John Grey

John Grey is an Australian born poet, playwright, musician. US resident since late 70’s. Latest book is What Else Is There

 from Main Street Rag. Recently in Agni, Drexel Online

 Review and Arkansas Review with work upcoming in

South Carolina Review, Hubbub and Sojourn.

 

  

BARE FOOT BOY

Your shoes and socks come off.

The water's tempting, ripples like the

sun's dipping its fingers of light, but it's

sure to be chilly and you can't swim.

So you watch: the leaping fish, a turtle

basking on a log, an egret on the far shore

nibbling in the shallows, two mallards,

shiny green male, dull brown female.

But no you plowing laps like Johnny

Weissmuller, the depth, the distances,

surrendering to your stroke. No Jane

either, to take in your dripping arms or,

share an underwater ballet.

Maybe if you just dunked a wet toe

or floated your hand atop the surface,

you'd be no lord of the jungle but maybe

it'd mean strike awe into the tiny green frogs,

the dragon flies, the midges, the minnows.

But no, they'd just swim or fly out farther

where you can't reach them, where,

for all your brainpower, it takes a strong kick,

a smooth freestyle, to leave your human shore.

It's sunset, time to leave. On go the shoes and socks.

Perfect protection but from what?

THREE A.M.  

If this city had gates, they'd be closed by this.

The market place would be nothing but heaps of rags,

a carousel of swirling papers.

The high-rises, haunted by ghosts of the cleaning crew,

would flicker like fading cigarettes,

And if the streets had bolts, the slamming of them

still would echo in my footsteps on the sidewalk.

And if time could close its doors,

it would shun me from all sides.

Speak to God, somebody whispers,

but He's gone back to the sky,

and there's a ceiling to this world

despite what the stars may tell you.

 

HOOKED TO THE MACHINE  

Dialysis... reminds me of a telephone.

The impure is calling from a dark rainy street

to a parental machine... get me out of here.

Ted is oblivious, drifts in and out of sleep.

For a moment, I'm wishing

there were such hookups to the heart

but then it hits how much I value

my movement above all else, even love.

Meanwhile, Ted must dream

if he's to get away from here,

dream of deep woods perhaps, wildflowers,

thick grassy fields, mechanism all

but their minute gears and pistons hidden.

His soulless savior chums on into the night,

sucking up waste, convincing his kidneys

they're organs after all.

Meanwhile, the apparatus is telling me

he needs more than what's inside him to live.

Emotion has already been down that road...

and now the body also.

 

THE SCISSORS

It's the night of the urge

for cutting into pieces.

It's the end of the sun

so why not the end

of the letter or the poem.

It's the man as stripping blade,

as battering tool,

as ultimate divider

into half a word,

half a meaning,

not so much muting voice

as making it unintelligible.

It's the night in which

too much civilization

has made me a savage,

where the connection

to people, to places,

to incidents,

is snipped into

departments of nonsense,

districts of dismembered sentences.

If I ever decide

to put them back together,

it will be from disjointed pieces,

scraps the wrong way up,

like the scissors that

are love,

like the paper that is life with you.

 

MORNING AFTER  

There is the elm,

shimmering in sun's oil,

dappling the inn roof,

a tenant for a hundred years,

and you on your honeymoon morning.

How solid that trunk, you sigh,

as you sit up in bed,

tapping its hardy bark with your eyes.

But how casual its branches, leaves,

rubbing against the window.

The room is hospital white

and you feel like a patient,

drugged and nauseous.

Your new husband slips in beside you,

about to dose your breathing in more ether of love.

Can you die of last night, you wonder.

Outside, the elm,

ten thousand nights of sex

packed into its solid wood,

turbulence ringed into grain,

memory steeped in foliage.

Beneath the sheets,

a kind of seed scratched into skin

with his hard tongue.

Can anything grow from fearful pleasure?

Last night, so dark,

you couldn't see a thing out there,

his body atop yours

like a bandage barely covering a wound.

Still, but for him,

there would have been a bloody void

between your nakedness and stars.

The tree fills it now

in lieu of your surrender.