"confessors" poems
Draw up your skirt, O woman of temptation.
Then watch yourself flirt with no contemplation.
Attracting the slack-jawed -- the ignorant ***
whose thinking is drawn to *** as you pass.
Set bare your breast to these "love-confessors"
and bare all your flesh to the fangs of oppressors.
Make them pay for your meals, for your wine and delight.
Then let them steal you away in the night.
Put feathers in your hair -- the peacock's vanity! --
Then watch the men stare and whisper profanity.
Wear lace and sheer clothing; hide not from their gawking.
Then listen, with loathing, to the non-sense they're talking.
Perfume yourself in myrrh, draw all senses in your direction.
Then drink in their ardour, and their misplaced affection.
Build tall your chancel with pleasure and desires;
play the distressed damsel, O great queen of liars!
You'll find soon enough the emptiness of touch.
You'll call your own bluff, and drop what you clutch.
But until then, sullen temptress, drive yourself from my door.
Leave my sight, but don't distress; I've no want for your flesh any more.
May 19, 2012
May 19, 2012 at 2:42 AM UTC
My life
has appeared unclothed in court, death-bone by death-bone witness,
and I was shamed at the verdict
and was given a cut penny
and the entrails of a cat.
But nevertheless I went on
to the invisible priests,
confessing, confessing
through the wire of hell
and they wet upon me in that phone booth.
Then I accosted winos,
and derelicts of the region,winning them over into a latrine of my details.
Yes. It was a compulsion
but I denied it, called it fiction
and then I swallowed it like my fate.
Now,
in my middle age
I'm well aware
I keep making statues
of my acts, carving them with my sleep-----
or if it is not my life I depict
then somone's close enough to wear my nose ----
my nose, my patrician nose,
sniffing at me or following theirs down the street.
Yet not even five centuries ago this smelled queer,
confession, confessions
and you devil was thought to to push out their eyes
and all the eyes had seen (too much! too much!).
It was proof that you were a needle
to push into their pupils.
And the only cure for such confessions overheard
was to sit in a cold bath for six days,
a bath full of leeches, drawing out your blood
into which confessors had heated the devil in them,
inhabited them with their madness.
It was wise, the wise medical men said,
wise to cry Baa and be smiling into your mongoloid blood,
while you simply tended the sheep.
Or else to sew your lips shut
and not let a word or a deadstone out.
I too have my silence,
where I enter another room
and am not only blind,
but speech has flown out of me
and I call it dead
though the respiration be okay.
Perhaps it is a sheep call?
I feel I must learn to speak the Baa
of the simple-minded, while my mind
dives into the multi-colored,
crowded voices,
cried for help, I've no ******* on me.
The transvestite whispering to me,
over and over, My legs are disappearing.
My mother, her voice like water,
saying "fish are cut out of me.'
My father,
his voice thrown into a cigar,
"A marble of blood rolls into my heart"
My great-aunt,
her voice,
thrown into a lost child at the freak's circus
"I am the flame swallower
but turn me over in bed
and I am the fat lady."
Yes! While my mind plats simple-minded,
plays dead-man in neon,
I must recall to say
Baa
to the black sheep that I am.
Baa. Baa. Baa
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 12:52 PM UTC
It’s in a secret folded letter,
in a book somewhere.
Building dust in your,
crusty childhood trauma.
Words like “I’m sorry that
we couldn’t fit together”.
Maybe “I’m sorry that they
didn’t teach you to love better”.
It might say that I just
want you to finally be happy.
You’ll think that’s another one
of my unforgettable darling lies.
But the anger I’ve been feeling
is completely unforgivable.
Making no better reason
to relentlessly forgive.
Seeking lustful validation
is probably my sin.
Seeking your forgiveness
is probably my mistake.
But time is always our cruelist
and truest confessors,
and I have never been betrothed
to anyone, but the truth.
Oct 11, 2018
Oct 11, 2018 at 12:45 AM UTC
From the desert,
which is far away,
Came little bird,
seeking for place to stay.
When he was crossing,
unknown garden
The Irish daisy’s
occurrence sudden
Made him forget how
To fly and breathe.
And made him fall,
on thorns beneath.
Abruptly standing
Up, he began his song.
Here is, enjoy!
Won’t make you wait long:
“Without you a moment
Is like a century for me!
Your short absence is such a torment
Made me question: to be or not to be?
The land where you are
Is like an entrance of cemetery.
But land with no thee,
Is graveyard saying: not to be!
I want to own selfishly,
Your snowy petal’s tenderness,
And to declare jealously,
A war,
To those who are
Drunk with your scents!
Recall,
A moment is the century
On your absence!”
This is the end of song,
But yet
This Irish daisy is
Making my bird upset.
We seek just happiness
In an unhappy world,
Which has confessors
With unresponded song!
May 27, 2025
May 27, 2025 at 7:16 PM UTC
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 slope
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
Oct 25, 2020
Oct 25, 2020 at 9:50 PM UTC
In ROTC I dared to grow my hair.
On the cusp of hippy life with
burned bras and free love and
smoking hash I dumped my baggage.
I joined a circus going to Boston.
I was baptized in saltwater. Plum Island.
I made love to love tilting at windmills.
In my attic I learned the hard truths.
The People's Almanac was my bible and
those who held my heart my confessors.
May 12, 2021
May 12, 2021 at 8:59 PM UTC