How do we get ourselves
back from the lost places
inside our own minds;
the places where self-doubt
swims like a school
of sharks,
a school of thought?

The page,
tells the kindest
lies;
doesn’t always have
to be true,
however, it should
be honest.

It should hurt
A little.

Like…

a cage fighter,
like razor-wire,
like a coffee cup,
like a broken bottle,
like suede,
like the left wing
of a hawk

or

the right wing
of a vulture.

Like the backfire
of an old car,
the roar of
a shotgun;
the tink and plink of
buckshot on
an old 50-gallon
drum.
like a saw-tooth,
like a lion’s roar,
like a warm blanket

or

a war machine,
like something sweet,
that’s become something
else,
something obscene.
like a sonic-boom
rattles a pane
of glass.

Nothing is really,
like anything else,
we’re all simply
figuring everything
out for ourselves.

We’re fettering,
ferreting our own
truths from
betwixt the
lines, our own lies
so,
keep a
keen mind,
a watchful
eye.


*

-JBClaywell

© P&Z Publications 2018

I miss you.

I think about you
every single day.

You’ve always been
one of the most
powerful
human beings
I have ever
known.

To be nurtured
by you
was to be saved
from drowning
preemptively.


To be loved
by you
was equivalent
to having a
corner-man
in a title
fight.

It was not soft,
but it was kind.

It was often angry,
but never intended
to be mean.

Your heart was
always a forge,
a furnace,
the surface of
the sun.

The fire
is still
alive.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

memory is an odd thing.

recall makes us and itself
into amazing animals,
leaning toward the primordial.

we remember that time;
those precious last few seconds,
or that night that felt like
it just might be endless.

either one of these
can be a soft, warm thing
or a cold-blooded killer.

the ***** of it is,
the memory itself
the day of the week,
the time of day,
the way the light
might fall;
could make it all
interchangeable.

imagine it…

a teddy bear
with raptor’s claws.

sounds about right.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

I remember being young
and not feeling much
like a person,
but more like a shapeless,
formless, amalgamation
of emotion and thought
that barely made sense to
myself,
couldn’t possibly make sense
to anyone else.

I remember that very odd,
stilted,
self-awareness lasting the
whole school-day,
the whole school-year.

Sometimes,
at home,
while the record player
hissed and crackled its way through
a stack of 45s,

I’d feel a “pop” and become
something more akin
to human,
less apparition or automaton.

I’m more or less the same
now as I was then.

My arms and legs are held
in place by the pages of
beloved books, photographs
of my children,
the feel of my wife’s fingers
pressed into the small
of my spine.

I still go ghost now and again,
sitting in a room,
in the back of the house,
the albums on their shelves,
or spinning faithfully,
the texts that surround.

“Pop”

Really, I can almost hear
the realness of myself as I expand

into a more artful being.

I’ve learned something.
I’ve become something.
I’ve attained something.

I’d rather, for the most part,
be in front of people,
than with people.

When I am with people,
I don’t know how to behave,
I become anxious,
a visitant version of
myself.

In front of people,
I am comfortable,
content,
contained inside
of my own
art.

None the worse
for preternatural wear,
I’m allowed
to
pop.

*

-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018

Standing under a lavender sky
looking up at a waning crescent
moon.

It looks like God’s thumbnail
bitten anxiously off,

set adrift inside the evening’s
celestial ceiling.

I try to wish her back
into existence.

Alas,  
I am unsuccessful.

As the sky deepens
into more desperate purples,
I become attuned,
acclimated to the fact
that my wishes will fall short.

Solace comes in knowing that
my love did not,
neither has hers fallen short
of the stars,
of the heavens,
of the desperately purple sky.

As I was then,
I am now.

Surrounded.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

No one ever tells you
that your momma is
going to die
one day.

Well, really they do
but to believe them
is to believe in the
monster that lives
under your bed
despite the fact that
your momma has told you,
over and over,
that monsters aren’t real.

(You want to believe her
so badly, but are never
quite convinced.)

But,
then comes the time
when she is gone,
having passed away
in the smallest hours
of Monday morning.

Today is Wednesday;
so you’ve  come by
to check on your father
who’s not lived alone
since before you were
born.

The house is empty,
dark, still.
You call out,
worried.

His voice calls back
from the bedroom.

You walk the hallway
expecting to find him
sitting on the edge of
the bed,
tearful,
sorrowful,
fidgeting with some
small thing that once
belonged to your
mother.

Instead,
you realize that you’ve
interrupted a nap.

Though, perhaps 20 minutes
before you arrived,
he was indeed
sitting on the edge of the bed,
head in his hands,
tears on his face.

Now, however,
he lay beneath a blanket,
on his side of the bed,
alone.

He’s nudged up
next to the pillow
on the other side
that waits patiently,
cool, smooth,
for her.

Yet she remains alive inside
of that dark, sleepy house,
and you can feel her there.

Perhaps she is nudged up
next to the man, who is
nudged up against that
smooth, cool,
empty
pillow.


*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

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