Continuing to live - that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries -
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise -
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.

And what's the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,

On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.

I
 
Fold upon fold
your origami letters
map  thoughts,
images and moments
of three days,
two nights.
 
Now to unfold
the creased trajectories,
intersecting space,
following time:
bird-like flightpaths
on the radar screen.
 
Each coloured sheet,
placed on this desk,
becomes a tessellated diary,
and grows beneath the hand.
So generous a gift.
So readily received.

II
 
Ah, that's your secret:
the power of the list;
 this, then this,
 then freedom follows,
 knowing the necessaries
 dusted and done.

  Peaceful now,
  and watching the clouds
  cross the skylight,
  Bach decorates your soul
  with his meditations
  on the possibility of everything.

  How did you guess
  I love the detail of life-
  lived, up to the hilt:
  the embellishment of dreams
  pulled from the ether,
  sound and sense in tow.
 
III
 
I travelled North
in the seat opposite.
You didn’t notice me
as you gazed
through your reflection,
sighting the past.

When you look at me
you rarely blink or
glance away (as people do).
Poor nature,
She hasn’t a chance, has she?
Never a mote missed.

As my passenger
I shall care for your silence;
to let you loose on
unbidden thoughts
as they rise above
the scrolling hills.

left, sinistral, left sided, left out,
left behind,
gastropod sea shells,
coiling counterclockwise,
when viewed from the apex

when that all alone,
left-out feeling pervades,
to the party uninvited,
for the team, unchosen,
stand out for not standing in,
invisible moat surrounds and suppresses,
life's outward bound sounds,
vision best,
when only looking inward,
remember this too well..

this world, this work,
was created by an
ambidextrous soulbeing
his soul,
favoring neither right or left,
favoring doing right,
and no one
left behind

cognizant that both sides now
are necessaries
for human and seashell existence

proof be that
the creator,
his perfection, at the very least,
in his design motifs,
unquestioned,
made us all
sinistral shells

and sinistral poets


those apex corkscrewing left poets,
the leaven of human fermentation,
you and your sinistral tidbits
are the influencing spice
of an average world,
keeping the world tilting
on its proper axis

make us and
our daily bread rise,
sinistral yeast,
vive la difference,  
you are
the best of us

Writing is a waiting game
May not come soon fame
One's hope time may tame
Let exist will-power flame

Normally a writer is poor
In poverty he will shiver
Having ever worry-fever
Goods, a writer will deliver

He will have an empty purse
This is a general curse
He will have none to nurse
Still, he will love the Universe

His life will have only miseries
With full of very sad stories
He knows not the joy of victories
He will lack basic necessaries

He will be a firm optimist
And in love a specialist
He will never show his fist
He is first in God's dear-list

What he has, he will donate
Is he not truly great?
He will challenge fate
Driving it out of gate

He will have a helping tendency
He will assist in an emergency
To benefit all, he will show urgency
He will support during a contingency

A poet is always child-like
No one he will dislike
His words will never spike
He and God are almost alike

A poet will never ridicule
Love is his one and only rule
He will misuse not poetic tool
Positive forces he will pool

Anger is to him totally strange
Peace only he will exchange
Happiness he will surely arrange
Equal to Divine is his holy range

A poet is a lovely master
Who will save from disaster
He can easily tame a monster
His poem is a true-booster

A poet is never a power-monger
To him will never come anger
He will make the World stronger
Let his glory linger longer.

M V VENKATARAMAN

Joyous is a blue grocery bag
Swing in the grasp of of happy young
Boy content with his provisions.
Joyous is a blue grocery bag
Holding all the necessaries for
An expectant mother.
Joyous is a blue grocery bag.

for her.

<>

“you will laugh with surprise, as the anointing oil of relief
crowns your head, slicking down to caving cavities,
river running in crevices, that feed the buried places, replenishing the almost forgotten secret of letting go”^

                                                         ~

the mind caches certain skills, once learned, never to return,
but tucked away, just in case, maybe, in the nightstand junk drawer of: “don’t need it now but, ****, you never know”

kept around in the lost and hopefully, not to be searched for & found,
a skill set painfully gained, a muscle memory, flabby from no use
but quick taut tightly, snapping back when ****, here we go again

I loved you in ways theoretical impossible till you enabled the possible

lost you for no good reason, in an act history labels beyond belief,
refuses to record, lest by memorializing it became/becomes re-realized,
this intolerable, would be past the ****** eroding barrier reef

the difference between junk and treasures is in which drawer placed,
the steps to letting go once learned, cannot be forgot, the cost,
way way too high, kept around, in a damnable place beyond grief

not to close, handy, findable but easily, avoided, but strange, when
living in the epicenter of the virus, you do some cataloguing, ridiculous,
this touchy-feely escapade, nothing ****-it to be gained, all-too-brief

head shake, took a pandemic to make you go back, rustling among
the ancient, old hand-writ poems, another keepsake kept for reasons
known and unknown, to be **** sure you once owned it, survival skills

In the Pandemic Days of Almost,
somethings will die, some go forgotten,
but the almost-forgetting-skill will survive,
a necessity of the how-to’s:

how to grieve,
how to believe,
how to leave
but live on,
hoarding
all the **** necessaries
ready to be retrieved


<>
Tuesday Mars 24 Twenty Twenty noon

In the Epicenter, New York City

In this bluest blue
of the first morning venture
I can hear a helicopter
or a C-130 from the airbase nearby.
Yet, despite my squinting, I cannot see it.

I avert my gaze from the sky,
moving it to my front lawn
just in time to invade the dog’s privacy
as she performs her morning necessaries.

The skyward sounds intensify,
I attempt to find their source once more.
Still unable to locate said airship,
allowing my eyes to follow instructions given by my ears,
I spy a hawk riding the thermals,
perhaps looking for a rabbit to invite over for breakfast.

Able to still hear the warbird or rescue chopper,
my imagination stirs these sounds,
the vision of that sleek, hunting raptor.

How tiny his goggles, his helmet.

How deftly the hawk fires rockets from under his wings
while strafing the rabbit village with his machine guns.
They scatter
as the burrows that nested them warmly, safely in the autumn are destroyed
in flying debris and fireball.

Breakfast is served,
our thunderhawk dives to inspect the results
of his latest scrambling mission.

The dog and I weep softly as Taps plays for fallen lapin infantry.

Our own breakfast is griddling,
we turn our backs to this  morning’s madness.

The omelettes are ready,
the bread,
baked,
pulled from the oven,
the coffee is hot.  

Like rabbits we retreat
to safer quarters.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2019

Warning! This poem is too long for certain elderly gentlemen.

A blue haze morn, pleasant in the transition
from the ides of sensual summer to the
broken, busted curled dead leaves that now
decorate the half & half scorched, mottled lawns,
that soon enough will fall to full-on browning!

All this my eyes see when first I wake, only
the calm morn waters unchanged, thank god,
for the mind is fermented, the brain full on,
three, count ‘em, three born baby poems, all
simultaneous being birthed, triplets from one
****** working overtime, yet, only paid the hourly wage!

The mind interweaves the three, and yet subdivides,
only I, the landlord of the brain, failingly and flailing
struggle to keep track of these wild tenants, each:
a curvature, a tangent, a sibling and a stranger to
each other, sharing  a common single parentage!

Poem #1

Poem #1, a bright child, yet, poorest in vocabulary, more humming
than recites, but below its tuneful melody one just perceives, a refrain
born in the refracted sun rays that first opened our  eyes to this day, in
great gratitude, a morning prayer, a mourning poem, bidding adieu to the great  nighttime where the conception and inception inseminated within the ****** of the brain, and welcoming the warmth of day that cracks our body’s outer egg shell with praises of hallelujah that this one word poem gives so easy, in glory!

Poem #2

The toes wriggle, the eyes rapid-blink, the mouth yawns revealing
a still sleeping tongue, the stomach rumbles a basso tune reminding
everyone that their continuous sustenance comes from it alone, no
matter what those other body part snobs claim! An Uproar ensues
(bien sûr!), everyone roused, slumber a thing of the past, a cacophony
of disharmonious noises, no Greek chorus this, purely 100% American,
each party convinced of its self-worth, its own vitality, a ball park of
loutish fans, hawking vendors, an amalgamation of colorations, a
tapestry of humanity skin colors, though in a single voice upon this all
agree and shout “**** the Umpire!”

Then the bladder whispers “uh,hey people,” and all grow silent knowing
who’s the boss, and the man, stumbles from bed, wondering silently what
the heck that huuge racket was all about and how come no one else heard it?

Poem #3

A subcommittee of the senses convene a meeting and on the agenda, in
no particular order are the following, items of varying importance, but
needing speedy resolution:

The always very touchy skin asks: what shall we wear
today, it is warm outside and overly cold inside, should
we go short or long, stay in our overnight dressage, or
get a fresh accoutrements (clean Tee and sweatpants)
just to celebrate having made successful passage to day?

The aural receptors (who always insist on being addressed
in the plural), state that can wait! first let’s us determine what
music we shall receive, that must match the nature outside
and the nature within?  A Joshua Bell violin concerto, or some
retro greatest hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s?  Let’s vote..

The Gallic nasal passages (Les Passages, as they snobbishly prefer) sniff
in derisive decision, non! to yesterday’s clothes, a shower and a shampoo
dear skin, a nasal necessity, let’s try to remember to use deodorant today
please, and no more feral cereal and milk, something more fragrant s’il vous plait!

The Buds, as the tasting cells preferred to be called, said indeed,
some fresh cafe au lait in a proper bowl, to accompany les croissants frais, une baguette au beurre, and do not forget the red crisscross jar of Bonne Maman (Orange Marmalade/Confiture d'Orange)

The Eyes, waited and listened, and then proclaimed, all well and good,
but realize that after all this, we are the instructor, the instrument panel
without which you cannot operate in concert, let us see what we can see,
in the closet, in the kitchen, read the playlists, prepare the necessaries
for bathing, check the thermometers and then we will decide!

Then, the Mighty Brain, said “folks, we’ve been busy all night and tho
first light has already penetrated, we are going back to bed, as we are exhausted by all this noise herein encapsulated!