The air is incredibly thin.
I can’t breathe, and my
hands are shaking.

When I was a boy,
a playmate hit me
in the head with a
glass ashtray.

In an instant,
my father had snatched
the boy up and carried him
****** outside, suspended
by one ankle.

I’ve heard also,
stories of my great-uncles
two brothers, run out of
Saint Louis County
because they’d fought in and
been banned from every tavern
on both sides of every main drag,
of every township therein.

Maybe that’s where this
comes from.

There is a fire inside that
most days is only embers,
but stokes far too easily into
infernal inferno.

The grey mush in my skull is
jacked into some electricity
with jumper-cables made from
too many sour thoughts,
a fierce depression, and
huge piles of self-doubt.

Gladness, contentedness,
feels like fraud, like failure,
like not leaning into it sturdily
enough.
Like not staring into The Abyss hard
enough.

It feels like obscenity to
not see conflict,
to not rail against
some dark thing,
some enemy.

In doing so
is found the ability to
feel like
enough.

But,
what
is
enough?

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications; 2016

she had eyes like diamond


i kissed her lips
and she sighed

it echoed in
the coalmine

Lily on my crown,
My soul is rooted with sunflowers,
Love springs from my lungs.
Death is a garden.
Affection a coffin.

Hedge around ribs,
Holy light tightened on heart,
Beating carols only heard by dogs
Like a whistle, thistle on my knees cutting heaven real deep.

Tulips lace my tongue
Taste of angels, backwash of Lucifer.
Eyes pupiled amethyst. The healing stone. My world is healing while thorns and samsara hold my ankles to material and the edge of avarice.

World of loom hill parade ecstasy while weather ignites to 24° psychic readings being hosted in palace atrium & column walls where the archaic clock gongs upward to ****** addict ghosts and mental wards in lucid Babylons.

Lovers screaming against bombs, blister billow black clouds and smoke with marijuana haze in flats and compassion for grief cottoned years.
Rumble of music soaked into ratless insulation, long conversations with the insomniac self who hides from monsters inches over his head.

World of daysetting group understandings amidst orange moonlight. Coalmine haired bereaved droop nose man crawls from darkness for another cigarette on the balcony, 4th floor apartment complex in May. Depression hit like **** **** fogging out the brain.
Emptiness is the west.

Travelers who sway on driftwood face The Cascades acknowledging past times, revolving themes and bullet mouthed villains who seek away from starvation from ego lacking.
Their bile is sentences and the rest, anyways.  

Japanese instrumental rolls through closed eyelids in flashing Technicolor, rabbits watch the highways unaware of mortality.

World of bicycle rides on packed ** Chi Minh
City 2016 Winter where twenty-something North Americans go for pho while others go for broke. Palm trees polka dotting college campus in Afternoon, insects whine for the daydreamers. One is writing poetry in a small Vietnamese cafe sipping earl grey inspired by the Oriental clutter and a redheaded girl back home who paces frantically in the attic besides a crooked lamp scrawling flowers to the rotted whitewood panel work

The artist’s craft is a keepsake for eternity, as wells dry out and desert becomes ocean, poems will melt to matter zipping to outer space, satellite ink spots expanding by forever realms.

Pillow foot sole cracks shell casings on forgotten battlefields in later decades, wiping off grit shoeshine boy corpse particle reformation and fairy spit from brow, the last mad prophet sees visions of Christ as arachnid wretch black widow who venomed our bones with rapture,
doom wax peeling away after the damages had been committed.  

Now I check for spiders beneath my sheets.

Banshee howl symphonic sorrows leak in unison with all lanes of commuting traffic. Denial curse for positivity, mindset slate hiding
The weary souls radiance. On the 15x down Johnson! psychedelic chasm quakes through the wheels and my thoughts are spinning sunshine!
Washing machine dynamo recollections of whiskey spilt over carpet dark sand shade while La Vie En Rose resonates from playerless pianos topped with incense sticks in arabesque ashrams, imaginary shelters. We all have one!

Nick Cave is sleeping by back row while we approach final stop in front of bankrupt Chinese corner stores. He’s murmuring Oblivions and the bus keeps on going.

Death is a garden.
Tears are its rainwater and bucket flow.
Nectar pattern reveries honeybee the flowerpots.
Peoples sprout from them bloomed full.

Rosy reaper blasts past the solar system in a comet rocket since she saved the aliens, she hums Vivaldi and huffs a good huff from her cherry cigar.
She tightens her starlight hood and black holes be born.
Torn apart Pluto goes

B    A    N    G

Comet delirious ignores the decimation
And shouts the Lotus Sutra

“ALL GODS WERE TOO PASSIVE”
Reaper hollers back steering by the milky way and beyond on their hallucinogenic trip.

Lily on my crown.
Crown for the kingdom
wherein Reaper resides
and sings with galaxy ukulele to
the great empty.
Great as all can be.

inside my chest is a coalmine. you have the raddest eyes I’ve ever seen & you hair smells like rain. I want to call you on the telephone & tell you a secret about your freckles. I wanna call you shakedown. I wanna call you shotgun. do you want to make a movie? I got this camera, see, & a backyard like forever, & when it snows it’s like the whole world is one giant pickup line. my body in a wooden box & you just like holes for breathing. if I’m lying my neck is a bird. free. the truth is skin & skin. your red and grey beanies. a stick of dynamite between my teeth.

Let's say love is a mirage
Once you get there it's vaporized

A blanket full of sand
Three containers at sunrise

Stacked up waiting for more massiveness of spice
The penalty pointed spokesman said defined

Example, the olive baked snacker that slipped out
of the coalmine

He had a plastic burned hand with two blisters on
the side

But is it a mirage?

Tobacco sunset
A cotton carpet with table topped wine

All vaporized

time forgot
the scars
the words
the open sesame
of my miseries
my contempt
for the irony,
of freely contrived romance

how her lips,
pressed against mine
became the toothed suckling
of her vampiric abandon
the sucrose of my affections and adorations of her
how she fed on my caresses and poetry
how she wounded my soul
bled me out of devotion, mercifully, with adultery
and in the coffin
where I lay
kosher, rigor mortus preserved, for her trophy cabinet
taxidermy of bloodmoon, post-******, post-disenchantment
if the coitus fits, the honeymoon was faked
how she planned it
bottled my tears for a dry day
lubricant for her tryst

for having faked it
so many times,
surely the ink has run dry
surely the letters were forged by faithlessness
my Hancock used,
to certify her authenticity,
against my imagination
the signature of my pleasures,
a wife's knowing,
turned to the devil's archives
my powers
turned to the dark
where my light
illuminated wonders untold
impossible
for a monkey has palms and thumb
but it builds not empires with feces
wherest, withal, man builds forests where monkeys swing

and I sung at her wedding
canary fleeing the coalmine, of debauchery,
"Speak now, or forever hold your peace."

hours ahead, the setting sun,
I spoke, and the world's light dimmed
that I should be beleaguered
20,000 leagues fatigued
taking my meager pay
how many times
can a heart break
beholding infidelity
a woman so treasured
if one should have
20,000 hearts, and 20 souls,
how many times
would the domino effect
produce domino displays
like rivers and waterfalls
seas and skies
mountains and snowfalls
lakes and ponds
oceans and mirages

I sung it all
for never shall I bear peace
in the sight of infidels
for they massacred love
in their ****** of my love
a thousand men took her
willingly, she walked
into the church mass
and let them have their way
to spite my face
to rend my heart open
with joyful, painful *******
and drain my heart of its love
in the pews
for the children's sake
to see the fraud of their father
that my blood be tears
and my tears be blood
I have no quench of my sorrows
I bleed ore
and cry thunders in the bellows of my torment
known never peace have I
though having supped of Nirvana
and forged heavens
from my joys abundant
I have been mad
and wasteful
surely
to weather myriad wicked adulteresses so
and still have peace in my breast
it
surely,
I profess
was never peace, but madness!

SURELY

and so,
that is why
it took time for my heart's breaking
for every ******
and every pulsing
of cave, to womb and back,
the journey of each sacrilege
of innocence
that generations
of children
have been metaphysically unborn

by such a fuckery

that worlds have been destroyed
before spawning from nebula

that lives have been destroyed and saved, both,
before needing salvation
before being endangered

that hope was undone, in need and dream,

that songs were unsung, and sung in their unsinging
before stories wrote their need to be shared
that bards would be unborn
before legends could prophesy this unholy merrymaking
befallen me
and I,
soft of heart and lung
could be drowned
in my keep
with nary a poppy seed
to sate
the breaking of water, in me, soft-hearted I be
that meteors
could shatter the stillnesses
of the surfaces of oceans, tempered as I,
and I,
as ice shattereth
and remain disparate, frozen in time,
I break, and continue, beyond need - beyond agony
beyond warmth that wets the rain to stir from sleep
beyond ice such that tears never dreamt of cold
to neither have walked the sky
such tears are dream itself
but
to dream of cavernous sorrows
mere
to satisfy the torture of things wished to be unknown
what madness could be avoided
though blessed be the avoiding
that there need be sorrows such that hells become heavens
and the devil become deserving of all the hells
due the death of Christ
that lucifer bear the scorn of all sinners
for all time
till time loses meaning
and joy becomes as vapor to lucifer
as vapor is to the vacuum of space
but a pebble in an ocean's wealth of nothing...

Therein, my wrath,
due all my torments, chronic as breath,
that my heart has become a vice
that empathy has become chastity belt
frostbite, my melanin price, cakes my fist
as I behold my gavel,
and judge all the ****** 1000-years before their deaths,
with such wisdoms, my rage knows not end
my fury knows not storms, in universes beholding their eternal gaits,
my fury cannot fathom taming,

that my heartache become a madness
that neither holiness nor love canst quell
save that nothing save me otherwise,
that I become married to,
nay,
that I BECOME love and holiness,
righteousness, too,
that my righteous wrath,
be spared annexation to evil,
that my vengeances be preserved
and mine enemies kept alive
in my everlasting joy
of what punisheth them,
eterally!

That I,
may be born celibate
before knowing my virginity
simply to inquire
ahead of custom and common ontological seeking
query women,
that they do still, without vanity,
utter the word, the sign, the force, the mind, the passion, "LOVE."

let alone perform it, that which it is I say,
a man's privilege to declare that he knoweth love,
and women darest have never had it,
yet they deign gave God's breath to their desires of love,
reified it
believed in it
let alone had faith in themselves that men died for their ******
that marriage be ****** by the succubus in God's heaven!

They'd dare!

take it, from me, in my offering,
that I would love her,
truly,
in earnest
and see her fed of love
as like water
like milk to a babe
or,
should she deign me less than a man
due my will to love her
should she deign herself queen without me,

whenever the moment strikes
she'll dare, on a whim,
part her legs
for any man
declaring himself "King."
though he be a vagrant,
a pauper, a louse, a street urchin,
with gold bullion cascading from his pockets
because I, dared declare, "I love her..."
that she should **** such a lecherous, maggot semened
cuckold of love who would bed her with envy of me
and joy of that envy sated
true joy in his ******* of my wife
for he sold his soul
to bed her
buy her
and found his purchase met faithfully
that he might, unfaithfully
unholily,
amuse her
dwell in her
due the purchase of womanhood
due the market prices many celebrate ****** by,
rather,
due the "Graces", the unlovable, evil, malice
the bloodied, rancid, defiled, arrogant ignorant, so-called
"love" exemplified, demonstrated primarily, of
a djinn, a monster, a fiend, a demon,
a devil, in fact,
so called:

SATAN

it's tempting sometimes.
the impulse to withdraw all the money from my bank account
and drive down I70 until the scenery changes,
the impulse to wander without bothering to find anything
let alone myself.
the impulse to disappear.
but impulses are just impulses,
i think this is just the way my mind convulses
and, obviously, i can't do any of those things.
or maybe i just feel like i can't do any of those things.
i mean, i've got responsibilities i've got people counting on me.  
i can't just up and leave my life
even though sometimes i'm itching to like i've got poison ivy
crawling all over my skin.
speaking of poison, i've heard people theorize that
maybe oxygen is slow-acting poison, taking all of our lives
to **** us under the guise of "natural causes"
i think if you stay anywhere long enough
the air becomes polluted, the air gets toxic.
my highschool art teacher,
who was incidentally a real conspiracy theory kind of guy,
once told our class that we're all too locked into our realities.
that life is only what we perceive it.
i had snickered along with the rest of the class,
the rest of the unwilling congregation to his soapbox pulpit,
because that's what people do when they're uncomfortable.
now i guess i wish i was a little less locked into my own reality.
i guess i wish i could be the kind of person
who bought plane one-way plane tickets and could be reckless
without first getting tangled in the repercussions.
i think the problem with running is
that no matter where i ran i'd still be me.
most people tie their feet to the train tracks of inevitability,
they will build a house there until it falls down around them.
they will live there until they're evicted,
with their hands still clenched in the sheets
and their feet planted in the backyard.
most people never leave where they grew roots.
but, see, the problem with roots is that unless you want to die
you can't ever pull them out completely.
i am always going to be from somewhere.
i am always going to be from here.
i am always going to be myself.
but life is a work in progress and i'm ******* working on it,
i'm not where i want to be
but as long as i know where i've been,
i don’t ever have to go back to where i was again.
my head is so crowded that sometimes i think it's exceeding its occupancy.
i think that i'm going to start having to get rid
of pieces of myself to make everything fit.
sometimes i just want to lose all my thoughts along the interstate
like i lose them halfway through a poem
i'm not quick enough to write down.
my head is like a graveyard with good ideas
buried under cracked tombstones that no one leaves flowers on.
sometimes i think of my brain as a black hole,
a place where light gets lost and doesn't come back out the same.
sometimes i think of my brain as a moratorium,
a place where dreams go
to get dressed for their funeral processions.
but sometimes i think of my brain as midas,
any idea can be golden if i get my hands on it.
sometimes i just want to hold my coalmine heart so tightly
that all that's left is diamonds.
the thing is, sometimes my brain is a like a black hole
and sometimes my brain is like a galaxy.
on my good days i'm golden, on my bad days i'm falling apart
and i lose a couple more more of my pieces every time i hit the ground.
but it's all internal; i think if i were to self-destruct
it wouldn't even make a sound.
and so often i think of the world as a battlefield,
i think i was born in the trenches instead of the home front.
i think i found myself in the worst place to get lost.
we went to bed as children
and woke up with the world on our shoulders
we went to bed as innocent and woke up as soldiers.
and you can't save people from themselves,
even though we've spent the last few millennia trying to.
we're like that sometimes, we never learn.
and even when i was drowning six feet under gasping for air,
you never needed to save me from myself,
my shadow is more than just the reflection of somebody else.
so go on, get your armor
so go on, get your battle scars
so take aim, so don't be ashamed
it's uphill sometimes but i kind of think we're getting there,
even if i don't always know where is.
sometimes you don't sink or swim,
you just thrash around until you start floating
our life jackets are all labeled "here's to hoping, here's to coping"
so **** your horoscopes.
you only listen to it when it tells you what you want to hear anyways.
so don't go to bed, kid, stay wide awake.
it's better for dreaming, it's better for scheming.
nobody is going to hand you your destiny,
you've got to ******* fight for it.
and we're all learning how to open our eyes
when we get pulled under by the tide and lick the salt off our teeth.
and if you're searching for purpose,
for something that might be worth this,
i can tell you where not to look.
kid, i've been there.
**** it, most days i still am there.
i built a house out of deflated life preservers there
and was surprised when it didn't float me home.
but this is what i know now:
i know i have a choice in how i look at this world.
am i going to focus on the brutal or the beautiful?
because for all the ugly there is so much that’s still lovely,
so don't let this ******* of a world steal your bright eyes,
cutting your eyelashes down to size.
don't let this ******* of a world tell you to settle for anything.
and when they tell you about icarus like a warning sign,
ask them "what good is a cautionary tale that doesn't **** up?"

Your way body entwined in mine
Makes me feel like everything is alright
That you and I will tow the line
Not live in constant fright

Serve the present
Leave the past
Forgive not resent
Then love will last

A canary in a coalmine
Has a dire fate
Love that's turned bitter
Must be saved before it's too late

Make love feel heaven sent
Send it too all of them fast
Let it linger like a scent
And cover area vast

I felt *****,
        worm down.
        but I stepped into the rain.


Every droplet had a meaning,
                 erasing, cleansing
moments that clung onto me.

Some were easy to dislodge,
              washing away before me.

Others were like soot, coalmine
                                                deep.

Only the deluge before the pause,
                                  awoke my life.

Something's never really clean away,
           but are dulled, only to await

the next deluge to cleanse me
                     that little bit more.

(This is not scary, short fiction and probably not fit for click-farming.)

Sometimes I’m serious, a girl can be serious. I have to write a lot of analysis papers in school (yeah, some people still waste their time and money like that). I’m leveraging that effort here. This is part* of an academic paper I’m writing on the world economy in crisis (this part covers world inflation and China/Taiwan). It’s a draft in progress and, in the spirit of brevity (my target ~1000 words) and avoiding the verbose, I’ve simplified the narratives and removed graphs, diagrams and footnotes. Here we go:

Have you noticed that the world seems less stable and that your spending power has eroded since 2009 and especially since covid? You aren’t wrong.

The Fed balance sheet had never been over a trillion dollars before 2009. However, from 2009 (the banking collapse) to 2022 (COVID) the Fed moved our balance sheet from sub-1 trillion to 9 trillion - pushing about 50% dollar inflation on the world. We ourselves experienced 8% inflation.

Everything in the world is priced in dollars. If you look at cross-world currency settlements, you might think, ‘well,  there's the dollar and the euro, the pound, the dirham and all these other currencies’ but there’s really not. There's only the dollar and the other currencies back-solve for how they pay for things in their own countries. That's the way the world works. So when we push 50% inflation (in dollar terms) to the world it affects everyone. Marginal currencies on the bottom of the financial structure collapsed. That would be Turkey, Iran (Iran controls Iraq now), Pakistan, Lebanon, and many many other currencies throughout the third world that hyper-inflated (became worthless).  

So when people say, “can we all just all calm down and go back to business as usual?” There is no easy way to go back to 2% world growth and stability. Inflation is an insidious, destabilizing force. Even China’s economy is in deep, deep trouble - they’re in the midst of a real estate crisis, a banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, a trade surplus decline (because of their threat to invade Taiwan), a debt to GDP crisis (much worse than ours) and now, Trump is threatening tariffs that could bring their net income to zero.

China has said many many times - too many times to doubt it - that they will attack and absorb Taiwan by 2027 - period.
Why would they do that? Aren’t our economies too linked? Knowing we will have to retaliate? We don't know what President XI Jinping’s calculus is. The CCP doesn't see the world the same way we do and, like Putin, we may not be dealing with someone rational. It’s like when Putin moved his blood banks, tankers, air force and army to the edge of Ukraine - some said it was just ‘saber rattling.’ No, when the blood banks and tankers are moved - you’re a ‘GO’ - it’s just a matter of time.

Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister now vilified for appeasing ******, wasn’t an idiot. He could not get his head around why ****** would plunge the world into war. They had lived through WWI and where was the profit in it - what reasonable reason was there for a world war in 1938? Let’s not make that mistake. Let’s take a moment and think it through.

Why is China obsessed with unifying with Taiwan? (1) History,  the Chinese, who lost the revolution that brought the CCP to power fled to Taiwan (2) The democratic government in Taiwan is four times as successful as communist counterpart. Their GDP is higher, their worker productivity is four times higher, they enjoy a higher standard of living, (3) they are a success story that demonstrates what China could be if it weren't hamstrung with the communist party. (4) they want to deny us the tech, (5) Their culture and world view is different. In China there are no human rights and no truly private property. There is only what’s good for (Chinese Communist Party) CCP power - the CCP is everything.

Why protect Taiwan? Taiwan Semi is the chip manufacturer for the world. They are the only maker of 2mn chips - the most vital, powerful component for the AI and quantum computing races. The country that wins those races will control information for the next century. The loss of that capacity is an absolute, existential threat to the security of the United States. The fact that the US failed to keep current in this area is a major *****-up decades in the making.

Messages of deterrence are flying. One reason we bombed Iran - where we had to drop munitions, with precision down three tiny shafts, covered by a mountain, from whatever heights - and we did it - was a message of deterrence partially aimed at China. Proof that America still has the best and most lethal military in the world - and we aren't afraid to use it. The US admiral who commands our indo-pacific forces recently said - publicly - that “if China thinks they're going to either blockade or engage in some kinetic conflict with Taiwan, we will turn the Taiwan strait into a hellscape.” Even a limited naval engagement with China, in the Taiwan strait, could cost thousands of American casualties (think Korean War people).

What kind of leverage does China have VS the us? Recently:
China has stopped supplying the US with rare earth magnets - those are critical to making EV vehicles run.
China is denying America processed synthetic graphite - a critical component in every single EV battery.
China is withholding the lasers used in fiber-optic communications from the US (they are the single world manufacturer).
Those are single points of failure for US technologies and we must ‘Manhattan Project’ our capacity for their replacement.

Why did the Trump administration remove subsidies for EV vehicles? First, it plays to his base but secondly, removing the subsidies slows demand until we can fill those gaps ourselves. Part of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ earmarks billions to start addressing the failure points mentioned above.

What non-military leverage do we have VS the Chinese?
We hold the upper hand. China imports 13 million barrels of oil every day,  9 Bs of natural gas every day, 40% of their food every single day.and they need access to the American dollar system to acquire those goods. They are a closed capital account - no one will accept Yuan as payment. That is a single point of failure for them.

Conclusions: We should let the CCP know - make it very clear - that if they attack Taiwan, the first thing we’ll do is take them out of the dollar system. Pushing that button would be easy - but it will hurt us too in the short run. It may be a better deterrent than those US carrier strike forces - which are still an option if it comes to that.
.
.
Songs for this:
Canary In a Coalmine by The Police
Invisible Sun by The Police

You speak of languages,
but the heart knows only one.
Believe me—if I say it in mine,
you will feel it in yours.
For you are not someone who’s one in a million,
you are the one who’s one in a lifetime.

I wish I could be the same for you.
Maybe I could have lived in your palm—
like one of the useless lines near your lifeline.
These hiccups I get while writing about you—
I hope they are true signs of missing you.

What more should I say?
Words are slacking out of my mind—
every time, every verse, every rhyme.
I confess the same old crime.
The church, the chapel, and the altar—
they only hear the prayers;
they never imprison me or ask me to serve my time.

Unforgiven, forbidden love—
I am only left with your memories,
like soot that flows through the coalmine.

Salutations—  
Your friendly neighborhood shaman.  
If you agree, I’ll set your worried mind free.  
Sit down a while, feel like a child.

Sing, moon child!
Sing for the night,  
Sing for the one you hold tight,  
Sing for the weary, distant light.

Don’t idle—  
Here’s your guitar, play a solo that lingers.  
You’re a demigod of sound,  
But your gifts have been underground.  
Time to awaken—  
The earth needs shaking.

I’ll lead you to a mystical void,  
Where clarity births choice,  
And through it, you’ll find your voice.

The shaman fades.  
You reach for your guitar.  
Three chords in—  
A glittering sphere appears, then bursts.  
She stands before you:  
The green-eyed girl from your dreams.

Hair like rivers, eyes like flame.  
She lifts your guitar, says, “Play again.”  
Your heart stammers, hands shake.  
You strum—first a hum, then rhythm takes.

You sing of sultry dances, second chances.  
Your fevered voice makes her lips quiver.  
You know you’ll kiss her—  
But will you remain once you learn her name?

You’ve found your voice.  
But first—a sacrifice:  
A white dove.

In the void,  
You devour the bird whole.  
Now you’re free from your past—  
Your resolve built to last.

You run to the next chapter—  
Stages and spotlights.  
You’ll be a star,  
Sing like a coalmine canary,  
Though your heart is weary.

You sing for the woman in your dreams.  
She is your voice, your only choice.  
Your rage becomes songs destined to hit.

I am the mage, the wizard.  
I have a stage—my sonic blizzard.  
A wall of sound,  
Where I’ll finally be found.

Six strings and a plectrum,  
A death wish, a spectral spectrum.  
I’ll unleash this rainbow in the dark—  
Tell your angels, “Hark!”

I’ll slay demons with speed,  
And conquer my need—  
To lay beside her  
In the quiet after the song’s ******.

The rhythm I keep is my heartbeat.  
Each chord I pick, each riff that kicks—  
Ends the siege of my spirit.

Winter is near—can you hear it?  
I’ll build a musical emporium  
To settle old scores,  
And hold a moratorium  
On lonely love, shattered by the dove.