The potter and I had arranged a barter.

So, I went to see him and complete our business.

This same potter is also a painter,
and so, when I arrived,
he was in the middle of a deal that would put one of his paintings on someone’s wall
while putting more money in his pocket,
right then,
than I make in a month and a half.

Rather than impede a more artful capitalism,
I left his shop so as to pursue
some time inside of these pages.

Purchased of some small food,
a cold drink on a hot day,
I sat down to write for a while.

Having paid my own art some attention,
I made my way back toward the potter’s space
so as to complete our transaction.

On my way there,
I felt two pairs of rather wild eyes
upon me.

They, those eyes, pierced my side,
with the intensity, authority of a Roman Centurion,
stared at me with the zealousness
of The Old Testament,
fell upon me like the weight of The New Testament;
King James edition,
and I knew it.

I felt,
strangely obligated,
to acknowledge this weighted gazing,
asking these ladies how their evening was going.
My efforts were polite,
rhetorical.
I left them sturdily in my wake.

These women faded from my thoughts.
And, I wish, retrospectively,
that I had vanished
from their minds as well.

Alas, these missionaries
had been set to their devine task
by none other than
Yahweh Himself.

And, their mission,
it seemed,
was me.

They tracked my progression to the potter’s field.

“Can we pray for you?”

“Sure, you can do whatever you feel compelled to do.”

“Do you not have a relationship with The Lord?”

“I have a relationship with the entirety of The Universe.”

“Do you not seek salvation from sin, the wickedness of Satan, and the evils of men?”

“I do not. However, I do know that you seek the ability to feel good about praying for me, a disabled man, because you seem to believe that because I have legs that do not work like yours do, I must be fundamentally lacking something that you can bestow upon me.”

“Have you no faith at all?”
“Have you no relationship with Jesus Christ?”

“I do have a faith. I have a faith in my own humanity, in my inherent ability to commune with all that is honest, true, and good in The Universe.
I do not need your self-serving prayers.”

My friend,
the potter,
the painter,
sang these ladies a song;
played his guitar.

The ladies swayed in time to the music,
just a little.

Together, we bestowed,
upon this pair of zealous women,
kindness and patience
that they seemed to accept
along with our collective faithless, heathen, message
of goodwill;
love for their humanity,
if nothing else.

“Well, we didn’t come here for this,” they said.

And they left us,
none the worse for not
having been prayed over,
or preyed upon, to commune,
in each, our own way,
with each other,
The Universe,
The Great Spirit,
The Buddha,
or Whomever.

Once they had gone,
I traded three books that I had written
for a very nice vase that the potter had made.
The vase was gray,
spun with earth tones,
was flecked with robin’s-egg blue,
sits beautifully on the shelf.

It is now part of The Universe
with which I commune.

I pray
that it
is always
so.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

Having done a lot of driving,
my tank was almost empty.
But, in other ways,
was as full as I could want.

We had gathered,
those who had asked for stories,
and myself.

We had spoken of the tasks of putting pen to paper,
of putting one’s own thoughts
onto the pages of composition notebooks,
of how doing so had saved my life,
and had potential to save theirs,
if they ever found themselves in such need.

I had driven also,
to the next small town over.

There was the promise of music,
hawkers selling food and drink,
a street fair,
on the town square.

I sat with my friend,
her family,
in the civic center park
of the town that lives
just to the north of
the small town
I call my own.

It had been a hot day,
but the breeze was nice.

My thoughts wandered to the week’s earlier journey.

The eighth-graders whom I had spoken to,
had their own stories,
from Mexico, Libya, Iran, Morocco, Palestine, and Nigeria.

They told me those stories
from their summer-school desks,
in Kansas City, Missouri.

Really, they didn’t seem much different
from the stories I could have found
in this sleepy little village
just fourteen miles from
my own driveway,
that tonight was electrified into activity,
by way of the evening’s festivities.

I don’t come here all that often,
except, on occasion,
to visit my friend,
her family,
maybe one other.

Every time I do though,
it feels like a different planet.
Or, like I’m the alien,
having never seen people before.

We would all do well
to get out more.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublucations 2018

On Sunday afternoons, I go to the Hy-Vee gas station and write up journal entries and/or just whatever ideas are floating around in my head.

In doing what I do for a living, I hear a lot of stories. Some of those stories are pretty tough. So, writing about the stories themselves or writing about the way those stories made me feel at the time is pretty essential. It keeps me clean, so to speak. Writing about work lets me keep the stories, so that I might learn a lesson here and there, while letting me let the pain, hurt, or other dirt go. Plus, as a bonus, I don’t get too worn out in the doing of the work. The writing staves off any empathy fatigue I might feel.

Also, I tend to wander around town in the evenings. I do it so that I might people watch and so that people can check me out.  That sounds a little odd doesn’t it?  I know. But, here’s why I do it…

My dad used to ask me, when I was a boy: “How many handicapped people do you see?”  “How many people that have an obvious disability do you actually see in St. Joe?”  “None. Except for me, I don’t see any.” I would answer.  And, at the time, at least for me, it was about 99.9% true.

“So”, Pops would say; “Be the one that people see.”

What he meant was that people are often fearful of what they see as different or don’t understand. We all know this to one degree or another, I hope.

So, in doing what Henry Rollins has taught me, at least while working all over Northwest Missouri, I try to put as much mileage on my crutches as I am able. While I’m out there I try to meet as many people and shake as many hands as I can.  I check people out and give them an opportunity to check me out. And, I write about those interactions.

I am a huge fan of the travel writings of both Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain. (I’m so sad that Tony left us. Really, it has been like losing a pal.)  However, while I don’t disagree with them that every American should have a passport that is well used, I know that for myself and a lot of Americans travel like those guys do, is a financial fantasy.

But, I can go to City Market in Kansas City, I can go to Cameron, Missouri, I can enjoy and ask questions of the other parents and patients when I take Alex to Children’s Mercy for appointments. I can and I do.   And, no one person has ever been anything less than kind to me. For each other, we are the “one that people see” and I think we’ve done ourselves and our stories as good a service as we can.

Recently, I opened up The Ritual a little. It morphed a bit when my pal Josh would join in. Both he and I would set up like we were going to write our next batch of poems and then we would start talking. We’d bounce around conversationally, just like two pinballs in a machine; there wasn’t a topic that either of us could think of that we couldn’t rail on for the two-hour parameter I’d set.  Neither of us got any writing done. I don’t think either of us cared.

That said, I’ve left The Ritual as it is now. I’ve put it out there on social media that I’m sitting at the Hy-Vee plaza, in Caribou Coffee writing on Sundays.  Sometimes Josh shows up, sometimes he doesn’t.  But, I keep the idea of conversation at the forefront of The Ritual. Sometimes, I think it’s more important than the writing that either does or does not get done.

Why? Because now, in this era of social media, we isolate too much. We feel like we really do have 547 friends or followers when really, we’re alone in our rooms with our smartphones, tablets, or laptops. I imagine if the only socialization I got was online, I’d be horribly lonely.

I’m not putting down Facebook or Twitter users. I am one. But, I want to talk to as many human beings as I can before I kick off.  

So, if you need to talk, want to talk, or like to talk...

It’s a Sunday Ritual soon and it’s all ours for the taking, and talking.

Both of us were frightened
by tales of blindness,
rare,
but if it occurred at all,
likely permanent.
We were stoic as we watched
several small vials fill with blood.
We hurried here and there,
always stopping to hold elevator doors,
to offer smiles,
reassurances where we could.
Having not now,
perhaps never asking him
to give up his personhood,
I reminded all of these geniuses
that my boy, despite his nuances
and need for simpler explanations, was indeed,
a man,
a maker of his own decisions,
and very curious,
in his own way,
as to how it all worked.

(He studies his x-rays with a seriousness
that astonished us all.)  

In the end, his signatures graced all the paperwork,
his mind was clear, focused,
despite some nerves.

But, my thoughts came back
to that bald little boy in the Radiology waiting-room.


How would his story end?  

There wasn’t any doubt in my mind
that he was at least seven years old.
No boy of that age chooses a slick pate like his,
even in the summertime.
No, that was cancer’s gift
and his momma’s curse.

We’ve endured
Cholesteatoma and a curved spine.
An aortic anomaly corrected almost 5 years ago.
He’s run a gauntlet,
no lie.
We’ve seen him seize,
called for ambulance assistance.

But, I’d never doubted that he’d get an 8th birthday.  
Not once.

(Not like her, the bald boy’s momma.)

The boy,
not mine,
the one in Radiology,
he looked tired.
His mother looked exhausted,
but spoke to the receptionist of her little one’s excitement,
looking forward to picking his older brother up
from school on the last day.

It signaled an ending
to my eavesdropping...

My own son came back
from his session of x-rays.

The bald little boy and his momma
followed the nurse back toward
their own appointment.

We gathered our belongings,
turned to leave.

A weak smile caught my eye.
The small fingers waved.

I waved back.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

Like the last few seconds
that the filament
inside of a lightbulb
lasts.

It is not
surrender,
but,
strain,
struggle,
a summoning
of will.

To continue
to give as much
as is left,
the very last.

Not expiration,
explosion.

Because even the subtle
pop of that wire,
is not a death knell,

it is a warning
against the
remaining heat.

A reminder
of the light
that lasted
until
just
now.

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

I wonder if this old grade school
understands that I steal little
bits of myself back from it
even all these years later.

Despite the fact that
this building stole
a lot of my childhood,
leaving me with ******
noses, blackened eyes
instead of  good memories,
I come out here,
to write poetry.

The sun warms
the steel bench;
its  heat
softening the muscles
surrounding my crooked
spine.

My boys,
possessed of energy,
boundless,
climb monkey bars
or
slide down spirals,
maybe swing
for awhile.

I’ll do the same,
inside of my own
mind.

(Never forgetting the blood
I’d left inside.)

I write the line,
the lie;
“...stepping into silence.”
and think it a grand thing.

Recalling the morning,
standing outside
with the day’s first cigarette,
feeling that ‘connected to everything’
feeling.

Soon enough it
had all gone to hell.

Because, the more I thought
about whatever I’d meant
by: …”stepping into silence.”
the less accurate it seemed to be.

While outside smoking,
I’d gotten a message from
a co-worker.

The poor *******’s mother had
fallen down the basement steps,

So…

“I bet that fall wasn’t very silent.”

sloshed around in my skull for
a minute,
then,
the woodpeckers
started in on the eaves of
my neighbor’s house,
their machine-gun beaks
strafing the silence even
further into ruin.

Soon enough,
“...stepping into silence”
ceased to be poetry
and turned simply,
into some
jibber-jabber
that I’d scribbled
into a notebook
earlier this week.

Nevertheless,
it’s mine;
silent, screamed,
or otherwise.

I’ve stolen it back
from this monument
to my terrorized youth.

Here in the sunshine,
by the slide, the swing-set,
the dandelion baselines
of the diamond behind me,
my sons kicking yellow
with every step.

I am grateful for the noise.

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

Walking the nighttime streets
of this city.
Been doing this over half my life.
I’ve never worried about
the clack-clack-clack
of cerebral palsy’s
aluminum appendages
serving as dinner bells
for whatever wolves that
The Joe might den.

Bring ‘em…

drug dealers,
republicans
democrats or
the deranged…

It never mattered.

Broad shoulders,
a pretty mean
stink-eye,
&
being held upright
by a pair of elongated
billy-clubs
seemed always
enough of
a deterrent.

The wolves
are out of their
dens
tonight.

(I, among their number.)

So many
that the neon
howls.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018