Oh I wish so much you would remember
those happy days when we were friends.
Life in those times was so much brighter
and the sun was hotter than today.
Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful.
You see, I have not forgotten.
Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful,
memories and regrets also,
and the North wind carries them away
into the cold night of oblivion.
You see, I have not forgotten
the song that you sang for me:
It is a song resembling us.
We lived together, the both of us,
you who loved me
and I who loved you.
But life drives apart those who love
ever so softly
without a noise
and the sea erases from the sand
the steps of lovers gone their ways.

A hole in the ground,
slowly filled,
shovelful by shovelful of damp earth
filling the space around the small mahogany box.
Memories are pushed to the surface,
elevated upwards by the soil.
They think of her,
just a girl, just a girl...
Mary,
that was her name.
She was stubborn,
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary”, they would all tease her jokingly,
and she laughed along,
because she thought it was funny,
and she knew it was true.
Mary,
just a girl, just a girl,
too young to die,
too old to live happily.
She had been part of the world, and one of the people,
she had seen what she wanted to be,
and she wouldn't rest until she reached it.

Long hair,
perfect skin,
flat stomach,
thin legs,
white teeth,
perfect face,
a skinny waist.

Don't eat, don't eat, don't eat
A mantra,
she would repeat it to herself every day
Don't eat, don't eat, don't eat
It gave her something that she mistook for strength, for life, for vitality,
Don't eat,
she would whisper it when she awoke
Don't eat,
she would match it in time with her steps,
Don't eat, don't eat, don't eat.

She saw who she wanted to be,
Her,
she would point her out,
that girl there,
the one on television,
the one who has everything,
the one who was everything,
Her,
the girl who she wanted to be.

But a body can only bend so far before it breaks,
can only take so much weight before it sinks,
can only take so much pressure before it bursts,
and for Mary,
she has broken, sunk, and burst.
Poor Mary,
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,”
oh Mary, what makes your stomach grow?
Now your buried deep, and covered with snow...

She's just a stone now,
and some memories,
no longer a body,
no longer a girl.

Once, I was excluded from love,
in bitterness I cursed all that I saw,
not knowing that this bitterness made me anathema
to the very sensations I pursued.
I spread hateful ideology,
made every effort to share my misery,
shouted condemnation at every pair of clasped hands,
every kiss I saw made me retch.

The bitterness welled up
and poured forth from me,
reppelling loves valiant attempts
at liberating me from my tower cell.
From my relatively pleasant existance
I fashioned my own tailor fitted hell,
which I wore everyday, steadily collecting filth,
so soiled I had become.

As I lifted the last shovelful from my early grave,
and prepared to climb down within
with my list of grievances against God
stapled to my shirt, so I might never forget,
my foot stepped out into the pit
but a gentle hand clenched my shoulder
and pulled me back from the hole,
and I turned and discovered love...

It does exist,
none need be excluded, if the feeling exists for some
all can be included.
Love not for the pleasure of it,
but for the pain, and strain,
so that we may constantly measure it against the ache of loneliness
and remind ourselves, that while love may be a neverending battle,
surrender to hate brings nothing but ruin.

I can't say that I know what it's like
To lose someone
And it's not because I have never experienced death

My Great Aunt died of lung cancer
Though she never smoked
And was the nicest lady
With what I assumed
Was a New York accent
To ever be convinced that I loved
Her Spinach Frittata
And who indirectly
Made jokes about my insatiable desire
To consume the apple pie

She died on the tenth of october in the year two-thousand ten
(10/10/10)
And I remember my father calling me to the kitchen
To tell me the news
I cried a little
And went back to my room to write angry poetry
But ultimately I was just tired
And went to sleep
Without really adressing anything

At her funeral, I remember my cousin telling me
The story of how her (then) long-term boyfriend
Used wire cutters to remove his braces
A week before they were due to come off
They called me over to put a shovelful of dirt
Into the grave
And I did
Then ran back, jumping as I did (jumping as I did),
To my cousin
Because her candid attitude let me know that it was ok
Not to be somber

My dad's friend had a stroke which dislodged blood clots and sent him
Into a coma for a long time
And while we posed with him for Christmas pictures
(I hated posing, I hated the picture-taking, I hated smiling, it all felt wrong)
And my father promised that hypnosis was going to work
My dad's friend died
In a hospital bed
In his home
In a historical region of uptown Whittier
My dad lost his friend
My mom lost hers as well
When she stopped talking to his wife
Who had been her friend first

The cousin who was talking to me at the funeral
Lost her (then) boyfriend
When she woke up one morning
To find him dead with her
In bed

So I can't say that I know what it's like
Because I have lost people
I've seen death
And I dislike it
I dislike the thought that all my
Teachers will die before me
And I am sad thinking about those days
That I will be in the crowd
One of the Touched

I dislike that I don't know what it's like
Because I don't see it like the others
I try to remember beauty in their life
Beauty that they shared with me
Beauty that I will keep alive
Like the energy cell
The Doctor blew life into
To power the TARDIS

But if I can't find it
If there was nothing we shared
If there is nothing to tie me to them
I feel bad that someone else feels bad
I dislike their pain and
I wish I could give them a hug
And that the hug would fix everything
But it won't
And all I can do is think about
How much I ****
At comforting grievers
And how much I wish
I could be a better comforter
But I'm not
Because I don't do well with death

There was no silver spoon
Just a shovel
The same one my grandmother
and great-grandmother had held
The same one my mother handed me when she told me to dig her a grave
Because she was too tired to finish it herself
Already got half way through excavating but the pain was too excruciating

The women in my family have spent their entire lives being dug out
Their chest are hollow caverns from the careless tourists who have hollowed them
Shovelful by shovelful
Bucketful by bucketful

My mother did not raise me
Just a skeleton that wore her skin
Empty within
The caves of her eyes cast shadows on her cheeks
The crevice of her lips a ravine that ran straight to hell
A ravine that had swallowed fools whole
Silver-lined tongue and coal-pocked jaw

I have I inherited her suspicion
Her hollow-coldness
Her mystery
Her safe and sound
Underground
In the dark
Where no one can hear the flutter-thump of the bats caught in your stomach

I have inherited her wisdom
Her wit and passion
Her fortitude and ingenuity
Hidden in the dim halls of my veins like jewels in darkness

I was told to protect these little gems of myself
These pieces that I could never get back
Told that once someone found them, they would keep taking and taking until I was truly empty
I was told to never give away all my secrets
Because then I’d become another part of their histories and not their ongoing mysteries
Another tourist attraction, walked through again and again until their feet wore a path so deep in my skin I’d never be able to right myself

I didn’t listen
I let her in
Let her cave-paint me with stories lost to time
Let her explore where no one had gone before
Miner’s daughter, lovely clementine did not leave much else behind
But she did not take more than I had wanted to give her
Did not leave me empty and cold, robbed of riches once untold

So when the next one came
I welcomed her with open arms
Cradled her against waterfall-crashing heartbeat
Made her a place of her own
Gave all I could give without ever feeling that I was selling pieces of who I was
I put down the shovel
And let myself be loved

want to stop,
know it's wrong,
know this is a one-way ticket
to a bad place,
an empty hole.

just one more,
just a bit,
it won't hurt if it's only so much,
i can master it,
take control.

one little bit turns,
now it's more,
another shovelful of dirt covers
the silver-laquered coffin
in a grave dug in soil that
should have been for someone old
and now homes someone young.

and everyone stares and says its a shame,
but one guy down the street just started
something,
knowing he's in control, too,
just a little won't hurt...

I am the vengeance,
never received.

I am a walking fistfight
that never was.

It is staggering
how much rage
can be carried
on one’s back.

I am every raised voice,
every clenched fist,
the howl of every
harsh wind.

I am every book that
I’ve never read.

I am every song that
I’ve never heard.

All I want to do
is bleed ink
until I’m dead.

Bleeding black ink,
a written hemorrhage,
a shovelful of dirt
flung onto my own
casket.

I don’t want to be well-adjusted.

(What the hell does that even mean?)

I am all the slammed doors
in the apartment complex.

I am a papercut on the tongue.

(The letter sits unsent.)

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

The gibbous moon hangs over the Earth,
death descending upon a dying reality.
A shovelful of ashes,
this dance of futility,
nothing left behind but fallen soot.

Dearest brother, we are at the last point,
it seems, and who would have expected
such a ridiculous finale,
this eschatological confrontation
with the black summit of existence?

O impotent little man,
in your melancholy selfishness,
how you distress me
with this great, surging silence,
the oppressiveness of solitude.

Despair is disease,
but I can no longer mourn you.
Your remorse is indulgent,
self-forgiving, superstitious.

The pain of relentless doom
in no way ennobles you;
your retreat into suffering
but a complicity in guilt.

Stretch forth your wretched head to
say the words you cannot say;
a contortion in the throat,
a choking on each syllable.

Do not be deceived.

Beyond all else
there is nothing more human,
than these last, few moments
of the searing white heat
of the God we cannot prove,
of the broken mirror image
of your imminent demise.

Passing beyond all morality
oozes the wound of your existence:
to decry the winnowing of meaning,
the destruction of freedom,
the end of everything.

Hidden in aubergine shadows,
fading into colors, darker,
the sheer dripping despair,
unconsolable.

Hints of words whisper on the wind,
reverberated voices, persuade things,
actions, ideas, unspeakable,
piqued, neural gears begin to spin.

Unbidden instructions begin to elaborate,
a plan seeking revenge starts to unfold,
behind eyes, crimson dripping blades,
smoking gun barrels, and deep pits gleam.

An aberrant smile appears,
teeth showing, grinding,
barbarous design conveyed,
a baleful, carnal laugh escapes.

The final shovelful of earth placed,
leaves, dumped from a box, cover over,
an incinerator for gloves, clothes, tarp and shovel,
ironclad alibi, the cold case dropped in a drawer, forgotten.