Today we celebrate your day,
The truth in all the things you say,
That smile that shows the best of you,
The hope that ever sees you through,

Today we think of all you've done,
The journey that you have begun,
This joy and love you bring us all.
The faith that keeps you standing tall,

Today we join our hands and pray,
The Lord to bless you in his way,
With gifts no mortal man could find,
For one so treasured by her kind.

i have said,
goodbye to you
a thousand times, plus more
in both, small moments
and big.
when i turn,
to see your face
and then, remember you are no longer
so with smile, and a tear,
i  once again,
bid you goodbye.

it is now nigh,
on three years,
i have been saying
farewell.
all that time,
desperately missing you.
wishing i was,
saying,
hello, instead.


but the sad truth is,

dead is dead.

au revoir, dearheart

yet again.

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

Dearheart, where have you gone?
Where is the girl who rode the bus with me all those years ago?

Tears don't stain a screen the way they do paper,
but even If I wrote this with a pen I'd have nowhere to send it.

I'm doing everything I can to forget you honey, but I know that I'll never be able to. How could I, when you own so much of my heart?

You've left pieces of yourself behind;
strands of hair, a pair of shorts, a shirt, your smell upon my pillow.

Tell me now, memory of my love, how now shall I continue without regret at what ought to have been?

How may I lay next to another,
and not think of you in your need?
To the more prosaic, how can I taste another woman without wondering what other fire may consume her after all the terrible things you've taught me about needs?

You have died to me, and I mourn your passing. And a part of me...perhaps the best part, died with you.

you made me feel
like i was hard to love
and that’s something i
can’t find it in me
to forgive you for

after all, what good
am i to you
if there’s no ***?

seems like the answer
to that is a naive and
generous $400 and that
hoodie you stole from me

i told myself that if you
were happy, that was
enough for me,
for 5 ******* months

and what do i have to
show for it?

a last dinner together
that you were 40 minutes
late for, that i ate alone,
which is ironically the best
meal i’d ever had with you

and i think of you
years from now
doing to another partner
what you did to me

and in the midst of this
anger and hurt, i pity you

because, dearheart
when it comes to lasting love,
selflessness, reciprocity,
and symbiosis

your cup doesn’t
runneth over

it just runs out

there is a choice to be made here
a crossroads, if you will
and i very much do,
thank you

i can either keep beating
the dead horse of what
you did to me

or, what,
forget you?

like how you made me feel
when we first met and the cliche of
this boy is gonna break my heart
so i better break it first
ran through my head

isn’t it funny,
dearheart,
the lies we tell ourselves?

but you lied to me, too
in more ways than one, and
the coercive and manipulative man
i spent five (miserable) months with
was not the kind artist i
really could have fallen in
love with

i don’t care what happened
to that version of you anymore
because melancholy and remembering
do me no good

you taught me a lesson
unintentional though it may have been,
that flowery words and pretty poems
don’t mean anything without actions
to back them up

you knew just the right way
to break down my walls
to make me feel safe and loved
and i won’t forgive you for that

but i will forgive you
for enough
to forget