New poems: John Grey

MANGO

Golden dangling fruit,

I pulled you from the tree,

not a harvest, but a seduction.

Your rind came away in my eager fingers,

and the amber juice

filled the creases of my palm,

like the sun’s own lotion.

 

One bite

and my mouth succumbed

to the mess of love,

down my chin,

on my lips,

in every pore of my defenseless tongue.

 

A wild too brief,

a sweetness compounded.

 

And just growing there.

Imagine that.

Like a lovely woman.

One not expected

but just standing there.

SMALL WORLD, EVEN SMALLER COUNTRY

 

So many people here.

I’m squeezed from all sides.

My lungs are in an uproar.

Breath can’t come soon enough.

 

The old are in residence.

The young are moving in

            in droves.

The rich claim their space.

There’s not enough left over for the poor

but they jam in anyhow.

The middle class lock hands,

stand on each other’s feet.

 

The straight are so crushed

into one another

they’re almost gay.

Democrats crunch Republicans.

Republicans squash Democrats.

They emerge, where they can,

as undecided.

 

And then there’s the ethnic groups.

And the religions.

Irish Catholics, Iraqi Muslims,

Jewish Jews –

I’m oozed from one to the other.

 

I’m in a steam press,

an iron maiden.

Irresistible force

meets immovable object.

 

Look around me.

If only I could.

Go where I want to.

Someone else wants it more

           

            It’s a Democracy at least.

            The voice from above insists.

            So I am a free man –

            but with a prisoner’s reality.

IN SERVICE TO YOUR EXISTENCE

 

my days flicker not for anyone          

in my bitter cold apartment

I see myself often

with metal reflected eyelids

they tap on my brow

always wanting something

maybe love

when it is all done pretending

 

oh well…

at least I found me a room

not far from yours

 

I wanted the flame but took the groove

this cracked path

where ghosts dwell

swiping left as if that meant leaving

 

I speak sometimes to everyone

but never I am still theirs

not because they remember

but because they don’t

 

I’ve learned to inhale with the lights

they pop and I am clean

but only in the flash

I forget my scent        

I am small but again I arrive

as a favor to a poem never returned

 

and one day you’ll drop that coin into the well

and I’ll wave not because I stayed

but because I have always been here

IN HONOR OF YOUR DEPARTURE, I’M…

 

getting abstract like my slurry tongue,

another path to fake feeling,

conveniently absorbed in alcohol

dripping down my shirt –

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i –

while she did what needed to be done,

packed her bags, got on a plane,

leaving me to the weirdest dream

where i’m the only one alive on the planet,

just me and a fridge full of beer,

and a hollow body

that i can pour alcohol into

until i become just like my father –

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i –

how many times do I have to say it,

i’m stuck here, forced to be myself –

(ah, if only you could see me now) -

gently foaming at the mouth,

erasing all miracles from my life,

turning a would-be scream

into another empty bottle

on the kitchen floor –

you and your rachmaninoff,

your duplicity –

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i –

so much for the honest mouth,

for listening so quietly –

ridiculous!

i’m here scribbling empty lines,

whistling rugby songs,

sucking wind,

studying the spider web on the ceiling,

hearing no word from anyone,

and wanting to be

anybody but the person I am –

so what else?

what’s wrong with me?

why must shame have such an undying thirst?

            fucked it all up

            didn’t i

MY WILD SIDE WALK

A moment ago I felt so sick -

from the cloistered wealthy on the east side

to poor people on the streets of south Providence -

the drop off is amazing —no, depressing -

and so cold —

because there is nothing to be dreamed of,

there is no chance to be seized, all is lost,

time drifts backward -

I am walking. That's what I do.

I'm trying to convince my sadness to relax.

No one here's read Dostoyevsky.

I translate "The Idiot" for them -

I am Prince Myshkin in sweatshirt and jeans,

making resolutions I'm too sick to keep,

risks my frailty won't allow —

and you wonder why I can hardly move?

I stare in the windows of shuttered shops,

A pigeon plops down in the gutter beside me.

A car backfiring will be the sound of guns

come evening.

And I'm sick again -

my body puzzles me,

late afternoon shadows evoke a corresponding sadness,

and smells — and the thump of a basketball

on a nearby court — and the face at the

third floor window of a tenement —

it sets the old world in a frame -

by the time any of it reaches me,

the lives of others

have mutated into misunderstanding.

I feel as sick as the blade of an ax

slamming against a throat — or and old tune

I struggle to know the words of—

or the whir of a cop car siren,

coming for some sick kid,

coming for us all.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review. 

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.