my god!

she makes
me
smile.

and,

i
don’t
even
feel
like

I’m
faking it.


*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

I was never interested in the kind of love that takes place in the daytime. I always wanted love that hid in the shadows, because as wonderful as love can be, and often is, it hurts.
I never wanted love that could see me bleed.



Love is soft, kind, holds your hand on the porch.
Love sits with you on the swing, in the park.
Love is candlelight, chocolate, a nice dinner.

Love is holding hands and nevermind
that palms are sweaty.
Because that love is new and
nervous, and hopeful.

That love is exploration, new touches,
electric tendrils caused
by kisses on the earlobes,
on the back of the neck.

Love is an evening stroll
that leads to *******,
waking in a bed that isn’t yours,
but a bed that feels safe enough
in the grey light of the pre-dawn.

And, anyway, isn’t it exciting?

This new place, this new person,
this new experience.

Love is conversation over a cup of tea,
a light breakfast, some good bread.

Love this new, this fresh, this exhilarating
won’t last, it can’t last, it’s too rich,
too many calories, too much sugar.

A love like this one is a mocha frappe.


The love I wanted was a 2:45am bedtime,
maybe a little hungover.

Maybe I’d been somewhere I shouldn’t’ve,
maybe she had.

The floor was littered

with unanswered text messages,
with missed calls that fell out
of my pockets like loose change
when I took my pants off and
hung them on the back of a chair,
too lazy to put them in the laundry.

Love that survives in these gray spaces,
maybe it’s real, maybe not, maybe it’s
mutated, adapted into a primordial
survival ignorant animal.

Love in the gray space, in the shadows,
in the storms, survives or dies,
but you, not it decides.

*


-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

I wanted you to love me
like a campfire,
like a warm blanket,
like a secret note,
a whisper in the night
that told me how special
I am to you,
how important,
how vital.

I wanted you to love me
like new snow,
like the smell after a
rainstorm,
when the streets are
washed clean,
and we would bask
in the halos of the
streetlamps,
holding hands and
smiling.

You loved me like barbed wire,
like a snare on a rabbit’s foot,
like a house fire,
all the mementos that didn’t burn
coated in a layer of ash,
of soot.

You loved me like a bomb shelter,
like a place safe from your explosions,
but barely so.

You loved me like sandpaper,
removing layers,
grinding,
removing,
until I became

unvarnished.

I wanted you to love me like silver,
like gold.

But, you loved me like tin.

I never knew what it was,
my sin.
I loved you, but you left.

You escaped,
unlike me,

untarnished.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

The birthmark rides her set jaw.

It is a deep, bruised, purple
that starts just below her left eye
and runs like a brushstroke,
to the right and comes clear
across the lower mandible,
stopping after her right ear is
swallowed by the color of fresh
plums.

The iPod or smartphone
rides in the pocket of her
pink sweatshirt.

It matters little what songs
reside therein;
those jams are pure armor.

The sun is in her warrior’s eyes,
she squints and the muscles in her jaw
flex.

She’s spotted me,
ambling in her direction.

We share a brief glance.

Immediately, I can see that I’m both a kindred
and an interloper.

(I start. I stop myself. I say nothing.)

She continues with the thousand yards, the long knives,
the silver-bullet eyes.

I’d lay real money that her DNA is angry.

She’s an Incan or an Aztec warrior,

and she wears her unwelcome birthright,
her birthmark,
her war paint,
her war pain
because she has to.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

I choke on the decomposition,
the rotten, vegetal smell of her
home.

I’m in there every three months.

She, with her withered legs and
her *******, bewildered smile,
tells me that everything’s groovy.

But, I know better.

It ain’t.

She ****** herself on the regular.

She tells me that her man is all
sorts of lovey-dovey.

He ain’t.

He’s a *******
in sheep’s clothing.

There’s nothing to report though.

If she won’t say it,
neither can I.

I walk out the door,
that the caregiver holds open.

Ol’ Loverboy has his dentures
in his hand, wiping them down.

The desire to put them back in his
mouth for him is huge.

I imagine him choking,
like I am.

Not on that rotten, dead plant stench,
but on a fistful of incisors.

*

- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

Now and then I feel
like I am being hunted
by old dogs hollered down
from some dark mountain.

The old man says to me
that it’s not right that
I’d parked handicapped.

(He approached as I’d lit up a smoke.)

I asked, so, of course,
he told me:

“Those crutches don’t matter much.
Your age should dictate your need.”

he pauses.

“And, you’re young enough to get
to the door from a spot further away
than this one.”

I tell him that he’s lucky my momma
taught me to respect my elders.

The urge to render him more useless
than he is now comes to stay.

But, I lock that particular door and
listen to those old dogs howl and snap
their jaws.

I’m going to relinquish this parking space.

Not because of what this old man says,
but because I’m done with it.

My son is in the car, playing with the radio.

I climb in and squeeze the back of his neck.

(Perhaps a little harder than I’ve intended to.)

I’m syphoning some of his innocence for myself;
willing this particular hunt
to be done.

*

- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

Telling stories to the dead
brings them back to life
for just a short time.

Time spent with them
can pass like molasses
through an hourglass,

although I never seem
to mind.

It helps me as much as it
does them;
I get to live the ghost-life
for a brief stint too.

Being born in 1947
instead of ’75.

It feels like a different
kind of alive.

History has sharp teeth,
an unkind bite.

It’s okay.

We’ll share the scars
for a while.

*

- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017