I am neither kept nor caught.

Not a rabbit in the snare,
not the fox in the chicken coop.
I am here, with her,
not fooling her,
myself,
or anyone else.

If anything,
I am like a shark.
I have to keep moving
or I can’t breathe.  

Hunting stories;
an understanding of humanity
that continues to elude me,
in my shark-state.  

She lets me swim
these streets and alleys.
Hunting ideas for the notebook.
Telling all of the other fish my stories.

Sea lions I’ve bitten,
stingray tails.
How they might’ve tasted.
Their terrified eyes.

These are good stories.

They’re not always true,
but it’s always a little more fun
when they are.

I’ll just keep moving.
Swimming the currents
of this municipality’s ocean.

Sometime later,
I’ll feast.

(Blood is always in the water.)  

Pen and ink.
Tooth and fin.  

It’ll be a frenzy.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

It was one of those black,
crystalline
winter mornings.

There was no moon
or
stars that could be seen.

The coastal storms
had harried our
Midwestern weather pattern,
dosed us with perhaps,
a little more winter
than we’d previously
been ready for.  

Out the door,
on the street,
just before five o’clock
in the morning.

The air is not still,
but doesn’t have much movement to it.

This breeze has teeth though,
they bite hard enough
that everything in me
says that it might be a good idea to stop,
turn around,
get back under the covers,
hideout for a few more hours.

But, I’m already out here.

I’ve chosen the Phillips 66 sign
as my adopted moon,
letting it guide my steps.

I pass by that mechanic’s yard.

The yellow IROC Z-28 stares at me
with her dim headlights,
reflecting the light of that
‘not-a-moon’ moon
we’d both elected to go in for.  

“I used to go fast”, she says.
“Me too”, I say and keep walking.

There was a time that I wanted that car
like I’d wanted women I had known
during years and versions of myself
long gone.

Really though,
I don’t know what I would have done
with those yellow fishtailing hips,
those screaming tires,
that black vinyl-wrapped steering wheel.

Yeah,
that car was very much like
those long-lost lusted for women,
in that I’d have been flummoxed
as to what to do with them after a while.

There are only so many
red lights to run,
so many hairpin turns to take,
holding that yolk for dear life.

There are only so many mindless rolls in the sack,
only so many beers with bourbon sidecars.

I keep walking.

That yellow Camaro winks at me
a few more times
under the light of that gas-station moon.

I keep walking.

Nowadays we’d both make
that same quarter-mile run
to the Phillips 66
in the same amount of time.

However,
she’s all caged up
in that chain-link lot.

I’m not.

I’m free.

I’m cold,
but where I’ll end up,
I’ll fill up on biscuits and gravy,
sit in a warm booth,
hope that someone
has already left a morning paper behind,
and stare into the inky, starless pre-dawn sky.

Likely becoming
hopelessly infatuated with my
adopted moon.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

Looking back at photos of Christmases past.
An action shot of my youngest boy,
testing out his new hula hoop.

I can see my mother’s feet.
She’s sitting in her chair,
watching what must’ve felt
like the magic of the day
unfolding before her very eyes.

And, it was magic.
For a while her pain had subsided,
her knees didn’t hurt,
and she simply enjoyed her small,
nucleus, family as we unwrapped
the wonders laid out before us.

Her shoes,
the ones she deemed the most comfortable,
were yellow and black little tennies.

I called them her bumblebee shoes.
And, there they are in the bottom left corner of these last three photos.

Now, she’s gone.
Somewhere, around the corner, we say.
To the other side, we say.
But, she’s always near, we say.

And,
as I think of her now,
I imagine her as a drawing,
a cartoon,
like something that Bill Watterson
might have drawn up.
Bumblebee shoes,
looking a little bit like dinner rolls,

(That’s how Schultz described Watterson’s drawing of Calvin’s feet.)

her capri jeans,
showing her little birdie-like ankles,
and her comfy, orange Kool-aid Man shirt.

(I still have it.)

She’s still a bit wobbly,
unsteady on her feet,
but she’s doing okay.

So am I.
(Angela too.)
So’s Pops.
So are her grandkids.

We miss her.

And,
this Christmas is different,
that’s for sure.

But,
she walks into my thoughts,
coming from the kitchen of my memories,
carrying a cup of coffee
or
a plate of something wonderful for me to taste.

And, she’s always wearing her bumblebee shoes.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018

“You tell that man that I’ve no more desire to speak with him than I would the devil himself!”
“You tell that man that I am very upset that he would come in here and interrupt this afternoon’s bingo game!”
“I mean, honestly!”

The administrator of
the nursing home looked at me nervously.
I looked back,
apologetic,
but undaunted.

“I just need information.”

“I need to know if she has any plans to go back home.”
“I need to know that if she does go home, she’ll have the proper equipment and support system in place, waiting for her when she arrives.”

The administrator walked back
toward the facility’s dining hall,
where the bingo game was in full swing.

(The executive whispered into an ear.)

A pair of elderly, cataract-laden eyes rolled,
then glared at me with a hostility that I could feel,
even all the way over by the nurse's station.

“The lady says that she plans to stay with us.”

I nodded, said my thanks, and walked back out into the cold.

This part of the job is always a bit surreal.

It makes me think of my mother.

She was the director of several nursing homes over the course of my youth.

The smells of these facilities is assaultive.

(Industrial cleaning products,
boiled vegetables,
assorted liniments and balms,
the faintest twinge of ***** in the nostrils.)

To me these places smell like memories
that go for long periods,
unrecalled,
unrecounted.

(School-age summers
spent in supply rooms,
marking supplies,
stacking them neatly,
like troops ready for deployment.)

Often the nursing home
is thought to be a horrendous destination.

I can understand that.

But, she wanted to stay
and I had interrupted the bingo game,
hadn’t I?

Tonight’s supper was roasted chicken,
mashed potatoes,
pickled beets on the side.

(I’d read as I’d entered.)

Maybe her sons and daughters
didn’t want her anymore.
Maybe they’d visit every afternoon at 4.
There was no way I’d ever know again for sure.  

But, I know why this afternoon’s task
made me smile,
stinging at the same time.

Because I’m Cynthia’s son.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018

“What do you like about me?” he asked.
“I like everything about you. You’re my very best friend.” came her reply.
“Yeah, but what specifically, makes you like whatever it is that you like about me?”
“Okay, okay…” she said, her brow furrowing thoughtfully.
“I like that you’re smart, and funny, and that we talk a lot, and that you love me the way that you do, as much as you do.”
“Well, thank you, babydoll.” he said grinning at her, still somewhat dissatisfied with her answer and not sure why he was.

Later, she came into the room that he was writing in.
She said: “You know that I don’t have the same type of thoughts floating around in my head that you do. You know that my words don’t come as easily, as effortlessly as yours do, right?”

“I do know this.” he said.
“But sometimes it just feels really good to hear good things about oneself; to hear reasons why you are someone’s other half.”

“Fine, but you should know that it has always been this way, you have always stood in the very same light that you stand now. You are me, and I am you, and we are we. It’s this way now, and has been for the better part of two decades. It will always be so.”

“I know.”
"I do know.” he said reassuringly.

And, he did know.

She turned, his beloved, to leave the room.
“I’ll leave you to your writing then.”
“I can’t wait for you to show me what you’ve been working on.”

He called her name, just as her foot had touched the threshold.

And, so she came back to him,
this poet,
this writer,
with his artist’s self-doubt,
his constant worry
as to his worth,
his being ‘good enough’.

She wrapped her arms around him,
he allowing himself to be enveloped,
felt secure
in her embrace.

So,
with a wink,
a contented sigh,
and a brief pat
of her magnificent
left buttock,
he released her.

He was already
thinking
of
the next
stanza.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018

The car and I,
we made our way
into the downtown
portion of this Midwest
mini-metropolis.

The sun was out,
snow melting,
and it sounded a lot
like rain as everything,
everywhere
dripped and plopped
creating a slurry of
grey road juice
that hissed under
the tires as we
passed by.

At the intersection
nearest to my friend’s
shop,
there was a refrigerator
box that had been
tossed in the street.

It,
like most things,
was on its way
to disintegration.

The red letters
that were inked to
the sides of the box
had started to run,
making the box look
to be some kind
of suburban roadkill.

I wondered briefly,
as the next holiday
rounded the corner
if the contents of the box
might be a gift.

Or…

Maybe a:
“*******! The fridge is shot!”
kind of unexpected
expense.

Either way,
the car and I
had other destinations
to reach.

So, I let my thoughts
wander still
as the tires turned
underneath.

“What would it be like to climb the steel stairs
on the sides of those buildings nearest
the scrapyard?”

Someday,
I’ll find out.

Surrounded by the steam
that comes from those buildings
doing whatever it is that they
might do,

I’ll smoke a cigarette,
count the pigeons that land nearby,
and think of the best way
to tell you all
about it.
*

-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

Waiting for what?
Nothing much is happening here.
Still, there’s nothing wrong
with waiting around for a while.

The air is amazing tonight.
Damp,
cool enough to make
the earthen odors
mean a little bit more
than they might otherwise.

There were two ravens
on the street lights
earlier this afternoon;
we looked at one another for a minute.

They had their sodium lamps
to roost on,
passing judgement on us below,
but there were other errands to run,
no time for further inquiry
as to the harshness of the gaze they leveled.

Still, we looked upon each other,
it was like they knew something unknowable
to anyone else at all.

We ate a tripe supper,
with beans and onions.
The smell of the tripe was a pleasant,
but readily acknowledged
barnyard smell.
As I chewed, I knew doubtlessly
what I was eating.  
It tasted fine.

After supper came a pair of cigarettes,
some time to walk.

There was no real destination.
The only task was to avoid the torpor
that comes all too readily
once the belly is full.

Now,
the house is asleep.

All but me.

I can still smell the lingering smells
of fried ***** meat and onion.
Now harsh,
a bit unpleasant.

I’ll make enough use
of such a small displeasure,
so as to stay awake just long enough to finish these lines,
take another short stroll
into autumn’s savory fragrances
before sleep steals what’s left
of tonight’s living wage.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018