What is it about poetry
that so consumes you
Brings you to your knees,
cowering in a corner
of your own delusions
Reading in between the lines,
finding what is not really there
Dropping hints of absurd defiance,
collecting spoonful after spoonful
of puzzled meanings and chaliced dreams

Flowing symbolisms, metaphoric landscapes -
Where bushes are bluebirds
and sidewalks - bridges of no return

Why do you reach
into your pocket, searching for love
on white paper folded into a square,
when all along it faces you -
not in ink, but in smiles
expressing exactly what is felt
No boundaries or disguised emotions
penned in rhythmic sequence,
only true love, standing on this sidewalk -
which is only a sidewalk

What is it about poetry
that so consumes you,
when love is waiting – just outside the lines

A dark wind bellows about
Staining all of grey moors,
The whole dire frozen sky,
Shivers and dearly quakes,
Let mine rag out over seas
With clearest sails of eyes,
Let me hear one bold stag,
Stately shout in mossy bog,
Let me fly with black of crow,
Splash over the sodden sun,
Free me from bane sorrows,
Ancient Rowan trees who run,
My love has left, sure as time,
And tears are lost in frost hails,
What will become of only mine?

Blue skies
Fields stretching out
                 like white-sand beaches
Eyes wide open
                 we dive
into a sea of hopes and dreams
                 and we swim
towards the Lighthouse of
                         "Everything Possible"

We marvel at
the smell of the white clover.

It is a baked in smell right now,
the heat is oppressive, crushing

The smell of the clover, and this
cigarette are the only reason we’re
out here.

Smarter, healthier people are inside,
in the air-conditioning, nursing a beer or
a lemonade, watching whatever might be on
HBO.

Returning to our respective homes,
we rejoin their much more comfortable
ranks.

(I’m curious what’s on HBO anyway.)


When the need for nicotine rises again;
cigarette in hand, opening the door, seeing
the pavement has darkened with rain.

The smell of the clover has been muted,
replaced with the brassy, metallic breeze
that rises like steam from the hot driveway,
lingering under the nose like a warm childhood
sip from the spigot.

That steam has its own odor,
rich and febrile,
rising from the superheated
surfaces of our cars.

It smells like squirt-gun suicide,
a child’s drink from the barrel of
plastic ordinance.

(Do you remember doing that?  
I do.)

How terrifying that must’ve been to parents;
to see their children, in swimwear or skivvies,
******* on the end of a gun.

Perhaps they gave it less of a thought
than I do now.

I’d wager they were inside,
in the air-conditioning, nursing a beer or
a lemonade, watching whatever might be on
HBO.

Out of the early summer heat.

*

-JBClaywell

©P&ZPublications; 2016

She has a shaved head
that reminds me of a
crooked-smile-ex;
that choked on cigarettes
and words too contrived,
painted in a negligence
for humanity and a
belief in uninformed
nothingness.

Her body curves like
backroads I've been lost in.
Skin as pale as an eggshell,
I'd imagine she'd shatter
under the olive robe
she calls a dress
and bounce under the
kickstep of organic flats.

Eventually she will become
too much of an idea, she will
evolve into a misogynistic
poem, and if I were
to imagine her naked,
guilt would flood our fleshly-
alcohol-stained-continents,
angry between every slur,
loving between the shadows
of phantoms I once knew.

When I was ten,
It didn't matter that my legs weren't hairless;
I was just a girl -
It was shameless.

That was the year it all ended,
And suddenly,
I was supposed to be a woman.
Suddenly my legs
And all the spaces in between
Weren't mine, but his.

When I turned fifteen,
I thought he wanted my new hairless legs;
I thought being a woman
Would make him love me
And the woman I was going to be.
But I was a girl.
I was shameless.

And it was easy to pretend I wanted it,
Easy to pretend that I wanted what hurt.
It was easy,
It was shameless,
Until I was crying on the bathroom floor,
Missing a period.

And that was just the thing -
That my own blood was a sin.
I couldn't bleed,
Because being a woman was wrong.
And I thought that's what he wanted,
I thought that's what he wanted all along.

He wanted me to be a woman
When it was his hands on my thighs,
His hands on my waist,
His hands covering my eyes.

He wanted me to be a woman until I was:
Until I had hair on my legs
And all the spaces in between.
And suddenly I was supposed to be ten,
I was supposed to be a girl,
I was supposed to be shameless.

I wasn't a woman;
I was small.
I was young.
And it hurt.

As I near twenty years,
I think of being ten,
I think of being fifteen,
And I feel no different.
I'm still small,
I still curl up on my bedroom floor.
I still have pink walls
And red painted toes
Because I'm a girl,
And that's the worst of it all.