New poems: John Grey

ANOTHER TIME

 

He’s from another time.

That’s why he’s smoking

his third cigarette.

That’s why one tiny light

draws you to him

even in the thick of darkness.

 

His was the body you imagined

Now with your touch,

a tingling reality sets in.

Your wayward mind

finds direction in your fingers.

 

You think of how desire

is a small room,

just enough space for two.

And a cigarette is a gentle heat

compared to the flame

that builds inside you.

 

Yes, he’s from another time.

He reads poetry…

to himself

but also out aloud to you.

And there’s a softness to his voice,

a reassurance that, once begun,

good things will continue.

 

He’s from another time, yes,

but so are you now.

You’re shed of the lonely hours,

alive in the shared ones.

 

And when he closes his book,

when the ember of his cigarette dims,

you understand that the light you followed

was never his alone.

It was the flare in your own chest

finally given oxygen,

finally burning steady.

 

 

 

OPENING UP A BOOK OF ART

 

Alone in my apartment, no company but a

reading lamp, the book fell open at The Scream,

A face stretched wide, not in pain exactly,

but in the moment before pain perpetuates.

I’d seen hell before -Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen –

but this was different. No antichrist in a cradle,

no devil in disguise. Just a bridge, a sky

hemorrhaging orange, and a figure who knows

too much and cannot un-know it. Strangers strolled

behind him, unaware of the rupture in the air.

I’ve felt that rupture. The woman in the grocery

aisle herding four young brats. The homeless

guy bullied by cops. Once you’ve seen the scream,

you start to hear it everywhere - in the rustle of leaves,

the tautness of a forced smile, the ringing of

church bells, the old lady arguing with the

young girl at the cash register. It’s in every

silence, every noise. A sky about to bleed. A face

on the verge of eruption. The dread of being human.

The sudden scream. The incumbent scream.

Two hands at the ready yet to weak to hold it in.

 

 

 

 

 

MOVING THE HIVE

 

She is my baton,

a queen, buzzing in my palm.

 

Workers follow,

not as many

but as one,

much but to instinct’s satisfaction.

 

I have made for them a hive,

a citadel of comb and bloom.

I delicately place

the queen within.

The workers thicken around her.

 

I listen in on their conversation:

 

It is summer. The sky is clear.

The sun is a wound

we have learned to love.

 

Soon, we will make honey

from everything that

has tried to break us.

 

 

 

 

 

ALOFT

 

sky-bound,

aloft like a balloon,

away from you,

one light,

 

one winter,

but what’s the chill

compared to

your cold stare,

 

and your painted

war-like face,

angry lips,

nostrils of fire –

 

to the stars, I go,

to the dawn, the morn,

the horizon,

whatever has no hold,

 

out of hearing,

silence for language,

just enough wind

to buffer, not despise me

 

 

 

 

 

MISTER RESTLESS

 

I leave this place

thinking I need

to be somewhere

though I have no idea

where I’m headed.

 

But I’m on the move,

that’s the main thing.

I don’t turn around.

I don’t even look back

over my shoulder.

It’s not as if I have

somewhere to be.

But I do have

somewhere to leave.

 

I’ve got these

perennial itchy feet,

this restless mind,

this distaste for even

the most temporary

of permanence.

 

So it’s goodbye

whoever you are,

farewell your life,

your ideas,

your memories,

your passions,

your likes and

your loves.

 

I’ll be elsewhere

before you even know it.

That’s how I am.

I fear commitment.

To another person.

But, more so,

to the ground

I’m standing on.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly..

John Grey: New Poems

 

SUBWAY SAX

 

He’s the sax man

of the subway,

back to the wall,

sound facing the commuters.

 

His eyes

are passing shadows

as his instrument 

blows through 

and sometimes over

the surrounding babble.

 

No one hears him

in the way he’d dreamed

when he was younger.

This is no concert hall,

just an underground cocoon.

The crowd is no audience.

They’re waiting for a train.

 

They don’t know

Sonny Stitt from Stan Getz,

Cannonball Adderley 

from John Coltrane.

 

And, as folks occasionally

drop coins into his cup,

they’ve no idea

what it takes for 

a musician like him to survive.

 

He plays because 

there is no other way to live

They move on 

figuring there has to be.

 

 

 

 

FROM THEN TILL NOW

 

Our first apartment was 

a tiny kitchen, a cramped bathroom

and a bedroom the size of a coffin. 

 

We ate off packing crates.

Our bed was a hand-me-down futon.

 

Now, we dine on shiny Formica.

We sleep on springs and linen.

 

She’s proud of her zip code.

I’m best friends with our mortgage.

 

Her dreams can take a break

now that we live some place 

she’s always dreamed of. 

 

I lie awake staring at walls, the ceiling.

I love the way they keep their distance.

 

 

 

NEIGHBORHOOD STROLL

 

garden and hedge,

orchards and fenced fields –

 

they are the lesser nature

for my minor Wordsworth –

 

strolling a path

that crosses a one-block park –

 

a few random oaks

fill in for forest –

 

a squirrel takes the time

to not be a bear 

 

 

 

AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD

 

I clearly

remember

 

someone telling me

 

though I can’t

remember who

 

that my childhood

had it all wrong

 

and that 

the Indians 

were the good guys

 

and it was

the cowboys

who were bad.

 

It was just

after I had

defended 

an imaginary fort

against an imaginary

Apache war party.

 

I then 

pretended to shoot

the kid 

who told me this.

 

The press

were the enemy

even then.

 

 

 

 

YOUR FAST GUY

 

His glove compartment

is stuffed with speeding tickets.

 

He collects them like...

you bite your thought like it's a tongue,

before the word "women" slips out.

 

He accelerates that convertible

on a straight stretch of highway

even though you beg him to slow down.

 

Your feelings, his needs,

and only one steering wheel.

Will it always be like this?

A crash? A breakup?

Blood or tears –

or even both.

 

He's going even faster.

Your heart plays ping pong 

with your throat.

You love him,

but not at this speed.

 

Finally, he stops, 

parks by an overlook.

"Lovely," you both say,

he for the dramatic scenery, 

you for the stillness.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review and Lost Pilots. Latest books: Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

New Poems: John Grey

Carnival Dancer

 

She’s not so much a dancer 

as someone who grows lither,

less inhibited with the music.

It’s her gift to strangers,

on a street, intermittently lit,

in contrast to the deep black of her hair,

the eye-liner,

propped by lips blood-red as cherries,

waving her chrysanthemum,

castanets clicking like cash-registers

to the strum of fat guitars.

 

Crescent moon, warm evening,

from doorway lamp to doorway lamp,

then tracing, with dark fingernails,

the electric spark of the riverbank,

flaunting the knife strapped to her thigh,

lovingly retrieved from its hiding place,

the perfect prop for a move

as sinfully graceful as eleven at night, 

with occasional laughter, an odd trumpet,

all part of the costume.

 

Cat’s eyes, locks plastered down the middle,

cheeks powdered, from plaza to narrow street,

she can draw on public sex

she has never used in private,

eyes the families 

that come out once a year,

feel, in watching her,

the erotic shiver of the city.

Gutter Man

 

Nothing like pools of last night’s rain

for some breathtaking views of your reflection

and good times had by all

rippling in water.

 

And you live nearby with your mother

though you’ve forgot where exactly

and sleeping is sleeping 

whether on a bed or in the gutter,

 

though that’s no ceiling 

but a cop standing over you,

all in blue, with a face 

where the moon ought to be

 

in the first rays of daylight,

and his gun keeps materializing 

on his right hip – bang! bang! bang!

wait a minute…that’s your head. 

Getting Back There

 

You leave the city,

don't stop driving

until the land flattens out

and farms fall into view.

You're on course for the rural heart

of the country,

miles of straight white fences,

cornfields stringing gold from silo to silo,

town to town,

RD numbers and wooden mailboxes

carved with a family name.

Forget the droughts,

the miserable yields, the vampire bankers

and the unforgiving commodities market.

You sense something as pure

as a scrub clean in a porcelain tub

under a sloped ceiling,

a star-tippled skylight.

You reckon on a homeliness

as beckoning as a sit on a porch

in late afternoon, at the dimming of the sun,

cured by wind-borne farmyard smells.

You're geared to such delights

as early morning scouring a barn for eggs

or leaning on a fence,

watching a tractor work the land,

or crows hobnobbing on a power line.

You get here

just as farmers are down to their last dime,

can't wait to get out.

And wives, as bruised as the earth,

can no longer hold back.

And the backs of sons are bloodied

by the strap..

And a daughter,

looks out the window for city lights.

sees only stars,

those sparkling betrayers of distance.

It's how it's always been.

It's how it never was.

Congratulations, you've made it.

Congratulations, you can't tell the difference

Rainbow

 

It's up to you now, Laura.

I've suffered through the storm,

 

the nearest thing I know to divine judgment.

You promised rainbows. Show me.

 

No, not some of your buttermilk pancakes.

Or even that wine you've been saving.

 

I want my prism of droplets refracting and reflecting

the white light of the sun.

 

Don't screw up your face like that.

Stare out the window for me.

 

Find me that diaphanous spectrum.

There are colors out there surely

 

and brighter, lovelier than peacock feathers.

You think you're so clever bringing me food and drink.

 

But I can't taste my way clear. A forkful of that,

a sip of this - where's the awareness?

 

I've been bullied by the sky.

It's not up to you to make amends.

 

Just describe the brilliant hues of the rainbow to me.

And how they fill up time and space

 

Or float out ahead of the body, touching everything.

Let me know that they have our hearts, our souls.

 

And, oh yes, make sure

they're willing to defend them.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

New Poems: John Grey

A HUSBAND’S PERSPECTIVE

 

Cake of soap, 

wedding ring, 

gold filling,

            so much to be amused about

            and, for having the blood sucked out of me,

there is a charge:

            don’t spill the ash,

            beware the stain –

for your concerns,

there is no comeback –

            just my flesh, my bones,

            the scars where you can see them,

            the scars where you cannot –

a doctor listens to my heart,

the enemy that I love

takes pleasure in its pain,

pain in its pleasure –

            oh my God.

            my Lucifer,

            your red hair

            is both the color

            and the cause

            of where I burn -

and your green eyes

are both hugs and punches,

            while your mouth

            works both miracles

            and their opposites –

in the same face,

the charmer, the brute,

the whisper and the shriek,

the most valuable and the fool’s gold –

            as I said,

            there is a charge,

            one you sometimes

            give back

            as a refund,

            or toss back

            as a bomb.

 

 

 

 

ON A MISSION

 

as I grow I just 

never get finished

with the sun and tides

as a five-way street

becomes an obsession

before I die -

 

between the starlight 

brushing my cheek

and the course 

of these whole changes,

I’m swapping out all I know

for found wisdom –

 

I’m never finished

so don’t ask me

for this is my entire life

and I’ve not 

time enough for yours –

 

all this unlearned stuff

I’ll tell myself 

before I go public

and I’m not ready…

tired some times

eager at others

as I peer in the cracks

of walls and clouds

and ancient earthquakes

for a blessing 

of some fair-weather truths

but mostly a concoction

of all lies –

 

 

 

 

 ED

 

He has no time for the internet,

what he calls, “words on screens.”

He misses magazines, 

like Life, like Saturday Evening Post,

and especially the car ads,

not cheesy photographs 

but paintings, lovingly detailed,

of a Hudson or a Buick,

their colors bold red or sky blue,

fenders, hubcaps, hood ornaments,

gleaming veins of silver.

 

He remembers the renderings

of Caddies from the fifties,

cars that seemed to stretch 

from sea to mountains,

shark fins to air-brushed front bumper,

and headlamps like lighthouse beacons.

 

Nothing pops off the page anymore.

Vehicles still fill the roads

but no longer the imagination.

Once he was every driver

cruising the highways,

flying by giant billboards,

top open, breeze blowing,

fluttering flat cap on his head.

As for the lovely women 

in the passenger seats,

he married each in turn.

 

He doesn’t understand

that the kids with their cell phones,

I-Pads, tweets and Facebook,

are making their own nostalgia,

the times of their lives 

for future years to look back on.

 

To him, there’s only one past,

only one man missing it.

 

 

 

 

NO ALTERNATIVE

 

In my alternative history,

I’m not Napoleon nor General Custer,

but merely husband number two

of some madwoman named Lucy

who clubs her spouses on the skull

as they’re bathing,

holds their heads under

as they struggle to recover from the blow.

 

I don’t conquer other lands,

vanquish their armies

nor am I slaughtered  

in an ill-considered skirmish

at Little Big Horn.

But I do make the newspapers.

Too late, in this case,

so save the clippings for my scrapbook.

 

I much prefer my current life,

anonymous as it may be.

I can take a bath without the threat

of it being my last time in the tub.

Not that everything’s serene in the household.

My wife is angry with my bad habits,

bursts into the bathroom waving

a smelly, unwashed sock over my head.

In its alternate history, it’s a hammer.

 

 

 

 

OFF THE BOOZE

 

I go by the bar

on a wave of extreme self-control,

keep my nose to the sidewalk.

I’d like to have my halo now please.

 

I keep moving on the straight and narrow

and that’s where you come in

taking me aside like a cop many times

and saying, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

 

So I’m headed to the restaurant

where the two of us will meet up

and I’ll order…no I won’t…

no beer no whiskey, no mixed drink,

 

just water from the tap for me.

Then you arrive 

and the meal comes.

And the conversation goes on

between forkfuls. 

 

And all through my lasagna

I’m thinking how a hot toddy

would finish the night off exquisitely

But I order a decaf coffee instead.

 

So what if my knees are shaking,

my hands are trembling,

my throat is crying out for salvation. 

“Keep this up and you’ll 

 

feel like a new man,” you add.

The truth is there a lot 

of new men I could feel like

and only half of them are unwillingly sober.

 

Now all I need do now

is find one of those who loves you for it.

 

 

 

 

CAN’T KEEP A GOOD MAN HANGING

 

Matt’s alive and well I believe,

living some place in New Jersey,

selling second-hand cars. 

The stories of him hanging himself 

in a motel room in Colorado are patently false.

That was just his idea of the ultimate selfie,

a snapshot with death.

But he left the scene once the cops were done

with his body.

That’s when he hitchhiked across country,

just like in the old days.

 

Matt always had a convincing tongue

so I expect he’s doing just fine  

passing certifiable lemons onto the unsuspecting.

Didn’t he sell us all that line about

how depressed he was, how the drugs 

didn’t do it for him any longer.

We all bought it. So we wept.

But that was before his stint 

at “Burke’s Guaranteed One Owner 

Reconditioned Dream Cars.”

 

He doesn’t call or send emails.

We figure he’s too busy fooling

all those New Jerseyites.

Like he fooled us with those grim messages.

But so what if he laughed behind

that hand that tied the knot.

That was Matt,

just the thing he’d do 

if he was contemplating a career change.

 

His sister came by,

asked if anyone had any interest

in taking his old guitar or his vinyl collection

or the box of all poetry he wrote.

She spent an hour or more crying on my shoulder.

Must have bought a crappy car off him, I reckon.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly..