Late night car rides,
Empty pints of *****,
A one-night ecstacy,
With a heartbreak dawn:

She shows her shallows,
As if they're great depths;
A cry of sorrow? Honey,
You ain't seen nothing yet.

She's not an open book,
She's just a bookmark type of personality.
Stuck between the pages of something more interesting,
Like a catalog or a Cosmo magazine.

Oh, she's always just caught between someone's pages,
With bits and pieces of their's stories rubbing off on her,
But them words don't look the same tattooed on her, oh no.

So stop pretending you're the deepest sea,
Your pretentious crap never fooled me.

"I knew this girl once,
she had long hair, so long it whispered tiny kisses along her hips and waist
she had the oddest bluest eyes i'd ever seen, the color of the sky right before it gets completely dark
her thick, long eyelashes framed those eyes, and freckles formed constellations across her cheeks
i could almost draw the big dipper and Orion's belt on her milky white face.
She didn't know i existed but i admired her from afar. I could tell she was educated- She always had some form of poetry in her hand. But of all the things i could have noticed about her i noticed her bookmarks. She would lose them all the time, i would see her chasing after the scraps of paper as they flew through the wind down the street. She'd stick anything in between those pages, wrappers of all sorts, leaves, pennies, shoelaces, once i even saw a page ripped from a different book. It became my favorite game to guess what the next bookmark would be.  After awhile she stopped chasing the various bookmarks across the city and she cut all that long hair off, then awhile after that she started using unoriginal, uninspired plain old bookmarks.Then even awhile that she stopped bringing books altogether, until one day she didn't show up. Nobody knew that beautiful, mysterious, bookmark making girl was locked up inside her own mind. Nobody knew she hated her long hair and her freckles and even those baby blues. Nobody knew that she couldn't stand to live in her skin anymore so much that she swallowed a couple pills one night to ease away the pain. Even worse was she didn't know i watched her for so long and thought she was the most interesting human being i'd ever encountered. That girl committed suicide because she hated herself learn from her mistake, my mistake, everyone who ever noticed her bookmarks mistake, and don't do this, don't off yourself with a .45 before you've even had a chance to live" he's desperate now  
"please please you don't have to do this" he sputters

I answer simply " I never was much of a bookmark girl, i always dog-eared my pages"

*bang

This is a bookmark from your life
a bookmark in mine
a piece of paper
briefly stopping time
bringing our together our stories
or else maybe a thorn
burying itself
within my heart
' Felicity', your name
means joy but can you bring me any
did you even know
he would give it to me
the glitter, single yellow feather
carefree yet placed calculatedly
upon the red background
red as your distant country's flag
I forget how old you must be now
six, I presume
you've not yet started to ask
about his life yet prior to you, your sister
& your mother
& why should you
my moon faced stranger
all fortune cookies & rice,
straddling two worlds
from birth, a similarity
that in any other life
would make me want to call you
' sister' & forgive everything
Your birth, he
did not deserve, not being a loving
man, as you will find out
once you've grown
out of being a toy
& start to rearrange
the furniture of boundaries
if you should ever find out
about us, my mother & me
& what he did
that will be the time to see
if your heart's worth loving
if so, just call me
I'm leaving you my number
in my mind

935

This is what it says
on the front
and
on the back
of
my newest
bookmark.

On one side
the number is green,
the other side
shows a
red number.

It used to hang
from the rearview
mirror.

My car was in the shop.

The problem was minor,
but set me back by $65
nonetheless.

So,
I paid $65
for bookmark
#935.

The cashier swiped
my card and didn’t
look me in the eye.

I swiped
my new bookmark
and felt just a
microscopic
bit better
about
the
money.

Not
really
though.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019

The mind is like an unapart book with a bookmark. Words surround where you are; thoughts. They are written on your hands. You feel them. They are inside two sleeves. All of them. The book is you. The walls surrounding within hear the words and their ears respond in ink. The walls are thin paper that never are as blank as slight movement from the wind, only always catching stick figures, shot like fingers. All of you moves and touches paper all around you. You are weighted down in ink. The present moment between dreams practicing in that mind. That mind alive and thinner than one stroke, briefer than lines from the fast belly curves of your heart. Moving.

The key to friendship is my bookmark
I am scared to loose it
Cause if I do I may never know where I am
This book is my life
Without this bookmark I have no past,no present and no future

My friends I did not want to be,
With you, I needed, here with me.

The words I said, misunderstood,
I'd take them back, I wish I could.

We can't get up without a fall,
Maybe we will, by autumn call.

Bookmark in place, I bid ado.
With these last three words, I love you.

I don’t like having to put in the effort on things that leave an extra page missing
I can’t trust it
You’re every little thread I’ve tiptoed around
Making sure I don’t move on unchartered space too quickly  
I felt like you didn’t want that too
With your experience and all
Your chapters have started
There have been important people
Leaving fly leafs
Or bookmarks
Waiting to be scanned through blankly
Or
Revisited
I don’t know who was important enough
And I’m too afraid to ask
As to who
That little thread head was
So I made a subtle investigation
I’ve wandered around some parts of your book to merit
Audible versions of this girl whose book
So well covered
In dusted promises and doodles
There was an innocence left of her
That was so kept
She needed to hold my hand
To lift her pages so slightly
“Careful”
She whispers a great deal
These past few months
She’s trusted me with
The choreographed pressure of how
To feather the leaves of her past
On good days she’d read back ours
I’ve quoted enough lines and characters and memories
To entertain her of how it once was
The threads vibrate and echo
Reiterated but answers back the same
The untangled locks at least
I’ve seen fly leafs
Those were left with no closure
“We kind of just stopped talking” or “can we not mention her”
I’ve seen bookmarks
Of relatives and family and friends
And lovers
The bookmark had thread hair that tangled up so much that it left an aching worry in my heart
She was a lover
A lover with a bookmark
The bookmark who echoed a little too differently and brushed my skin too often when I’d lift a page
A little too close to the chapter on which she was written about
I don’t have quotes on her
But I have their stories
Stories have become our currency
The currency that equaled trust
The same currency that taught me how she was
And how to be
The currency that mattered
I’ve invested on these stories and have managed the skill of being gentle
I was the chapter that started after the messed up spool of the thread head lover
I guess that’s why it brushes in so close to me
I’m worried that I’ll end up tripping over thread, hold a page too tight
That I’ll rip down my own pages
And mess up perfectly fonted words
Forcing you to
Close down a chapter of me with a torn out page
You were too sentimental to throw away
And just be left as not even
A bookmark
But rather a poor excuse for a fly leaf that
You’d rather not talk about.

Weeks gone by                                          
And I still miss you                                  
Every day                                                  
           ­                                                       
I feel so empty
My heart aches
& the tears won't
Stop flowing down

You knew the little things about me            
& when we talked                                    
We always seem to                                  
Pick up where we left off                          

I don't know if I could ever
Close the book
& leave it on a shelve
As it ages

So much memories                  
& yet I can't no longer            
Write in it because                  
Things changed and                
Your day came quick

The page where we'd
Left off will
Forever be on hold
& the bookmark remains

Her hand is a bookmark in my heart,
So many smoothed pages ago.

you're the book
i read once and never again
i didn't want it to end
rushed through it too fast
the pages are so clean
no memories, no touches
i hope when you read it
you take your time
to smudge the paper
and fold the corners
because you forgot a bookmark

and just like a book
i would give anything
to be able to read him
for the first time
all over again

There it lay forgotten,
in the shelf gathering dust -
A chapter that had once been opened,
and halfway through shut.

Maybe some day,
in the future near or far
Another may wipe the cover
and with love pick it up

They might turn the pages,
might even read to the end
So don't expect your bookmark
to stay on the same page.

Pressed flowers
Forgotten in the pages
Of the that book
Oh what was it called
But anyway,
That book is sitting
In my father's bookshelf
Somewhere between
A history of the civil war
And an encyclopedia from 1949
It is lost in the depths
Of my mother's bookshelf
There the book with the pressed flowers
Covered in dust and memories
Waits for me to recapture the lost moments
Collecting and absorbing the words
And ideas trapped within the binding
Lost flowers, pressed in time
Lost in the pages of my childhood
Bookmarked, forever.

I kept the pages of your heart
Bookmarked
Knowing that one day I’d lose my place
In them
And that you might
Open that book again, and show me where I fit

do you know what it's like to have a pit in your heart? i can feel it right now i can hear gymnopiede playing in the back ground filling me with a sanity but not enough remember what Rupi said " it was when i stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself i found there are no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole" but instead i fall in love w the little things that i mold into big things to make myself feel important. when people see that i'm stressed and deprived of sleep and love i feel significant to their daily lives.
i want to be the rose in the garden that everyone wants to tend so they can revive the gold medal for the best green thumb. i want to be the bookmark of every bibliophile on the planet but little do they know that rose wants to die that's rose has thorns inside poking her every hope. rose hopes for love but not just any love. rose hopes that a dandelion will come who will be intelligent enough to pull the thorns out and so beautiful she will gasp for another breath just to see their petals. on weekends rose absorbs enough sunlight to get up for work. she tends to the clothing at the retail stop at the local mall and as she folds the endless piles of destroyed denim she admires the many flowers that tend to one another.she can smell the scent of the flickering candles upstairs and she makes her way up to the candle shop on her break she never sets foot inside, she worries the flicker of the flame will catch her petals. rose doesn't want to be alone when it happens she wants a dandelion to come and save her from the flame she wants dandelion to roar as loud as he can and blow the flame out. and be there ready to sweep rose off her stem. rose wants everyone to be happy she try's her hardest to make sure her garden has enough light and water and that everyone's petals aren't frowning. rose has tried too hard she ends up being the loneliness one her garden. she returns to her shop after break she goes back to folding the same endless pile of denim and she admires the buttercup walking with the california poppy looking at the lights hanging from the ceiling. the dutch iris and the crocus intertwining their petals. honesty and honeysuckle are pursing the petals together under the mistletoe. rose gathers her tools and makes her way to her wheel barrow parked by the restrauants she passes the children frolicking in the lot and she catches the heart beat of excitement of the little girl who's eyes are glued to the ipad that is playing alice and wonderland and rose can hear the garden scene and she cringes and feels like she's been swallowed by a world who doesn't know what passion is. rose wonders where the little girls mother is and she catches her mother sitting on the lap of the magnolia and she longs to be a mother but a mother who watches alice in wonderland with her child and frolics with her kids in the parking lot but pays attention to the cars coming just in case her motherly instincts have to kick in.
rose returns to her garden and flips thru the channels hoping to find a romance movie on. rose does this to her self. she absorbs her self into all the love she can get because deep downside she fears she will never find her dandelion. rose finds her self drowning in an ocean of tears. she crys out to the garden are my petals not light enough? is my stem to thick?. rose wants to dig herself a grave and burry herself there with the fake petals of a dandelion so that one day when the walkers in the cemetery hear the clanking of her stem crying out for love they will dig her up and see how much she coveted the love of a dandelion and they will find the real petals and place them next to her.  rose will tear honey because that's the sweetest thing she knows she will wipe her tears and lick the honey off of her petals. rose doesn't want to hide in her sunken city of petals she wants to tell you who she is. hello i am rose.
i've been trying to get rid of the file cabinets in my brain that i have been organized alphabetically. A- aster i love you and i promise your prayers for a new kidney will be granted. B- bleeding heart i want you to know i will drive you in wheel barrow to the hospital so you
can be sewed up. C- carnation please don't fret the world loves you and im so sorry you have a price tag that will eventually be ripped off when the children at the elementary school down the street buy you on february 14th just know that you're so much more to me than a valentine's day gift. D- daffodil you're too precious to feel unwanted your lover will come soon.i can hear the crys of them but please go back to the bed and sleep. i'm able to open my pedals up and hear the weeping of a dandelion "thank you for being there for them and just know i've been hear all along, rose. you're tired i can tell by the wrinkles of your palms please promise me rose that you will baptize yourself into the ocean of love that you keep drowning in. " rose pulls the dead roots that are pinning her down in her grave and gasps for another breath to see dandelion before the roots come back from under and tug her back down she is able to string her broken english together and whisper " dandelion i already have"

I spent my nights reading books in our greatest libraries
Searching for what it is I am still clinging on to,
Then after the final vowel I realised
The one thing I miss about you, is you.

You're a flower pressed tightly
between the pages of my heart

I want to take a walk in the wintertime
So my heart can identify its external condition

Americana is not Greyhound.

People come and go like life,
Attached to the waiting random.

The road feels longer,
Relief of excretion and sanitation,
Home spreads everywhere.

Sitting strangers are stories,
Riding by unknown sceneries,
Thinking about their hometown,
Wondering if they will reach their destination on time.

Earphone music connects memories to a person so vividly,
It feels like a new chapter in my life,
Bookmark the important ones with parts of me,
It feels like I’m departing,
From something small to somewhere big.

It’s
already
an adventure
once     the      first
step          is         made
with                               you.

day through night, i face the same fate
my flesh inches closer to its expiry date.

a hell:
my mind is at its limit,
and my body; no longer mine.

each minute goes by, i pray to gods,
every holy name, those i've never heard of,
pray, pray with all my might -
choose a different girl to feast on tonight.

my face was stolen from a world of debris
to support a family i'll never again see
i sold myself, let me be bought,
for just two coins, a price of naught.

a customer.
i tell myself,
don't open your eyes,
don't move a muscle.

hands on my thighs - deja vu
my body to her is just revenue.

memories of every night still live within my body - a bookmark telling me i'll never be my own. a constant image of flesh flickers behind my eyelids every time i close my eyes.

give me my body back.

Write me your vows on paperflesh
Pen me your desires in lovers blood
Slip it in an envelope, seal it with a kiss
And I shall trace it, with the same pen
dripping still with lover's blood.

Curve your spine over my desk
And spread yourself open as a book
Desire lines penned upon your chest
Heartstrings bared, across open pages
covered with lover's blood.

Bookmark the chapter of desire
Close the cover in the dark
And retrieve my pen, an empty needle
from ****** page fold.
No longer dripping with lover's blood.

flipping through pages of his mind,
caressing unspoken quotes; I whisper
slang of lust in his ear, ******* his big
ego to the bottom of his page, while his
drool trickles between breast; uttering
syllable after syllable as I re-write his script.

his hardness speaks fluently, inking
parchment with liquid tipped quill, oh! the
thrill as I bend his will, to fluidly flow; dipping
in inkwell of thoughts, penning desires and
want in liquid diatribe of lustful pleasures; like
a moth to flame flickering, as I lick verbs in
hunger to peruse his re-written script;
gripping sheeted pages to uncover his
beguilement; drinking in acknowledgment
of his golden chalice.

I want to decipher his member in autographed
curlicues of calligraphic swirls, teasing and
taunting as he watches, awe-struck; as tongue
etches each throbbing vein in ebonized charcoal,
sketched upon pages of wanton verses making
him scream with passion in prose; on bended
knee tasting my rose, penning his moans in
quotes against throat.

in heat of our passion, pages and scripts are
flipped allowing him to drip ink upon lips as I
whisper softly to his mind; want of him to grind
his neb of ache within my archive, articulating
history of hunger; as limbs mime each cursive
letter, insinuating one vowel at a time; licked
against silken parchment in tender stroked
consonant utterances; shuddering inside  
walls as nouns clench and moans escape
in adjectives shattering mind as wet tendrils
slide down firmness, fore, only she can do this
to me; making me flip volumes of pages while
inside wetness she drips ink all over in
chaptered stages.

each chapter I lick her spine; cornering her
in my mind as a sensual adversary; claiming
her as I untie her collection of copious sighs,
my mind tries to deny copyrights to her library;
as I place her upon my shelf, while against the
wall; ravishing her like the wild section of animal
kingdom, lusting while I watch her body fall
prey to breathless hunger, devouring
and savoring her bookmark; paying full
attention to her glossary of delectability,
that melts upon tongued bilingual text;
her nectar leaves its imprint upon
our handbook of worded aphrodisiacs.

cherishing our artistic volumes in ardency as
we're ready to publish our first draft, but not
before I slide her lubricious cover upon my
shaft; we begin to lay strokes of signatures
against our first editioned copies belonging
soley to us, as we scream in accented jargon
every second I tease; easing in and out,
shouting out in voweled ecstasy; gliding
thickness, gently against taut bookmark.

turning each page with deep thrusts, into her
inkwell; as I swell with friction, speaking in
fluent diction, of addiction to her sweetness;
dripping, as I'm slipping in tomes; thinking
about how she begged me to re-write our script,
spilling ink in delirious closure, in *******
exposure while losing our artistic composure;
writing manuscripts as ink spills upon volumes
of pages in disclosure.

For the readers
Nerds, geeks, book lovers
Wizards, Hobbits, and Tributes,
believing in unseeable lands.
Minds grow restless to travel
through the fluttering pages
of these paper portals,
Bookmark today and visit
another version of reality.
Brave enough to love
people they can’t see.
People they will never meet
People who would understand them
The way no one else does
Smart enough to know
this world isn't worth staying
Dystopian lands often favorable
To our own growing demise
Wholeheartedly believing
in the fictional and loving the unreal.
Attempts to turn the nonfiction fiction
To self hypnotize away today's chaos
You must have one hell of a heart
to seek refuge
in another's imagination,
and be able come back
to reality when your done
and try to to love this world.

Anxiety is a chartreuse bookmark
pressed between the pages of life
prominently protruding around the edges
yellow and green
sickly caught between past and future
beginning and end
But when the story resumes
the bookmark is cast away
forgotten as action ensues

when she says she is empty,
she is not asking to be filled.
stretch her thin and you will see
gold
peeking through her worn body.
stretch her thin and you feel her
fire
burning what you hold.
do not hold her.
when she says she is numb,
she is not asking to feel something.
do not wait out her novocaine
mood
drooling down her chin.
do not wait out her novocaine
high
she is elated.
do not bring her down.
she is a bookmark holding someone else's place:
do not move her.
someone left her,
waiting,
she does not know the other side:
that does not mean you show her.
someday she will be fire.
she will dry all that she has soaked with her
ravine heart.
you will follow her black markings to something
gold
she will be followed.
do not be surprised when she does not moan,
she will not moan,
she does not feel.
she is still ice.
when she says she is ice
do not try to melt her.
she will be fire.

I wrote titles on strips of paper,
Books that I planned on reading,
On my shelf that contained one empty shelve,
I rolled them into *****.
And threw them into the cup,
Shaking up the titles,
I get a Mo Yan.
Then I get a Charles Dickens,
The paper ***** get reshuffled again.
I pick again, it’s Mo Yan.
The third time, it’s Mo Yan
READ ME, HE YELLS.
His short stories were read,
a few months ago.
Chinese folktale like stories,
With satire of Modern China.
But none of his novels,
were touched.
In one of them,
The bookmark stops at 300.

for AR and Maria, oh heck,
for The Crew

A dog ear is a phrase that refers to the folded down corner of a book page, a dog ear can serve as a bookmark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_ears


~~~~~~
we fold a page corner down,
here we pause in this poetry book,
for now, a marker of incompletion,
or not

a passage, a phrase,
whole stands on its own,
but today crew,
slated for an exit,
a return-to-someday,
but aside, aside, discarded till...

all on that day
run to the mountain,
the mountain wont hide you
run to the sea,
the sea will not have you
and run to your grave,
your grave will not hold you
all on that day

so I, sinnerman,
injured my book,
I hurt that page
disgraced, act of disgraceful,
but

I am injured
and don't have no cares

but come the day of
return
the day I hope to must to believe in,
twice as much,
all on that day,
when the sea,
the mountains,
and the risen dead,
have me back,
to my proper place

even though
will be dog tired,
to that dog-eared page,
in that worn old notebook
return,
pick up
my sticks,
my pens,
that have no erasers,
start again

just where I know,
just when I don't,
but this why I know,
but to that dog-eared return,
the page where
I died,
I shall return,
all on that day

~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to all on that day?

Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to all on that day?

Run to the moon, "Moon, won't you hide me?"
Run to the sea, "Sea, won't you hide me?"
Run to the sun, "Sun, won't you hide me all on that day?"

Lord said, "Sinner man, moon'll be a bleeding"
Lord said, "Sinner man, sea'll be a sinking"
Lord said, "Sinner man, sun'll be a freezing all on that day"

Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to all on that day?

Run to the Lord, "Lord, won't You hide me?"
Run to the Lord, "Lord, won't You hide me?"
Run, run, "Lord, won't You hide me all on that day?"

Lord said, "Sinner man, you should've been a praying"
Lord said, "Sinner man, should've been a praying"
Lord said, "Sinner man, should've been a praying all on that day"

Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to all on that day?

Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to?
Oh, sinner man, where you're gonna run to all on that day?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4h55nVbt4c