.
You typed out
your lack of desire
to keep the charade going.
However,
I see no charade at all.
I see honest insecurity.
A self-doubt that staggers.
I see a sadness
that seeps out of shin bones
rising clear up to the eyes
and
leaks out as heavy as a downpour
for reasons that have little
in the way of explanation.
I tell you,
little friend,
it’s not your fault.
We live in a society
driven mad by algorithms
that over-gift us our own brain chemicals
and
leave us like addicts
at the doorsteps
of churches or taverns,
trap houses
or jail cells.
Our more advanced existence
has handicapped
our ability to
communicate effectively.
The savvy
among our beastly brethren
take full advantage
of the last sinew of innocence
that we have left.
Hold fast,
dearheart,
for this tumult of your youth
will leave scars
and
capture your good heart
in a cage,
leaving a stone in its place.
We mustn't allow this.
To do so creates a decay
like rust or rot,
which is so difficult to recover from
because it stains everything
and
everyone it touches.
Even now,
we are surrounded
by the skeptical,
the cynical,
the altogether untoward
and
unwilling to be otherwise.
You typed out
your lack of desire
to keep the charade going.
Be advised,
if it hurts,
it’s not a charade at all,
it is an investment
in a desire for change
that feels like something better
than what is right now,
what is wrong now.
We will seek a new now;
and
know that there are more of us,
more of you,
more of we
than you can even imagine.
All that I ask
is that you continue…
for yourself,
for my own self,
for the selves
that we have yet to become,
but will eventually.
So, please,
Exist.
Exist for me.
I'll exist for you.
Together we'll exist
for all of the people
who love
and
need us in this world.
Maybe,
even some people
we have yet to meet.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
May 30, 2021
May 30, 2021 at 8:08 PM UTC
A temporary wealth
is all that I am ever allotted.
A brief understanding,
as well as an ability to be understood.
We entertain ourselves
with coarse language,
crude humor,
a commitment to behave
as we know we should,
for a while anyway.
Even now,
our respective grasps
on whatever it is
that we are allowed to share
during this day’s task is tenuous,
at it’s very best.
There are count times,
microcosms of malcontentedness
that lead to slight infractions
here and there.
We,
I learn daily,
are in passing.
Always, in flux.
We are not pals
and
never shall we abide one another
as more than men,
in conflict
and resolution
at the same time.
It is not a death,
their exit,
usually anyhow.
There is no pall that befalls us.
Each of us is birthed
into the life of the other;
in an effort to facilitate
a change in each other,
I believe.
An impact,
like an iceberg shipwreck,
rescuing and rewarding the passengers,
most of whom would rather drown themselves outright.
None of us can swim.
We don’t know how.
We barely know what it means
to live as society says we should.
The rules change more often
than we can keep up.
Yet, we grasp
and
cling to basic, vague understandings
in hopes of surviving
despite our best efforts otherwise.
We work together,
tumultuous,
listening fecklessly,
recklessly hoping for
the best possible outcome.
It is quite the undertaking.
This,
this performance,
this penance,
the doing of this
is how we invest,
how we spend our temporary windfall.
We learn,
together,
to be human.
Not that we ever actually were not so.
We learn,
however,
to be ourselves,
incandescent inside of our own skins.
Together, but with lives outside of mine,
for the betterment of all of us.
I learn to be a better humanist
than perhaps I would’ve
if I’d never been endowed
with
this temporary wealth.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
May 23, 2021
May 23, 2021 at 5:14 PM UTC
The rat-terrier
that I’d loved for
over a decade
has been dead for
awhile now.
Sometimes I miss that dog.
Sometimes I miss cigarettes.
My America is now
the go-to destination
for the suicide-bomber
or
The Mass-Shooting Machine
All of this national abomination
has become all too normal.
&
why is any of this
at all attached,
in any way,
to our
Easter-Sunday-Church-Going
morals?
Tragedy,
a travesty,
trustworthy humans.
-untrue-
mistrustful,
unworthy misogynist,
malcontents
lacking empathy.
Unpaid checks,
no gravity -
a lacking of grateful
hearts.
Our ears destined,
designed, dedicated to hearing
only the hurtful,
instead of the healing.
On the take -
take or be taken
fake or be faking-
make or be made-
scapegoated,
goaded into submission
leaving
us wondering
just what,
exactly is so bad
about hate.
I mean everyone’s doing it these days;
and no one seems to be doing it wrong.
Maybe that’ll change
once we’re on our
deathbeds.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Apr 14, 2021
Apr 14, 2021 at 7:05 PM UTC
Our job,
in my opinion,
is to make sure
that someone who crosses our grave,
while on an afternoon stroll
across the cemetery,
on their way to the park,
meeting their
love for a picnic,
is able to say to themselves:
“Hey! It’s them! I’ve heard about them!”
Maybe we change things
for the world;
maybe just a handful of folks.
Perhaps the point
of this whole trip
is simply to do;
never to know.
All we can do
is believe in each other;
giving as much of ourselves,
our time,
our talents,
never fully aware
of just how far our
graveyard legacy
might be able to go.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Apr 14, 2021
Apr 14, 2021 at 7:02 PM UTC
It’s not the same
as investment banking,
but
you get the idea.
Investing emotion.
A willingness
to make something better happen
to or for
oneself.
Investing in
our own emotions,
so as to garner
more intellect in this regard.
An education in spending wisely.
Energy.
Education.
Experience.
These lines themselves
are an investment,
in thought,
in the feelings
behind the words on this page.
An execution.
An actualization.
We deal in Certificates of Deposit.
Human thinking reconstructed.
Structured.
Settlement.
Earning interest.
Renewed,
by oneself,
in oneself.
Rending willful neglect
to be null and void.
Willing the restored onto the next plane of existence;
the belief that one is powerful enough
to accept viability and value as inherent.
A readiness to do better than before.
Valuable.- Worthy of a life worth living.
Victorious. -- Made new, by one’s own hand.
Using one’s own mind;
actualizing this happening;
becoming worthy of being
powerfully reborn.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Apr 14, 2021
Apr 14, 2021 at 7:01 PM UTC
The air was painted.
Inside the chain link fences
were clouds;
brushstrokes
that could’ve been
proffered by
Van Gogh
or
*******
as they dissipated
into the early, cold
morning air,
pausing only for a
few moments to allow
some of the particulates
to freeze;
the hydrogen, the oxygen,
the lye,
&
detergents that
make up whatever
is used in
a prison laundry.
The effluvium is rich,
the odor of a passable
cleanliness in what is largely
a rather fetid domain.
The scent of bleach,
harsh, chlorinated,
removal of that which
stains.
Yet,
something stays,
an acrid, sour smell;
an unpleasantness
which seems to have chosen
to remain
unwashed.
It is concluded,
that this emanation,
is the opposite of
emancipation,
it is a olfactive reminder
that
Building # 7
serves up
freshly washed sorrows,
rages, or regrets
as well as
whiter whites,
releasing
stains from grays
more often than the wearers
of
these wardrobes are released
themselves.
With this in mind,
swirling, shifting,
moving, motivating
marching upward,
toward
Building # 1,
It is breathed in,
and out, and in
again,
renewal,
like clean laundry
washed in industrial
soaps, rinsed in disinfectants,
delousers, deodorants
unknowable.
Starting over.
Today.
Tomorrow.
Overmorrow,
And,
Everafter.
Amen.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Feb 28, 2021
Feb 28, 2021 at 9:52 PM UTC
The midwest tundra
swallows super-bowl trophies
and
replaces them
with
black-bottomed **** bubbles.
It dares most of us to do better,
while laughing in our faces,
forcing us to watch
as the kid we’re cheering for
cashes checks
for more money
than we’ll likely ever see,
but we cheer anyway,
as the offensive line crumbles,
the ground game is static,
and the receivers have fingers
glazed with margarine.
Like the zebras,
we throw the flag,
assess and accept the penalties,
and
acquit the insurrectionists
regardless of their guilt or innocence.
The previous commander-in-chief
wrote all those ********
a bison-horned,
organic jailhouse chow-hall
type hall pass,
so why the hell shouldn’t we riot
in the ********* streets,
or the halls of the executive branch
of the local,
state,
and
federal, feral governments
of the ungovernable?
Leave well enough alone
and
Elon Musk,
Jeff Bezos,
and
Bill “Microchip Vaccine” Gates
will figure it all out for us anyway.
Whatever happens,
************ Mark “Lieutenant Data” Zuckerberg
will keep us
all placated and engaged online
while the drone-strikes commence.
Social media keeps us
unaware of our socio-political/socio-economic saboteurs.
Who cares?
Aren’t there some cat-vids
on
Tic-Tacky
or whatever it’s called?
How much longer
do you think it’ll be
before we can live-stream
a state-sanctioned execution?
Phillip K. **** called
and
left a message for George Orwell.
He said something about
wanting his electric sheep returned
before Big Brother and The Holding Company
found out it’d gone missing.
Neither the electric sheep itself
nor
Janis Joplin were available for comment,
or hadn’t you herd?
Diplomatic Immunity?
Mutiny?
Mutations?
Economic,
ergonomic,
erogenous stimulation package?
Where do I sign up?
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Feb 14, 2021
Feb 14, 2021 at 8:48 PM UTC