The Winner of the Donut-Eating Contest
Time in the Sunroom
The Death of Dylan Thomas
He and She
Trash Pickup Morning
On a Late November Morning
The Names
Tom and I Return to the Old Fishing Hole
Last
Truancy
Ode to Fats Domino
Methods of My Waking
The Winner of the Donut-Eating Contest
The human donut spirit
the church of 15 minutes of fame
the open mouth
of a freaky-looking mad cow guy
how in rapid cud chew
he took away all sweetness
from the world
as his eyes swelled
and his slaughter-teeth oozed filling
devouring cruller and old-fashioned
as if they were his audience
a child’s ten thousand dreams
find their they way to his stomach
as he celebrates his victory
with a Boston cream belch
he wipes his lips with the winner’s check
swallows so much awe and disgust
that we are all donuts now.
It's at the point
where love must make way
for duty.
That's why I hold
your leathery hand,
whisper words into
your listless ears,
deal dully with the fact
that, to your mind,
my fingers could be anyone's.
You're so blind now
you cannot see
the sun streaks
on the window,
the kind that
eyes are continually
drawn to,
that illuminate
the learning years,
but are powerless
in the forgetting.
We part
on the usual meaningless terms,
as you're wheeled back to your room,
and I step out into the brightness,
the clarity of thought,
of detail in all directions.
Obliteration of self, annihilation,
eliminated, extirpated completely –
this man out of time offered no sanctuary,
not even alcohol, nor a woman’s regal arms -
unfulfilled and yet yearning,
holed up in his last retreat,
primal terror passed over by spirit,
the world conspires to make rejection absolute –
and now, an argument with fate,
against his sentence, to the last breath,
must be satisfied with being remembered,
he hears in himself, and it’s repeated elsewhere.
I’ve been low, she says.
as low as the Challenger Deep.
I know it like I know my big toe.
But I thank my fall from grace.
I’m now the queen of all perspectives.
He hears the music in him.
But his broken hands can’t keep him satisfied.
The guitar gathers dust.
His mind needs restringing.
She’s abandoned the mirror,
moved into her own shadow.
She hangs out where it’s too dark
for people to see what she’s up to.
It’s nothing.
He rides horses in his sleep,
gallops them unmercifully.
Nothing in his head is safe
from the pounding of hooves.
She watches poisons percolate.
And the useful arc of thunderstorms.
She plucks out the lowest of the hanging fruit,
in this case, her right eye.
He despises sunrise.
The heat’s responsible for
so many atrocities.
The light burns his vision.
She likes to break things,
scatter the pieces.
She gets violent by tolerating nothing.
Like the learned. The blundering.
He rolls the word merciless
up in his tongue.
And the idea of being tricked and sold.
Cruel is another one.
So is drama.
She says “love”
but she really means “savagery.”
Celebrates her diminished outlook
with the usual radical surgery.
She dreams of this lightning-kindled bush
that appears like a sign from God
but doesn’t say a damn thing.
He’s a sloth resting on a tiny time-bomb.
And yet too human to believe he won’t explode.
But why move?
Why not just primp and plod?
She yokes herself to the darkest thing going.
She sleeps without guarantee,
craves the malignity in softness.
He’s afraid the curtain will rise,
expose his long face to all others.
He’s unprepared for the universe.
And the bandage on his heart is coming loose.
She sits still and naked
like a moment of truth.
Her face is granted an extension.
She’s in the mood for strangulation.
He bleeds acid, seeks petrification.
The earth’s rotation
has eternity in its sighs.
Like him, it’s bound to be disappointed.
They occupy the apartment next to me.
I borrowed some sugar from them yesterday
and this is what I learned.
Every Wednesday,
right on daybreak,
giant metal hands
reach down from
the garbage truck,
grasp his recyclable bin,
tip it into the steel belly
of the loud grunting beast.
Every last empty bottle
of wine and whiskey and vodka
clatters and clunks,
can be heard throughout
the neighborhood.
He’s normally a secret drinker.
But, on Wednesday mornings,
he’s not.
Man splitting wood at dawn
strikes hard and often
with his blade of steel
on a cold, cold morning
at the last of November,
stacks the lumber,
like he lines up the children,
in the early evening,
only these are for the fire
and his brood slip
reluctantly into bed,
as hard weather
moves in from the north,
and the need for warmth
is more immediate even
than the want of love…
thump, thunk, crack,
sun flat-lining in the sky,
weary eye-rubs
in a second floor window.
Maria one day,
i.e. athletic prowess,
and can you believe,
Caitlin the next.
except, as a princess
saying no,
giving me a shiver,
a curse,
then Artie’s daughter,
product of his penis,
should've known
how could I not?
for nothing he ever said
or fathered
ever came true,
then Jenny in my ears,
Rhonda’s too high arc,
Lisa doing me one better,
Sonja on time
and me late…late,
Gail much too young,
her first words,
“none of you,”,
Bernie, on and off homeless,
oracular,
Katie, pale and oblivious,
Debbie, as hollow as panpipes,
Shona, about as patient as the wind,
and Carla’s famous speech,
“please don’t make me,”
Andrea popping up
through birthday cake frosting,
Julia tipping my porch chair,
Angela, proud and vain
and Meredith slyly nudging
me back to shore,
Rachel’s serpent's tongue,
Suzanne’s embryonic musical,
Kim’s not believing
a single word I say,
so I said no,
Rita sometimes calling me,
Gwyneth, the heart of sorrow’s marrow,
Nikki, more spit in my face
than on my tongue,
Connie, too caring of the future,
when whatever I said
was only for the present –
yes, I get confused,
all these women,
I’m like a hippo
trying to drive a bus.
Tom and I Return to the Old Fishing Hole
Here's the river
glad to flow
after all this waiting
and the rock
that suddenly reappears
after sitting out the nineties
and there's the first light
breaking through the trees
for the first time
in twenty years.
Here's the memory
that unravels years,
that has such resistance
to all this motion,
that decorates this set
the way it was
when we were seventeen.
We walk down this trail together,
chatting the history,
laughing the sound back
in the world.
We've already canonized the town.
Next shrine is the fishing hole.
We're remembering what we
caught back then.
How the heart still
reels it in.
Go back forty years.
High school.
The hundred-meter dash.
Ready. Set. Go.
Ten kids in the race.
You came tenth.
Ahead of you,
the winner raised his hands.
The second and third place-getters
both lunged at the tape
but too late.
The guy who missed the start
came fourth.
Tryers filled the fifth and sixth position,
strugglers, the seventh and eighth.
You figured for sure
that you’d get there ahead
of the slowpoke who made it
home in ninth position.
But you were doomed to disappointment.
Nobody noticed him.
They pointed at you.
The shame.
The embarrassment.
No way you could tell yourself,
“At least I tried.”
You did try and look
where it got you.
Had you thrown the race
on purpose
you’d still have ended up
in the same spot.
You learned a serious
lesson that day.
If you were going to make
it in life,
you’d have to rely
on your old man’s money.
Some guys cut class,
hide out in the thick woods
at the far side of the pond.
They’re loaded up
with cigarettes,
some lifted from
a convenience store,
others pilfered from
a parent’s bad habits.
Each boy finds
his own level
of inhaling and exhaling,
from the one or two
who’ve been taking a drag
since early childhood
to the newbies,
the kid’s whose lungs
are startled by the intrusion
and show it.
If girls could see and hear them,
they would witness
a pressing need
to cough and swear,
laugh and blow smoke rings,
to hang with their own kind,
to be men before their time.
And when the smokers departed,
they’d leave behind
a mess of butts, matchbooks and empty packs.
Most girls would be repelled.
A few would someday lie down among them.
He was fat
and fingers were studded with diamonds.
From New Orleans, he was,
and a smile like an elevated road
with too many trucks run over it.
And his skin was the color
of good growing soil.
But his hands were so nimble
on those piano keys,
it was as if the bulk of his body
was of a different person,
that soul and head
and a lifetime of dexterity
were parked between nails and knuckles.
Walking, he was a heart attack
but seated on that stool,
he’s living yet
despite what I read in the obituary.
“I want to Walk You Home,”
“Blueberry Hill,’ “My Blue Heaven.”…
he could play them defter
than I can name them,
while his jaw moved enough
for the lyric to unfold,
not too high, not too low,
but kind of cradled
and gruffly sweet.
There was a rumor the hurricane got him.
But folks found him safe.
Waters subsided.
Fats was a-moving
in the opposite direction.
I've been woken by alarms,
the jangling bell, sometimes the music,
Manilow to Megadeth.
And I've been roused by trashmen
on a Wednesday morning,
rattling the cans, the bottles,
tossing the empty bins across my lawn.
Street-sweepers have done in my dreams.
An ambulance is a popular choice
for random morning killjoy.
Dog barks have got me up,
same as cat cries and even
the hacking song of blue jays.
There's been times when
nothing more than the overpowering need
to be out and doing
has jerked me out of sleep
I've been shrugged awake.
I've been screamed awake.
Once, I was stirred to life
by a booming voice
proclaiming that from this day forth
there'd be peace on earth
and good will towards men,
forever and ever and ever.
No, wait a minute,
that was the day I overslept.
It took the neighbors next door fighting
to revive me.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and California Quarterly.
