“Where are the Slim Jims?” I asked.
“Are you with that woman?” the clerk
asked back.

“No, I’m with me.” I replied.
“Because, she just got one.” says the clerk.
“Okay. I want my own.” I said.

“You need to calm down.” he says.

The circuitry sparks.
The hard drive spins up.
Maximum.

“What?” I ask
and I really want to
know too.

“I said, You need to calm down;
beef jerky and stuff is right over there.”

“Oh, okay…and I’m not even wound up,
but I can get that way, if you’d like.”

“No, man. I was just saying…”
he trails off.

I wish I knew what he was just saying
and why he was just about to say it.

I wish I knew what I
would have said too.

Both of us were almost
*******.

Relax, chief.
It’s just practice.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications; 2016

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

Outwitting,
out-writing
the days
defeats.

Snatching
victory
from the
inkwells
of the
mind.

Spelling
out
half-truths
and lies
in equal
measure.

The eye
of the
beholder
is blind.

Every other
word is
a treasure.

Not gold
or silver,
but thoughts
fraught with
flailing,
failings,
soaring
in spite
of
broken
wings.

Sailing
past lonely
hearts and
thoughts
of loved
ones left
behind.

Smeared
pen strokes,
notebooks,
spines bent
full of sins
or loves
confessed
obsessed,
depressed.

We are,
all of us,
roses,
between pages
pressed.

*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

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

Today, a total loss,
nothing could’ve been
done to save it.

Today was relegated
to the wierdos,
the lady who wears her
cat on her head,
her daughter’s miniskirt
hovers just below her
naughty bits as I ask
momma my litany.

And, I’m an all-American
red-blood, to be sure.
I would look, I would,
but that poor kiddo’s
got a face like a trainwreck,
so none of it looks worth
looking at, if you ask me.

I’m just trying to get out
the door of the cat-hatted
lady and her daughter,
the clockstopper.

Getting back to the office,
putting some desk-time in,
I call the war vet with the PTSD
so deep that it’s in his DNA.

His voice, so quiet
the rage underneath
is audible.

Cradling the phone,
I fret for just a bit,
wondering if his meds
are doing their duty,
and pondering the next
visit to his address.
*

©2015 P&ZPublications;
-JBClaywell

Earnest Hemmingway says that writing is akin to bleeding.
The adjunct English professor told me that it definitely wasn’t easy.
And, that anyone who says it is,
is a ******* liar.
I disagree.
I think writing is akin to ******* in the beginning,
and ******* later on.
The first few times you try it,
you may not be very good at it,
but you like the results.
The more you do it,
the better you get at it.
You figure out what words or phases
turn you on the most, and you use those the best.
They get the best word-gasms out of you.
Reading books is, in this instance,
a lot like looking at *******.
It shows you what some of the other possibilities are.
It gives you examples of what works for other people
and what you can make work for you, and an audience,
if you like.
But, for the most part,
you’re doing whatever you’re doing
for the one who loves you most.
You’re doing it for yourself.
Later on, you can write for an audience.
You can take them with you, make them feel you,
show them wonders never before seen.
Like *******; the first few times might be clumsy
or awkward.
But, soon enough they’ll seek you out.
They’ll want your words for their own release.
Like loyal lovers, they’ll need your embrace.
So, maybe writing is like bleeding.
But, maybe it’s not.
Maybe it’s like *******, or jerking off.
So, do it a lot.
*
-J. Claywell
©P&ZPublications; 2014

Electronic invitations are sent
to this festival of pen, paper, and ink.

No one ever shows up anymore.

I don’t mind.

It gives me more time with this notebook
and a head full of fire.

On Sundays,
the coffee is $.87 and I can have
all that I can swallow.

Today, it came black
in spite of my request
and as I made my
attempt to doctor it
into submission,
it spilled.

The next thing I know,
I have a reem of coffee-soaked
napkins and I’m hoping these
pages can be
salvaged.

After doing the best I can
I hit the john to wash my
hands.

Stepping away from the ******
is a man in a suit and tie.
He shoots me a baleful look
which I gratefully return.

He didn’t stop to wash his hands
in his hurry to get away from me
so I know that his cleanliness and godliness
are about the same distance apart.

Upon my return to my wrecked altar
of ritualized scribbling I notice that there are
heavy beads of cream hanging on to the edge,
same as me.

Instead of wiping them up
I head outside and light a
cigarette.

There is a young couple
contented with their quick,
cellophane wrapped sandwiches,
Doritos and sodas,
a fine picnic supper.

I sit so that the wind is in my face
and the smoke blows over my shoulder
into their suppertime soiree.

Upon my exit
they shoot me a baleful
look.

I earned this one.

And, I gratefully
return
home.



*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

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



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Thanks.

There was egg salad in the fridge,
half a container of that store bought,
neon-green guacamole that nobody else
likes but me,
tortilla chips too.

So, we sat together and ate
this hodgepodge lunch,
the dog and I.

She never once complained
that there were no crackers
or a few pieces of soft, white
or even dark, crusty
pumpernickel bread.

We thought about whatever
it was that we thought about
while we chewed thoughtfully.

I looked up the word: tincture
in the dictionary that I keep in my
office,
right off the kitchen.

A friend of mine had used the word
in correspondence, and I was rather
embarrassed that I’d not known what
it meant.

But,
I found that embarrassment wanes
when one is scraping the last few globs
of guacamole out of the container with
one’s finger and is saddened because
the accompanying tortilla chips have
been reduced to crumbs.

The dog wasn’t embarrassed of me.
She was busy cleaning the remnants
of egg salad from the inside of the
old butter dished I’d packed it away
in.

I’d already packed what had been enough
for a decent sandwich away in my guts
using tortilla-chip spoons,
doing my best not to ***** more
silverware than I had to.

The hour was almost up;
I had to be back at the office
in about 15 minutes.

We,
the dog and I,
took this small measure of time
as an opportunity to listen to a
couple of songs…

one by Iron Maiden.
the other by John Coltrane.

While the discs spun,
the dog wiped any excess
egg salad or tortilla chip crumbs
from her muzzle
onto
the living room carpet,
by sliding around
on her face.

It was funny to watch.

I’ll have to be sure and not
tell Angela about it.

Soon enough,
it’s once more around the yard
dear doggie,
a Marlboro for me,
another few hours at the office,
little friend,
and I’ll sail back home
to thee.


*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

They asked me,
yesterday,
as we sat on the
half-court
on the recreation
yard,
having ‘small-group’:

“If it meant that you could have your legs back,
would you sell your soul?”

Have my legs back?

I knew what they meant,
so I didn’t need an explanation.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar question,
theirs.
It was one I’d answered several times
before.

Never, though, inside these fences.

As this was the case,
I felt good in my reply.

“No. I like who I am.
Who I am is based
inside of the fact
that I was born
with these legs,
that work this way,
turn that way,
always bending this way.”

They had trouble wrapping
their criminal thoughts around
the ideas of liking oneself
or
not taking whatever
was to be had.

We moved past it soon enough,
sitting on plastic safety chairs
in a semi-circle under the
basketball hoop.

We moved on to discuss
spirituality,
empathy,
humanism
on the warm
concrete
under the warm sun,
which glinted off
of the razor-wire
brilliantly.
*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2020

Sometimes I wish I had one thousand midnight hours all at once
or better yet,
a wristwatch full of the ticks and tocks of
all of the pre-dawn smallnesses for the next
decade or two.

These could be used to converse
with owls or coyotes,
foxes, hawks, ravens
or
river trout.

Our talks could be remembered
sweetly,
in the heat of a summer day
or
the dreariness of a wet, fall afternoon.

It is wished to not rely
on window sill,
moonlit memory,
mimeographed message
folded in half.  

No;
my boots would rather
chew earth,
pebble,
and
puddle,
seeking out strange nutrients.

Monday morning stanzas
are well and good,
yet
Saturday night
sonnets,
soliloquies;
those are the real
meat and potatoes
of a weekend
word ******.

Thursday night poems
are pretty ******
impressive too.

The Thunderbirds,
the phoenix of
the composition notebook.
Thursday poems and poets
ask for a sidecar of whiskey…
it shows up on the house.

Words and the working of them
should be fearless, eventually.

The best stories,
poems,
come from shadowed,
pained,
or
pining places
anyway.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021

If I were a real poet,
I’d be second-cousin
to Charles Bukowski.
If I were a musician,
I’d be a nephew of Tom Waits.
I think that it’s
a pretty safe bet to say
that the best tracks
on any album are track
#3, #7, and #9.
The best one of those three
is always #7.
Fall is the best time
to listen to jazz
and drink coffee
laced with bourbon.
It’ll get you drunk,
but you’ll be wide awake
at closing time.
My step-daddy
should be Hubert Selby Jr.
I can never sleep past 6am,
even if I go to bed at 2.
Sometimes baby,
the only thing better
than biscuits and gravy,
is you.  
*
-JBClawell
© P&ZPublications; 2015

you speak so freely
of your discord,
your worry over
what others think.

you never bother,
to look inside, to see
the cup you offer,
the sour, spoiled stink.

it’s easy to claim disharmony;
to profess to be the cup from
which only a few can drink,

but, if honesty were present,
and ethic of work, were here
the cup would be full,
the tea would be easily
potable.

alas, the cup is shallow,
there is no steam,
it brings no warmth,
no welcoming pull.

dishonest love,
a selfish heart,
is all that you can
serve.

an empty cup,
a vacant tea room
is more than you
deserve.

Yesterday,
I sat in a common area
of the local university and wrote.

A student
in a power-chair
would glide by
now and then.

I liked the hiss of the wheelchair’s tires
on pavement
or
inside on the hard floor.
I liked the hum
of the motor that accompanies.

I can recognize these sounds
for what they are
almost immediately.

To me,
the sounds are comfortable,
they have a familiarity
despite the fact that they
are not my own sounds.

They are not the click
and
clatter of my crutches
and
I wouldn’t presume to identify with them,
yet they bring about a kindred.

They, these hisses and hums,
bring forth a needed feeling of
‘not-alone-ness’
that I have come to relish of late.

To me,
these are the sounds of,
at the very least,
a modicum of success
and
always of perseverance.
  
Otherwise,
we might all be werewolves
out for a stroll under the light
of the full moon.

I grab small gladnesses where I am able.

The streets are full of wild things
that snap,
snarl,
and
sometimes bite.

I walk among them,
having written of small kindness,
things familiar if strange.

They let me pass unharmed,
still warmed by feelings of belonging.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPbublications 2019

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

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

There is nothing left
but a mute scream
wrapped in barbed wire
dipped in gasoline

Holding the match
between teeth
clenched tight
dreaming sulfur,
sparks

Oxygen feeding
combustion equals
explosion,
vacuum,
creation of
emancipated
******

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications; 2016

it’s a tough business I’m in.
and I wouldn’t choose to do
anything else really.

sure, I’d write more or maybe
give a talk here or there if
they’d ask me, but then…

doing this thing in December
is the worst,
because you get to see just
how much poor these folks
are living in.

the quiet rumble of the big man
his voice like a rolling, roiling
thundercloud, not ready or willing
to unleash.

the snap and pop of the whole of him
as he stands to greet me is like the lightning
and his massive sigh as he returns to his recliner
is a gust of gray sorrow filling my sky.

“Look at this,” he says, “just look.”
I do; and I see the old scrub brush
Christmas tree he’s had his attendant
*****.
“There ain’t a ****** thing under there.” he says
to me and to the universe at large. “And, I’m already…”

I know what he means, as I sneak my litany in.
his answers are the same as always, he’s making
his way and in fair shape.

“I go to the pantry; sometimes to the church,” he continues.
“But, it’s hard to stand in line…last week was two hours for lunch.”

my mind runs to the wallet on my hip and the five crisp, new $100
bills inside, but they aren’t there, they never were, a daydream
of passing one over and seeing him smile, smiling back, and quietly
exiting with a: “shhh…”

but I’m broke too.

I ask weakly if there’s anything can be done.

ignoring the question,
he tells me that all of his good ****
is in hock so that he might get his sister
and his mama something nice.

and here I sat thinking hard, not smart, about
how sometimes it’s not Christmas,
sometimes it’s just a Friday.

“I’ve hocked my good **** before.” he says.
“Take a few months of being really flat to get it back.”

what the **** does really flat look like comparatively I wonder
but don’t ask.

“It’s about the giving.” he rumbles at me.
“It’s about showing the people that care about you
that you care about them too.”

reaching behind his massive self, he grins at me;
pulls a small, carefully wrapped box, from its hiding place.

“Open it.” he instructs.

and I do.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublucations; 2015

There's not enough
real darkness these  
days.

There are plenty  
of shadows,  
but not enough
truly dark places.

Everyone wants to
be an apex predator,
but still wants to squeal
and cry when made to  
bleed and flail like  
prey.

Some of us live  
in those shadows,
fighting real battles  
that no one else  
would want to see,
or fight,
let alone win.

Victory is so unfamiliar  
these days.

The hyenas and wolves  
want their meals handed
to them;
served up on gleaming silver,
brilliant white napkins tucked  
under their chins.

No blood spatter,
no claw marks.
Soundless.
Effortless;
everyone getting what they want,
what they need,
without struggle.

Yet, also claiming to be  
the wildebeest or  
the caribou when the fangs
penetrate, biting in.

None of it's fair,
or right,  
or good enough for any
of us
anymore.

There's little consolation  
in the consolation prize.

The light is too bright,
But, it's the darkness
that hurts
our eyes.


*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

The sabers rattle
sending
the torn flesh messages
of the Great Old Ones.

No more apologies
or options for your
angst.

Those particular doors
have closed.

Acceptance of your mindless
discontent,
your dissatisfaction
with what is barely
adversarial,
or
at worst inconvenient
has been deemed
unsafe.

Safety, at this point,
Is not a concern.

Those hollows have been filled;
The floodgates closed,
That river ******.

This space is unsafe for
your need for a safe space.

(This Space for Rent)

Wanton want,
need,
greed,
have no elbow room
here.

This space is taken.

The fist you find
will knuckle the
small of your spine
and smile.
*

-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications

That poor little *******
sat at his typewriter
and thought to himself: “What do I write about today?”

It was an odd, off-feeling, thing that he felt.
Sometimes he told people: “It feels like it feels when you are sitting there, reading a book or something and you suddenly have to take a ****. But, instead of the feeling being in your guts, it’s in your brain.”

The problem with saying
that kind of thing out loud
was that the poor constipated writer
always and almost immediately
felt like he was telling people
that he was full of ****
or otherwise a *******,
based upon how it all sounded to him,
and he was sure to everyone else
as soon as the words escaped his lips.

The stagnant little writer
went outside and smoked a cigarette.
He was trying to think
of a new way to think.

He thought: “Most of the time I write
about stuff that happens to me
or the things that I see as I’m wandering
around town.
Sometimes, I make things up, telling stories about characters that I’ve based loosely on people
that I’ve met via work,
or barflies I’ve sat next to,
nursing a beer or whiskey.”

Usually though,
the poor constipated writer
ended up writing about writing,
or standing outside smoking cigarettes,
or sitting in some bar,
next to some ******
who wanted to talk about politics
or religion
or some other nonsense
that wasn’t worth listening to
and then what was that poor
little plugged-up *******
supposed to do?

Well, nevermind.

I bet he’ll just do
what he usually does
and go whine about how
boring he must be as a writer,
how nobody ever gives
a two-penny farting ****
about anything
he has to say.

Then, I can already imagine it, can you?

He’ll go into that cold little room
at the back of his house
and he’ll continue to do
what he’s always done.

He’ll write stories about the streetlamps
and the moonlight.

He’ll write about that girl that he knows;
the one with the strawberry hair
and the thousands and thousands
of freckles.

Then maybe the next day
he’ll write about the old lady
who’s lights got shut off
by the power company
and about how he called
the power company
and said: “Listen here, ya sonofabitch!”
and they turned the lady’s power back on.

But, that poor little constipated
writer is in a place where he feels
like nothing he writes
is worth anything at all,
so he might as well
give up.

Or not.

*

-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

You put on your flowered
summer dress,
the one that swishes
around your calves as
you walk.

I’ll put on my shirt,
the color of mulberry
wine.

We’ll pack a picnic lunch
and sit on the steps
of the library.

You’ll sit on the step
above mine,
your knees pulled up.

I’ll sit a step
below you and gaze at
your pink anklebones,
sandals set aside.

We’ll eat salami slices,
cheese, and grapes,
sipping apple-beer from
red, sweating cans.

The back of my wine-colored
shirt will darken with
the heat of the afternoon.

I’ll reach over and rub the firm
line of your ***** as it rests under
stretched-smooth cotton.

We’ll be mindless of the heat.

You’ll kiss me;
our mouths warm with
the spices from the salami
and cheese.

We won’t mind.

Leftovers stowed,
we’ll sit in the car,
turning the A/C up full.
relishing the cool.

We’ll retreat from the sun,
contented and cooled once more
to create our own
summer storm.

*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

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

Time moves quickly,
faster than one
thinks is so.

The home is
hollowed to
house.

(It’s time for
us to go.)

Almost ten years,
we’ve been here
and the roots
they’ve grown
deep.

We’ve broken
memory’s tendrils
and sought another
place to sleep.

It’s been the only
roof that my young
one has known.

He’ll have his own
bedroom,
passing the small
hours all
alone.

It’s a hope that he
enjoys it,
his own space down
the hall.

I’d beg for all his
nights to pass
fearless,
not one second,
none at all.

The bookshelves
sit empty,
all my treasures
have been stowed.

They’re all boxed
and labeled,
bound for new
abode.

The tendrils
of memory wrap
around this home
tonight.

But,
where we are
together
is home.

And,
it’s here for
a few more
nights.

*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

Thankful for what?
I've lost myself and gained an insight into my own stupidity, my own arrogance. I think that I think too much. I think that I know too much. I think I'm right much of the time. (I'm not.)

What am I? Who am I?
I feel like I know who I am.
But, I need to be something too.
And, that, friends, is the lizard-faced terror of our Capitalist society.

Some of us know who we are and that is definition enough.
Others of us need more than one definition.
Poet.
Writer.
Raconteur.
Able to stave off poverty,
socioeconomic savior?
Survivalist instructor to the less-fortunate?

What am I now?
Not very much at all.

This is not a good line of thinking.

My self-talk is not very good these days.

I want to make something happen.

Doors opening or closing,
is the hell of this particular hallway.

There are no open doors.
Every one of them is locked.

My kicking is bootless
as are my cries.

(Positively Shakespearean!)

I'm waiting for someone who carries a key.
This is not my style.
I want to wreck some rooms.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

Where have we gone wrong?
Is this wrong?

We can hardly stand to speak to
one another anymore.

Does anyone remember how to
actually use the telephone feature
of the device that they carry
in their pockets?

Is this the future?
Am I living in the past?

How does one stay grounded, centered,
in the moment, these days, these months,
this godforsaken year?

Everything,
every conversation,
even my plate of biscuits & gravy
has been politicized, polarized,
punctuated, with the pugilism of
keystroke pundits.

On most Sunday afternoons,
I sit and compose.

My own musings;
the oatmeal of my mind.
Waiting for Goldilocks,
maybe a bear or three.

Come Monday,
I’m incarcerated for the day,
playfully playing the role
of Counselor
to men with addiction-issues;
an outright aversion to following
the norms of our less-than-gracious
Golden Age.

I might say that I’m playacting,
but I take it all very seriously.
(Not myself, mind you,
the work done inside those iron-gates.)

I refuse to perform with an angry eye,
heart or mind.
Seeking
clarity.
Showing
concern.

Are you a help or a hindrance?

This might be the question
we all could answer,
especially now,
on the downward *****
of
The 21st year
of the 3rd Millienia.

We’ve elected an inept celebrity.

Several of us love that facist fact,
loading out in our flag-adorned F-150s.

(Yee-haw!)

What a shame.
What a sham.
What a shambles our humanity
is in.

Our souls scream for something
that feels like success,
security, surety.

Even those whom are seen
as the least of us;
who vote against their own
self-interests,
they deserve better than
The Beast of Us.

Our faces hidden behind masks,
tearful eyes,
our fellow citizens have died,
our leaders lied,
we rioted, protested,
looted,
in response to jack-booted oppressors.

Confessors?
None.

This battle,
this race of inequity
may never be won.

Still,
we run.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublicarions 2020

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

We evangelize to antagonize
these days,
failure to recognize
the humanity that we
bastardize while we
editorialize,
abandoning our personhood,
we fail to stand on love’s platform
in favor of being right,
which doesn’t always mean
correct.

The goal should be to
connect,
mayhap, to direct our
audience to our highest plane,
together.

(Arguments occur at 30,000 or 15 feet.)

But,
what happens when
planes collide in midair?
In midstream?
In mid-sentence?

What happens when
We lose our right to
be right,
because we’ve lost our
ability to listen carefully,
to speak carefully,
and to proceed,
regardless,
with kindness?

We’ve all been ordained
to the bully-pulpit.

Convinced that correctness
lives in our own mind,
written as our own gospel,
inside our own lives,
yet,
hidden inside of  
the blue glow of the #hashtag.

This,
this fools tool,
is the ordinance
of the culture war.

And, it is not
fatal,
(or maybe it is.)

is not effective,

(often)

is  not
#enough.

*
-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

the center
of The Universe
and
the center
of
nowhere
at all.

This city...

Saint Joseph,
Missouri.

like an apartment
complex
or
a cul-de-sac
built by
The Hand of
God,
right
in the
bottom
left-hand drawer
of The Devil's
bill-paying
desk.

we walk
our dogs
on
long leashes
making sure that
they can ****
in our neighbor's
yard.

we cultivate
red-state
politics
and blue-plate
specials,
complaining
that our crime-rate
and our cholesterol
are too high.

we're the tenderloin
capital
of the world;
and we closed
the door
on that debate
as well as
several
others.

once,
not that
long ago,
we put it
to a vote,
whatever
it was...

it hardly
matters
anymore,
but only
18%
said: "aye"
and only
37%
said anything
at all.

the ballots
must've been
kept in the
lockbox

in the
bottom
right-hand drawer
of
The Devil's
bill-paying
desk.
*

-JBClaywell

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

They’ve bitten and held
through the month of October’s
unseasonable warmth.

Now, they’ve excised on the
first day in November and I
bleed.

The leafless branches of the
bluffs,  show among their
unshed brethren like the
claws of the undead.

The work becomes onerous
despite my ambition;
the cold weather creates
problems unsolvable before
the first ice forms or the first
snowflakes fall to stay.

There is no reward in getting
done what needs done.

Leaving the house before sunrise,
coming home as the last of October’s
auburn hangs in the sky,
knowing soon that November will
leave her bleak blackness in the air,
robbing me of the rose-colored clouds
that decorate the morning commute.

The fangs of September are pulled
for this year, but the rest of these
benumbed months will gnaw
until the warm juncture’s thaw.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2017

There are gladiolas,
black-eyed Susan
growing in wooden barrels
behind the chain-link, below the razor-wire.

The Powerhouse
they call it,
the building that houses
the generators, the boilers,
whatever else it takes to keep
these cinder-block cell-houses
warm, cool, or otherwise
habitable.

As I make my way up toward
the building I work in,
I pause to look at these blooms.

I must.

For it is in seeing them
that I may be seeing the
only beauty offered that day.

There is so little here
that is beautiful,
one might say.

The floors are scuffed,
the walls,
the paint, chipped away
or graffitied with pen-caps
or makeshift knives,
not looking for that space between a cell-mate's ribs
just then.

There is rust on the window sills,
on the bedposts bolted together,
bunkbeds for the bruiser or the bruised.

Still,
the gladiolas, those black-eyed Susan's
persistence in palpable,
as is the potential of every single
human being housed inside.

The perspective shifts.

There's beauty in that potential,
presented in the form of actualized,
engaged participation in today's classwork
or
small-group discussion.

'What's this?
A breakthrough?
Sir, is that a teardrop?'

Real,
not tattooed.

Beautiful.

More so than any gladiola
or
black-eyed Susan here
could hope for.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2020

You typed out
your lack of desire
to keep the charade going.

You proffered
a predicted end to this existential
ebb and flow
of day by day
madness and miasma.

Yet, I could not abide
and
rest assured that I am no savior
nor saint.

My robes are terry cloth
with sequins, none.
No cape,
no boots,
no symbols of better than whomever.

I have only an unwillingness to stop.  

Because stopping is
to ensure that the darkness
and
the demons prevail
and
I refuse
to allow that to occur today.

Together,
dear unknown one,
we will become as phoenix;
being reborn
in the flame of overcoming.

Tempered we will be,
in the forge of discomfort
and
disquiet,
knowing still that we can be better,
we can do better,
we can become better than what is now,
doing so for our future selves
and
those who call us
by names other than our very own.

You typed out
your lack of desire
to keep the charade going.

However,
I see no charade at all.
I see honest insecurity.
A self-doubt that staggers.
I see a sadness
that seeps out of shin bones
rising clear up to the eyes
and
leaks out as heavy as a downpour
for reasons that have little
in the way of explanation.

I tell you,
little friend,
it’s not your fault.

We live in a society
driven mad by algorithms
that over-gift us our own brain chemicals
and
leave us like addicts
at the doorsteps
of churches or taverns,
trap houses
or jail cells.

Our more advanced existence
has handicapped
our ability to
communicate effectively.

The savvy
among our beastly brethren
take full advantage
of the last sinew of innocence
that we have left.

Hold fast,
dearheart,
for this tumult of your youth
will leave scars
and
capture your good heart
in a cage,
leaving a stone in its place.

We mustn't allow this.  

To do so creates a decay
like rust or rot,
which is so difficult to recover from
because it stains everything
and
everyone it touches.  

Even now,
we are surrounded
by the skeptical,
the cynical,
the altogether untoward
and
unwilling to be otherwise.

You typed out
your lack of desire
to keep the charade going.

Be advised,
if it hurts,
it’s not a charade at all,
it is an investment
in a desire for change
that feels like something better
than what is right now,
what is wrong now.  

We will seek a new now;
and
know that there are more of us,
more of you,
more of we
than you can even imagine.

All that I ask
is that you continue…
for yourself,
for my own self,
for the selves
that we have yet to become,
but will eventually.

So, please,
Exist.
Exist for me.
I'll exist for you.
Together we'll exist
for all of the people
who love
and
need us in this world.
Maybe,
even some people
we have yet to meet.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021

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

We’re the heavy eleven.

Think about that number for a couple of seconds.
It’s a pair of ones, side by side.
When people talk about couples,
significant others, they often say something about
two people becoming one.

I’ve always liked the idea of two ones.
Two single and separate entities becoming a
recognizably different thing, yet still able to be
autonomous.

What an enormously human achievement.

And,
the achievement in no way has to be relegated
to romantic partners.

We can all be friends, right?
We can have each other’s backs, yeah?
Support one another?
Thick and thin, and all that kind of thing?
Home team?
Visiting team?
Does it really matter?

I’m one.
Me.
Alone,

You’re one.
Alone.
Independent.
Relevant.
Real.

Like the ones
in the number eleven.
One. one.
Two ones.
Side by Side.
Each holding the other up.
Supportive.
Encouraging.
Together.

The heaviest
of
elevens.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

where did it go?
left in some boxed toys in a garage sale?
nah, it was left on school buses and playgrounds
trampled in the grime and dirt of too many fistfights.
tossed aside for the brave face that kept me alive for
another surgery…and recovery.
I tried to find it a few times
but too much time had passed
and little else had gotten better
I had moved on…unwittingly…unwillingly
moved into the territory of the adult
able to hold my own in a conversation
that should have been over my head
but was not.
I had discovered a different kind of toy
one that smelled like wild cherry bubble gum when first opened
one that was magnetic as it’s sounds unwound across my tape machine.
I tried to talk to people my age about my discoveries
They were too busy discovering their own wonders
like a pretty solid fastball...or even second base.
Years and youth gone
I lived alone
with notebooks, headphones, and cassette decks
content to leave their world for my own
a combination of riffs and words
that inspired me to use my own voice
to produce as good or better than the gods that lived
in my backpack.
I make my way…
and the old gods still ride along.

There is nothing
to it at all.

All I have to do
is jump.

Let myself fall.

Exhale all the
air from my lungs;
fill them deeply
once
more,

hold.

Step off
the edge.

Will I land on the rocks below?

Or soar?

Those are the options.

And, I get to
decide.

*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

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

“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

He went to see the oldboy in the hospital.
It was his job to check in on all the oldboys
and oldgirls that they assigned to him.  
He liked his job very much
the oldboys and/or girls had some of the best stories
or sometimes it was good just to visit with them
and watch the boredom or sadness leave them for a bit,
while they were visiting or chatting.

This particular oldboy was one of his favorites.
The oldboy reminded Jay of both himself and his father in an odd way.
For one, the oldboy had a lot of tattoos
and was always mad about something.
The oldboy had the proverbial soapbox
and wasn’t afraid to stand on it.
Also, the oldboy cussed a lot.
The oldboy was short/fat/bald too,
like Jay’s Pop was and Jay liked,
honestly to see this particular oldboy because
he felt like it gave him a glimpse into his own future.
It didn’t help though that the oldboy liked to smoke
those little blue cigars
and drink a lot of coffee
and whiskey,
because Jay liked, in moderation/sort of,
***** and smoke and cheeseburger sandwiches
and doughnuts
and bacon
and all that stuff that was surely shortening his life.
Jay didn’t like to think about that,
but he liked the look-forward that the oldboy afforded him.

Anyway, the hospital visit came about
and Jay made his way to the third floor
turning left and right scanning the signs
for the right room number.
He found it pretty fast
and made his way to the oldboy’s room.
The room was sad straightaway.
The little closet with the shelves just had a ratty pair of shorts
and a holey tshirt on it.  
The bed was made up tight and clean.
It looked like no one had slept in there the night before.        
There was the oldboy asleep in the hospital room recliner-chair.
He was in his hospital gown and drawers
with ratty old sandals on his feet. His chin was tucked in between his ***** and his gut
and he was snoring loudly.
Hey, Oldboy!
ZZZZzzzz
Hey, Oldboy, ya’wake?
ZZZzzzz
Hey!!  Ya’in here!!??
MMmmhmm?!
Hey, ya okay? Why ya in’here? Whatsamatter? Ya’needsomethin’?
Oh, hiya Jay.
Thanks fer comin’round.
His leftside looks a little hangdog.
They’s tellsa me I’da has had a stroke.
Oh, that’s a ****** shame, Oldboy!  
What the hell’ya gonna do now?
Oh, I’sa don’t right know, Jay.  
I’ma sad shape,
an’ I’ma miss my dog.
Lookit, Oldboy…
I’m calling The State.
I’m telling that they cannot send you
to the house without some extra time for someone to
lookout for you.
They’ve gotta keep someone
keeping  an eyeball on you.
They can’t send you home
with nobody keeping tabs on you.

Hey, that’s a good plan.
In this life ya gotta hava pal
and that pal’s gotta lookowt for ya.
Thanks fer comin’ by, Jay…
MMMhmmmZZZzz.

The Oldboy fell asleep
and Jay talked to some nurses
asking them not to send the oldboy home
until they’d talked to The State
and gotten him some extra help
and they said that they would do that
and they asked Jay to sign a release
and they woke the oldboy up
to ask him if it was okay that they talk to Jay
and the oldboy scribbled his name
on the paper and zonked out
and the nurses talked to Jay
and Jay made ‘em promise to do the good stuff
they said they would
and then he left
and went down the elevator
to the parking lot
and lit a cigarette
and felt sad and sorry
for the oldboy.
*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

The air is incredibly thin.
I can’t breathe, and my
hands are shaking.

When I was a boy,
a playmate hit me
in the head with a
glass ashtray.

In an instant,
my father had snatched
the boy up and carried him
****** outside, suspended
by one ankle.

I’ve heard also,
stories of my great-uncles
two brothers, run out of
Saint Louis County
because they’d fought in and
been banned from every tavern
on both sides of every main drag,
of every township therein.

Maybe that’s where this
comes from.

There is a fire inside that
most days is only embers,
but stokes far too easily into
infernal inferno.

The grey mush in my skull is
jacked into some electricity
with jumper-cables made from
too many sour thoughts,
a fierce depression, and
huge piles of self-doubt.

Gladness, contentedness,
feels like fraud, like failure,
like not leaning into it sturdily
enough.
Like not staring into The Abyss hard
enough.

It feels like obscenity to
not see conflict,
to not rail against
some dark thing,
some enemy.

In doing so
is found the ability to
feel like
enough.

But,
what
is
enough?

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications; 2016

there was this one time
that my family and I were
on food-stamps because my
wife was pregnant, and on Medicaid
because I got laid off,
because I was trying
to go back to college,
so that I could get a
piece of paper
that said I was smart
even though I used
crutches to walk.

because a piece
of paper is more
believable than
your eyes or
my mouth.

and, we were starving
so I used my mouth
to convince someone
in a tie that I really had
a disability, and a need
to eat.

that person, and his tie
asked me how long I’d
been disabled, so I
told ‘em…since 1975
is that long enough?

there was this one time
that my wife was pregnant,
and on Medicaid, and I bet
we were on food-stamps too,
and the babies that were alive
in her belly died.

so, I did the only thing
I could think of to do,
I got a tattoo, because
I wanted to carry some
part of them with me
forever, and have  some
part of something that I
could show you too.


there was this one time
that I worked a job
that was stuffed and
funded by grandmas
and grandpas, by
mommas and daddies;
by people that had done
the best that they knew
how to do.
and I would go see them,
check on them, making
sure that they were safe,
warm, and away from harm.

that job is the best job I ever had,
and we’re fighting funding cuts
because people think that these
folks somehow aren’t worth it;
that they somehow are facilitating
a drug or alcohol problem, or a
******* new tattoo.

there was this one time
that I was disgusted by all
the hate-mongering, lion-killing
veteran-suicideing, poor man hating,
cop-killing, killer-copping, Jesus-weaponizing
and just wanted to be a human
surrounded by other humans
and have those other humans
care about me while I promised
to care about them.

there was this one time.
and, it was a long ****
time ago.
*

©P&ZPublications; 2015
-JBClaywell

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.

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

Today, I went to the donut place that has had a couple of copies of my book for sale. They’re down one copy. That’s an interesting story and has some pretty interesting follow-up involved. The follow-up took place this morning. It involves a conversation with the person whom had purchased one of the aforementioned copies of ‘Gray Spaces”.  I’ll do my best to detail it here:

Ken, one of the oldboys at the donut place has purchased one of the copies of my book that Matt, the owner of the shop, has placed in there. He and I were talking over donuts and coffee one morning. Ken’s a bit of an opinionated loudmouth and gets on people’s nerves now and then. Sometimes such that people tell him where to go or choosing the higher ground, ignore him and treat him as more of an annoyance than anything else.
But, I like him.  He’s a former East-Coaster, specifically an old-time Boston guy. He sounds great. He’s a nay-ba-hood guy who just might have ‘pahked his cah in Hahvahd Yahd’ once or twice.
Anyway, he asked me what I did for work and I told him that I was a social worker until recently and that I was also a writer. He made some smart-assed remark about how I couldn’t possibly be a real writer as I had not published a book. I asked him how he knew I hadn't. His response was typical. He suggested that I looked like the type of guy who probably wouldn't be able to publish a book.  So, I showed him a copy of “Gray Spaces” making sure that he took note of the author’s photo on the back. It was an interesting thing, because as soon as Ken was convinced that I had actually written the book, he laid out a ten-spot. I handed him the book. That was the cover price. I didn’t realize that Donut Matt had wanted to charge a bit more to cover his shipping cost. Matt got a little cooked on the deal but was cool overall.
Ken had his book, Matt had ten bucks, I had sold a book. Life was looking pretty alright right then.

A few days later, I’m back in the shop. Ken comes in and he sits down at my table. He’s usually one to sit at the table with the other oldboys but sometimes Ken’s mouth gets him into trouble and he winds up being mildly and quietly ostracized by the other fellows in that they ignore him as their conversation marches ever onward.  

Ken sits with me. We, he and I are in a corner booth. I have coffee and a plate full of small cake donuts. Ken pours his own coffee, orders a cinnamon roll, pays and sits down. Now, I know that Ken has a good heart but he’s a nay-ba-hood guy. He grew up playing the dozens, he’s East Coast. He’s a pain in the ***, I like him, so he ain’t gonna bother me none. Plus, I’m curious…  I ask:

So, did you like the book?
No.
No?
That’s right, no.   But, I can’t seem to put it down.
Really?
Yeah, really.
Why not?
I don’t know. It keeps making me stop and think. And, it turns out that the stories or whatever you call ‘em; they make me see you in a different light.
Yeah? How’s that?
Well, you’re mad about some stuff.
Yeah, sometimes. But, I also like a lot of stuff. I see the good stuff where someone else might see garbage.
Yeah, I can see where that’s true.
So, is there any particular piece of writing that you did like or that made you think or feel a certain way?
No. But, there are those stories in there that made me feel bad that I give you such a hard time about opening the door and razz you about walking funny and all. I promise you, I’ll never do that again.

(Ken has a reputation for razzing folks in that shop. He’s not too nice about it sometimes either. But, there was a time that he slipped and fell on the ice last winter. He broke his hip pretty good and was laid up until March of this year. He recounted the story of his fall and subsequent recovery and said that now he has to move even more slowly and deliberately than he did before the accident. He’s 85 years old and has just now developed a sense of empathy regarding mobility concerns.)

We continued our conversation:

I like it when you give me the business. It gives me an excuse to give it right back to you.
Yeah?
Yeah. You don’t bother me. Why don’t you use some of this newly discovered empathy and be a bit nicer to the staff here?
Maybe I will.

We finished our respective breakfasts and I got up to go next door to The Goodwill Store. I wanted to look at books that I might give to some of my friends for Christmas.
Ken watched me go. He got up from our table and moved to join the other fellas.
As I walked past the window he rapped on it. When I looked in his direction he flipped me the bird.
How poetic.
*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2019

Is it strange,
do you think,
that today has been
so terrible
and I still have
a smile on
my face?

Believe me,
even I think
it strange
considering
that the blueboy
was content
to submit falsehoods
in his effort to
fill this city’s
coffers with
my children’s
Christmas presents
before they’ve even
been thought of

Even I think it odd
that despite a myriad
of disasters, including
a coffee-****
that moistened
the seat of my
trousers and sent
me scurrying
for the john,
and subsequently
the exit,
I’m still able to
grin.

Despite my chagrins,
in light of a day
filled with folly
bordering on
misery,

the silvery sliver
of hope shows
through.
I’m standing at that crossroad
waiting for The Devil to appear,
and I can tell that Ol’ Scratch
is close, close enough
that I can feel his gaze
inside this, a Wednesday,
a “one of those days”.

When the oldest kid
has puked his bed,
and I’ve got one more
mess to clean up
besides the one in my
drawers, but my shine
won’t dull, no matter
the ache in my skull.

‘Cause when Pitch is asking me:
“Boy, what’chu gonna do? I’ve been
havin’ a fine time messin’ wit’chu!”

I’ll say to Ol’ Pitch, that
sonofabitch…

“My fine, forked-tongued, fiend,
you can’t have no more of me,
for I’m hollerin’ down old dogs, you see?

Them dogs’ll run and hide,
I’ve got a fine crew by my side
into Thursday we will ride
and leave this ******’ day behind!”

This is why I still smile,
because in just a little while
I get to have my rest
My lover’s head upon my
chest, my children in their nests.

Of tomorrow I’ll dream deep
while in the dark, I sleep
pondering possibilities,
probabilities, and simply
other reasons to…

smile.

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

Do not forget  
that this is all there is.

This moment in time,  

these years,
this spectacle,  
this speculation,  
and this separation  
is all that you get.  

This life is leaving you.  

Exiting with every single exhalation  
regardless of your intellect,  
ignorance,  
or deliverance.  

First-world,  
third-world,  
shine or *******,  
it doesn't matter.  

The planet will continue  
to spin long after  
you're gone;  

Create,
craft,
conquer.

The entirety
of The Universe
resides
in
you.

It is in these medium-sized hours,
on these winter mornings that I find
the most peace.

It is while standing at the end
of my driveway that I can feel
my connection to everything.

The soles of my boots do not impede
or interfere with my energy’s ability
to connect, through miles of iron,
directly with this planet’s core.

The stillness is not still,
despite my own.

There are ignitions and other beginnings;
small voices protesting the final bus ride
to school; the holiday pending.

Despite this minor background noise,
this unadorned stillness connects myself
to something larger and more substantial
than I can speak, write, or even understand.

This conduit is in all things, in all people,
and is the unspoken, unwritten definition of
what it actually means to be awake, alive, and
alert to...what?

Is it God?
Is it my sense of self?
Is it you?
All of you?
All of humanity?
Is it my sons?
My daughter?
My beloved?

Yes.

*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications