children – Cajun Mutt Press

Butterflies in Reverse

You’re a child again
Badass to pain-in-the-ass
To asshole…

Demanding endless
Expired entitlements
Blind to what
You’d once seen
Unaware the toll,
Sacrifices made on
Your behalf
Just like we
Did you back in the day…

Except we were kids
Born into it
And gained insights
We still hold…

Until we become
Children again
Or God willing
Fucking die before
Becoming assholes.

Things Running Through My Head at 3:38 a.m.

Laying awake, needing to piss for the third time, still rolling on that Indica edible I took to sleep along with a tramadol and a trazadone because my joints are all shot and wake me up, I’m in that perfect zone of the warmth where my body meets the bedding and the cool night air coming from the open window, and I’m wondering why I drank to ease my pain, and I drank to hurt myself, at the same times, on the same nights…

DNR

I handed my son a 12-gauge shell, No Burden, written on it in Sharpie/
One in the back of my bald dome when the time comes son/
Don’t lose that but I’m not ready to give you that old Remington 870/
Not just yet.

JD Clapp is based in San Diego, CA. His poems have appeared in Farewell Transmission, Wasteland Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Poverty House, Revolution John, Maya’s Micros/The Closed Eye Opened, and the Remembering Charles Bukowski Anthology (Moonstone, 2023). His chapbook, Underbelly: Grit Poems(Alien Buddha, 2024), was just released.

the peel will remember
the orange
—for my daughter Serena

old bells
playing at suns must

for waxing moons
or waning peals

the sound of
metaphor racing

cast spells
turning years into dust

and there we are
back again

to the time
when you were four

and we took pictures
of prairie dogs

at the fort worth zoo
you said their holes

were nostrils
in the nose of god

one of us never so happy
to be young

Paul Koniecki lives and writes in Dallas, Texas. He was once chosen for the John Ashbery Home School Residency. His poems feature in Richard Bailey’s movie “One of the Rough” distributed by AVIFF Cannes. His books are available from Kleft Jaw Press, NightBallet Press, Dark Particle Press, and Spartan Press. Paul proudly sits on the editorial board of Thimble Literary Magazine.
His latest, Go Fast – The Trixie Racer Files, is soon to be out through Between Shadows Press.

Tag: children

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 06/28/24

Butterflies in Reverse

Things Running Through My Head at 3:38 a.m.

DNR

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 06/23/21