In the middle of another
eight hour shift.

The factory roars
as it always has,
as it always does.

Yet, there are poems
to be written,
cigarettes to be smoked,
and other thoughts,
perhaps thoughts of a
rosebush, planted in a soldier’s
helmet, or maybe daydreams
of
a black-cherry
sundae
to be dreamed.

So, the poet will think,
will smoke,
will dream,
will write.

What will they do?

The factory will roar
as it always has,
as it always does.

The memory
of a whole house
locked inside a single
room floods the mind.

This rooming-house;
a chopped-up duplex.

The poet lived
in the kitchen.

The ashtray overflowed;
the carpet was grey,
dusty with spilled ash,
the evening’s embers
gone cold.

The lock on the apartment
door;
it can barely hold back
a strong breeze.

The poet feels
safe enough.

When the landlady
comes for the rent,
he answers the door
in his underpants.

She is so persistent
in her quest for payment
that she comes by at ungodly
hours.

These are the times of day
that a writer, a poet
might best be
left to sleeping,
but the landlady fails
to realize this truth,
so underpants it is.

The room has been remodeled,
the poet has moved out,
gotten married,
is raising a family,
but he is still a poet.

Smoking a cigarette,
a welcomed pause
in the midst of
an eight hour shift.

The factory roars
as it always has,
as it always does.

The poet’s thoughts
will wander
to witches and how
the weight of these women,
dancing ******* in the middle
of a moonlit forest,
might have their weight
somehow correspond
with that of a duck.

And, then suddenly,
as if awakened from
a trance,
the poet will realize that
none of this ****
really matters anyway;
and that nobody ever
really gives a ****,
except the witches
and the ducks.

The factory roars
as it always has,
as it always does.

The poet remains a poet.

Because.


*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

We have not fallen
in love with the second
coming of November,
but she is here
nonetheless.

How sad it is
that she is so
drunk on her sister
April’s wine
that all she can
do is weep her
frozen tears,

wail her chilled
misery,
ruining this year’s
garden already.

I would like to
be warmer,
no doubt,
but

this return will
be short lived.

So, while November
is here again,
I’ll pour her another
glass of her sister’s
best vintage,
join her on the porch
and offer her one
of my
cigarettes.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

It is our own mountain before us;
it is our own boulder,
and each of us is,
alone,
our very own
Sisyphus.

We heave,
shove, strain
onward, upward
with the daily struggle.

The bones of our tasked
limbs do not snap.

instead they are often chewed
upon by the hounds of our
history.

To one another, we’re
strangers, human,
yet still such a mystery.

Commonality,
forgotten as we feud
in regard to which of
us has the greater undertaking.

The answer is always the same,
despite the fact that so few
of us are willing to hear it.

At sundown,
when we go into our
homes for supper and
too little sleep,

the stone rolls
down to the bottom
of our hill.

Dawn will break,
the stone will wait,
and each of us,
unbeknownst to
the others,
will begin
to push
again.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

Oh, how I wish
you could see
and hear
what was done.

Today we spoke
of what has become
history, the present
all at once;

of how Thunderbirds
have lined their nest
with feathers of fire,
and decorated nest walls
with leather laces,
strung with beads
bummed from a
Summer-school
Social Studies teacher.

It was the best kind of lesson.
(A history lesson.)

Robert Frost and John Coltrane
were present,
but you were missing,
lost this last year.

However,
you still live
inside of your
Never-forgotten instructions:

“Go down to Felix Street and see a man named Hans. He’ll show you what to do.”

(I did as I was told.)

Neither of us
knew it then,
but what I’d heard was:

…”he’ll show you who you are.”

He did.

And, I still know.

Because of a lesson
well taught.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

the shadows of branches
rest heavy on window sills,
the beam of a streetlight
comes to rest on an eye.

there is little that can be done.

arise, sleepless one, arise!

there is so much to think
about in these smallish,
tired, vengeful hours.

so many errors,
so great a penance
to be paid.

and,
there is all night
to pay it.

*

-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

We called ourselves a gang
when we gathered,
these Missouri poets
and I.

We were the same,
yet starkly contrasted
nonetheless.

They wrote of daybreak,
meadows full of mist,
thickets of mule deer
appearing at first light
or
rabbits snared, squealing
in tangles of hawthorn.

I could not;
did not do
the same.

Instead, choosing
to squint in the shadows
of barrooms or truck stops,

I became the raconteur
for a different type of wildlife.

My heavens were full
of angels whose halos
were made of cigarette smoke
as it circled toward dim ceilings

or

bright neon rooms that sizzled
and popped with the scents
of bacon, eggs, and brewed
coffee in Bunn flasks,
waiting for the pour.

Today, as I begin my 43rd,
it is much the same as it
has always been.

But, there is one angel,
who is celestially sorrowful.

Her melancholy is thought
to be total until,
my storyteller’s eye is better
educated by my ears.

The jukebox has played
lost love’s anthems since
breakfast began.

Her head has shaken
a negative with each song’s
passing.

Her downturned mouth
and sleepy eyes are
actually awake, painfully
aware of the feelings
locked inside of each
and every lyric.

She hasn’t told me any
stories of disappointment
with her station in life.

Instead,
she has shared
the complexity of her empathy,
the breadth and depth of
her heart’s ache for love
lost, even if it’s not her
own.

She owns it.

Singing in silence,
feeling out loud.

A rabbit snared
in a tangle of hawthorn.

The dawn has broken on
The 43rd anniversary of my birth.

The day’s first gifts are received…

A belly full of food,
a story,
love songs
sung with an ache
I’ll carry for a while.

I trap a $5 under the salt shaker
and exit.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

Every chance we get,
we’ll fail one another.
All of us.

We’ll talk over one person;
ignore all the others.

We complain that no one
ever listens to us.

We rail from our personal
pulpits against the injustices
leveled against the least of us,
doing so behind the comfort
of our keyboards.

Even if we know that we’re
wrong, misaligned, misinformed,
we fight onward anyway.

At this point,
the goal seems
to be that humanity
is choosing to be as
insular, isolationist,
antagonistic as is
possible.

We’ll hate one another
from across the world,
never bothering to cross
the street.

We’ll shoot one another
emails, messages of our
discontent, before we let
the bullets fly.

But, we’ll fire those too.

Each new home sold
will come with it’s own
chain-gun turret.
(Why the hell not?
It’s the American Way,
Isn’t it?)

We’ll climb down from
our turrets each morning,
log onto our computers, tablets, or smartphones;
sending our family, friends, neighbors, and even a few
strangers a fresh round of electronic hate-mail or
a few new anti-social media posts that finally say what
we all think anyway:

“Greetings and salutations!
*******! I’ve always been smarter than you.
I hate you, but I hate myself more and I’ve
never gotten the attention that I think I deserve.
Have a miserable day!
I know I will!”

After that we’ll back our
cars out into the driveway,
We’ll get on all fours;
fellating our exhaust pipes
for about 30 minutes.

After we’re exhausted,
(Get it?! Exhausted!)
We’ll climb back into
the car and pull it back
into the garage.

We’ll punch in the code
to our home security system.

The code will automatically
activate our ambient anti-anxiety
and antidepressant systems

(conveniently included in our home HVAC unit.)

These will fill our homes with enough meds/particles
so that we will be easily sated, manipulated
all day long.

For an extra $200
these systems will also
post positive comments
on all of your social-media
posts so as to maintain
the body’s highest levels
of dopamine.

We want you to end your day
feeling like the center of The
******* Universe.

(Remember when they made posting
vague, attention-seeking updates
On social-media illegal?)

Lights out!
Time to get
the government-sanctioned
2.75 hrs. of  sleep.

Goodnight!
I hate you!
Stay off
of my lawn!

My chain-gun is
set to auto!

Hail Trump!
Hail America!

*
-JBClaywell
©PZPublications 2018