William Saroyan said, "I ruined my
life by marrying the same woman
twice."

there will always be something
to ruin our lives,
William,
it all depends upon
what or which
finds us
first,
we are always
ripe and ready
to be
taken.

ruined lives are
normal
both for the wise
and
others.

it is only when
that life
ruined
becomes ours
we realize
then
that the suicides, the
drunkards, the mad, the
jailed, the dopers
and etc. etc.
are just as common
a part of existence
as the gladiola, the
rainbow
the
hurricane
and nothing
left
on the kitchen
shelf.

A Pretty Gladiola
It is very lovely
In the meadow

a word from thy mouth
is the spectral arrow
from nimble bow.

risen are the caryatids,
unsheathed are the swords,
molested are the gladiola
by the night's harsh *****;

the proscenium dislimns
as the iron curtain sea drowns
their blasphemous orations!
the thespians alerted
by a wordless hunt

   as i rise like the dew
  lambasting the autumnal grass
   bedecked by glistening wheals
    of ripe luminosities;

  this damp hour, the mercurial
     assault of declarations,
  fastens every word underneath
    tongues of river-deep stone.

Come
Be a mate
Of rose
Of daffodils
Of gladiola
In the garden

lighting with my eyes,
this inward sanctum

hair, her black river; my terrors
congregate. strobe of aurora
strokes auburn conflagration; my
secrets aloud

her eyes now are birds floundering
in vast oceans of tawny bodies;
onerously present like the
gladiola

where warm-blooded stallions
gallop the sinews of this
straightforward physiognomy.
******* are islands thick
with fleshly origin,
  
navel's cave oozes foam
of brine, sweating in the heat
of this frail moment where
my tongue conquistadors
exploring varying perfumes,

caught in the latticing shrub,
this gossamer pearl, furious
with godly ecstasies no heaven
could tell within the bat
of an eye or the heave of seascape

relics of soul hidden in all,
mine to quarry in my hands so
little with uninterrupted thrill,

  i love thee, all darkness.

gOd put a smile on your face
      your eyes (half-thrush like two beings in the dark
and a gladiola of light spurns to chide in its bickering excess,
    birds, birds of morning and paradisiacal streets half-wittingly
       fork to single-handedness, a star is uttered and altars sing
           rarely-beloved, a dance-song of soul) and their parenthetical
    rush to what continues to live suddenly as if to say its conscious
       death is a room without flowers.

There are gladiolas,
black-eyed Susan
growing in wooden barrels
behind the chain-link, below the razor-wire.

The Powerhouse
they call it,
the building that houses
the generators, the boilers,
whatever else it takes to keep
these cinder-block cell-houses
warm, cool, or otherwise
habitable.

As I make my way up toward
the building I work in,
I pause to look at these blooms.

I must.

For it is in seeing them
that I may be seeing the
only beauty offered that day.

There is so little here
that is beautiful,
one might say.

The floors are scuffed,
the walls,
the paint, chipped away
or graffitied with pen-caps
or makeshift knives,
not looking for that space between a cell-mate's ribs
just then.

There is rust on the window sills,
on the bedposts bolted together,
bunkbeds for the bruiser or the bruised.

Still,
the gladiolas, those black-eyed Susan's
persistence in palpable,
as is the potential of every single
human being housed inside.

The perspective shifts.

There's beauty in that potential,
presented in the form of actualized,
engaged participation in today's classwork
or
small-group discussion.

'What's this?
A breakthrough?
Sir, is that a teardrop?'

Real,
not tattooed.

Beautiful.

More so than any gladiola
or
black-eyed Susan here
could hope for.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2020

Offering an ibis well formed,  
turtle shell strong waves marked,
crested last light browned,
     orange gladiola skin his,
his tawny satin resistance
       a baroque tomb
in Shiva’s naked hand.



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