Whether you believe it or not,
my original arms dealer was
a Buddhist.

He armed me to the teeth
with a desire to destroy
the darkness
of my teenage thoughts
by firing bullets
filled with ink
into those wretched silhouettes,
turning them into
poetry.

He sent me,
filled past full
with bluster and
*******,
to the mustiest
den on Felix Street.

But, I couldn’t stay.

I hadn’t quite lived enough;
I’d learned even less
despite being so well
weaponized.

Instead,
I’d find The Black Box,
staying there until
The Paper Moone would
rise above my horizons
and that large sergeant
would offer me more ammo
from the armory.

We fired tracers down those alleys
until the shells were all spent.

We pause now to reload.

The Buddhist’s ordinance
is expended.

Little has changed
despite everything
being different
than it was when we first met.

Now,
the firing range
is nested by
Thunderbirds.

We are well-armed.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

Don’t look too close,
you’ll see something
you don’t like.

Don’t open the door,
you’ll see what lurks
in the basement,
under the stairs.

Leave the hasps unturned.

Let the keys jangle
on your hip.

Don’t turn on the lights.

Run.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

For the past 15 years,
the various versions
of ‘they’ have waited
for the all clear.

We’ve added a couple
more
through trial and error;
pausing to put a pair
in the ground.

And still, that horn
never sounds.

They’ve lived with
a *******
who’s volume ****’s
been broken for a
decade and a half.

Half the time no one’s
real sure what all
the noise is about,
not even the one
making it.

The only certainty,
if anyone’s certain
of anything at all really

is that there’s a fear of
everything that could
possibly go wrong.

This leaves precious
little room for everything
that might go right.

Or, for enjoying it
when it does.

Some days they walk
on eggshells,
other days it’s landmines.

Waiting for the all clear.  


*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

Her fingers are a blur
on the keys.

She writes with a confidence
that is so subtle that
it remains a secret
even from she who owns
it.

She gasps, chuffs, and
bemoans her anxious state,
but she never stops
typing.

After a bit, she pauses to ask
my, as editor, opinion.

She reads her answers to the questions
asked by the student-teacher essay exam.

I hear her read aloud.
I also hear her self-doubt,
her dissatisfaction.

She reads those answers to me
and hates them a little.

For the life of me
I cannot see how.

The words that she’s
written sit on the page
like cinder blocks of truth;

obvious examples of what
she has learned,
what she knows,
what she is now teaching
to some of your children.

Maybe I grind off
an edge by changing
a word or two.

Maybe not.

She writes like she lives,
like she knows,
like she loves,
like she’ll teach.


I wouldn’t change a thing.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

“What are you most looking forward to this summer?”
said the chalkboard at Caribou Coffee.

Someone had written TEXAS in huge letters.

I saw those giant letters as Nicolas and I walked in
for a variation on “The Ritual”,
my weekly festival of pen and ink.

What I failed to see,
was my little boy sneak over
to that chalkboard,
erasing those letters
and replacing them
with NICK.

Everyone’s got an end date,
TEXAS’ end date was today.


End Date

We’ve all got one.

All I want to do
is last long enough
to see
that they can cash a check
that they’ve earned,
get into a car that has their
name on the title
and get lost
if they want to.

Expiration date
on the old man,
the rhino with the ink pens
will be long passed one day.

In between,
there must be a handful
of dates that might mean
something,
maybe hold some memories.

But, really, none of those dates matter much.
What matters is that they get to use
it all up
by their own
end date.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

She’s a ******
ruiner.

She’ll take the
best you’ve got

and use it
to choke the
life out of anything
good.

It’s never her fault
either.

Never.

It’s life, or God,
or Karma, or even
******’ Wednesday
that gets in her way.

“Please!” she says.
“I’m under enough
pressure as it is.”

Like I’m trying to…

All I want to do
is the work.

Can’t do it,
if I’m in the same
building as
a
ruiner.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017



If you want more, click the link:  http://www.lulu.com/shop/jay-claywell/gray-spaces-demolitions-and-other-st-joe-uprisings/paperback/product-23035217.html

Thanks.

I am the vengeance,
never received.

I am a walking fistfight
that never was.

It is staggering
how much rage
can be carried
on one’s back.

I am every raised voice,
every clenched fist,
the howl of every
harsh wind.

I am every book that
I’ve never read.

I am every song that
I’ve never heard.

All I want to do
is bleed ink
until I’m dead.

Bleeding black ink,
a written hemorrhage,
a shovelful of dirt
flung onto my own
casket.

I don’t want to be well-adjusted.

(What the hell does that even mean?)

I am all the slammed doors
in the apartment complex.

I am a papercut on the tongue.

(The letter sits unsent.)

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017