Sometimes I just have to admit it.
Things are happening and I don’t get it.
What the hell is going on here?
Is an explanation from anyone near?
It makes a kind of sense, if you squint
But soon it caroms off on another bent.
I mean, it’s all in my native language, true,
But so much of it feels like visiting a zoo.

My life can turn into a monkey house
And without a decent kind of warning
And suddenly I’m dealing with issues
That weren’t there in the morning.
Some batch of politicians on the right
Are busily trying to steal my serenity
And maybe even trying to imprison me
And at least take away my dignity.

They say they are doing all of this
In the name of holy Jesus Christ
But it still works as a ripping off,
And an indecent but legal heist.
I may not be an attorney myself
But I was also not born last Tuesday.
These rotten scalawags in suits
Are trying to take my rights away.

It makes a kind of sense, if you squint
But soon it caroms off on another bent.
I mean, it’s all in my native language, true,
But so much of it feels like visiting a zoo.

It always amazes me that these jerks
Somehow manage to sleep at night
Because it’s plain enough to see
That what they do really isn’t right.
For example, for two hundred years
It was legal here to own negroes.
But that it was an sickening atrocity
Was as plain as their white nose.

But they held cotillions and soirees
And treated slaves like breeding stock
And sold off the black babies which
Seemed to happen around the clock
Because it made sense to these Christians
To ignore everything that Jesus said
And treat these people barbarically
From their birth until they were dead.

Sometimes I just have to admit it.
Things are happening and I don’t get it.
What the hell is going on here?
Is an explanation from anyone near?

There are plenty of modern references
Like treating immigrants as villains
When every white person in the USA
Were immigrants, most of them willing.
But rich people here are so upset
That these people are not the right kind
And that gives the rich white people
An excuse for them to be rude and unkind.

I could go on and on with this complaint
For pages and chapters without end.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me
“Enough! We conservatives agree and say 'When!'”

Sediment slabs purl down soft rock,
parched charcoal lathers soot - scintillate,
smothered form in slate deluge,
where the sun can take refuge,
saturnine in the hiemal shift of the alcove,
and nebulous spume caroms  - gaseous halations ,
off scalding waters, sweet smoke arise,
tenuous strings of light gossamer in the eyes ,
meshed scales loll down,
corona tendrils stream over sunken psilocybe,
equilibrium sun-warped - flares effulgent,
seeping into trails of salt-lacerated skin,
wax beads singeing skin - summer hit of apocalypse fever

Shall I exalt your grace as season's bring?
In winter; you're a frosty glazed escape
upon the icy sculpts of harps and string,
then plays the autumn leaves, that oaks undrape.

The ochre glides as you cavort the green
till blossoms bow; to all your springlike glow,
amidst the roses we proclaim a queen!
A spring vernal upon us - you bestow.

When dew has dried by amber's master hue
and caroms off the sea the summer beams,
within akin; devotes my lovers view
that eyes azure could match the ocean's seams.

My many seasons you are in cascade!
This love shall bask in each - when one is made.

The yellow dog was dead,
starting to bloat on the side
of a more rural stretch of 169
hwy.

It was easy to see,
despite the brevity of
our time together,
that the yellow dog had
belonged to, was part of,
a home, a family.

Even in death,
the dog looked like a
Dutch, or a Butch, or Jeb, maybe Roscoe;
like a dog that belonged
in a setting such as
this.

Not,
however, on the side of this
two-lane piece of asphalt,
but in this patch of fly-over
country that he had, just a
while ago,
snuffled.

Or,
living in the horse barn,
sleeping on the loose caroms
of straw, maybe catching a rabbit
for his supper now and then;
his master bringing him into
the house for a warm bath,
some table scraps, when the weather
cooled.

However,
today is warm,
the sun glints off of the white fluff
of a rabbit’s **** and the chase that
ensued was magnificent…

Unfortunately,
it led the yellow dog
to his less than enviable fate,
lying near the sweet summer grasses
with a look of disappointment etched onto
his face.

Upon my return,
passing the same spot,
I see that the yellow dog
is being given a wake.

The vultures,
their congress having voted,
their kettle having stirred,
landed near this fallen hound
and prepared to feast.

Though,
again my investment in the scene
was brief,
I couldn’t help but notice that
the yellow dog still wore a sturdy-looking
collar and that his tags shone brightly
in the late afternoon sun.

So,
I found myself hoping
that as he’d lain at the edge
of his last green horizon,
he looked up at the clouds
and thought:

“This isn’t so awful. I made the best of it.”

Then,
as the wake of vultures
began to feed,
I hoped they too might consume
some fleeting memory that the yellow dog
had about chasing rabbits, thrown sticks,
rolling in mud, or perhaps even this particular
misadventure,
the one that had led to
his wake.
*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018