The Deep End
Couch Potato Strikes Back
Pessimistic Heaven
When the Steel Mills Departed
Last Will and Testament
While the World Burns
Her Eightieth Birthday
The Morning After She Leaves for Good
Becoming a Natural
A Human Dawn
The Capture of Persephone
Perfect Timing
Some things were never part of the curriculum,
or any book my parents slipped to me. My first James
Bond movie. My first restaurant meal that I was
expected to pay for. My first time begging my father
for driving lessons. This possibility was mentioned –
the first black kid I was ever friends with – but
not in any primer, not for or against. I had to smoke
a cigarette without any commensurate lessons. That’s
why I coughed like a grandfather. I was forced to sit through
a sermon and without the appropriate thumb-twiddling skills.
Should I embrace prog rock? I had no way of knowing.
What about Seinfeld? I was not schooled in its humor.
I had no idea when or even if I should laugh. I was
raised to believe that life consisted of mathematics,
English and social studies. In my early teens, science
and sex (from a purely anatomical perspective) were added
to life’s syllabus. But nothing on skinned elbows,
broken fingers. Not a word regarding how much hair
should cover my ears. No lessons in masturbation.
No film at eleven to go over the salient points of running
a finger down the soft skin of a girl’s right arm.
About 95% of life, give or take, I was unprepared for.
I went on dates unqualified. I was thrown into the deep end
of hanging out with friends. I cussed without guidance.
I fought some guy in the playground with zero preparation.
I even fell in love and watching my parents was no guide.
Puppy love, they called it. Nobody diagrammed it for the puppy either.
I was getting a guilt complex
from watching TV,
and I really would have turned it off,
given my self-respect a chance to recuperate,
except that, after what was hours
of flicking through the channels
with my trusty remote,
I finally settled on a program
that interested me a little,
something about how the American public
watch too much television for their own good
aha, I thought,
let's see how my guilt deals
with self-justification
Everyone dies –
the water-boy, the railway worker, the jailed.
People come to see you
like they’re rehearsing for your funeral.
Even the laughs
are just tears in good humor.
Look at the mailman.
He’s on his last legs.
And could be for the next forty years or so.
Or the cop.
Even if he makes it to his pension,
there’s no guarantee he’ll spend every last penny of it.
There really is a heaven for pessimists.
It’s called life. It’s called Earth.
Your neighbor is coughing himself into the grave.
The stranger you pass on the street
is harboring a tumor in their brain,
in their future or, worst of all,
in your imagination.
And how hard it was to get up this morning.
You did a painful imitation of a person
who can’t get up at all.
You stumbled around like a dead man walking.
Then you looked out the window
at all the other corpses as they performed
the ordinary tasks folks do
when in the grip of the inevitable.
Everyone dies.
Everything dies.
The world’s like a vast ocean.
People are flotsam and jetsam.
They bop up momentarily.
They do a little sinking.
The rest of the time they’re sunk.
I don’t care much for canoeists or small investors.
I enjoy dragging pulped newspapers out of rivers,
watching old news dry off.
And I’m not one for complaining about mosquitos.
I don’t believe in CEO’s
or the Federal Reserve Bank.
With dawn, I’m noncommittal.
But the thought of jerking Excalibur out of its stone
gives me hives.
I’m not beholden to the Hun or anything far away.
I get off on the decay around me.
There’s nothing like a pothole to stir my blood.
I refuse to listen to the Gotterdammerung
I don’t begrudge a man his daily cigar.
Or the bees, their hive, the township, its woman mayor.
I appreciate liberty but not when its L is capitalized.
And yes I snap limbs on the trail and could care less
if that disturbs you.
I’m not in favor of imported booze or money matters.
I used to enjoy earning interest. But now there’s
so little interest to earn.
I despise fancy quotations and churches.
But I put fallen birds’ nests back in their trees.
I don’t understand plumbing or fountains.
And I can’t abide patching jeans.
I think six pretty young women is about three too many.
And I stay out of banks with foreign names.
I’ve no interest at all in the Sahara desert
or what most folks see as sources of wonder.
But I am in favor of steel mills.
Especially since they left town.
Off his head?
no, off his flesh...
old man,
tapping brown finger,
lapping brown tongue
in cold tea -
a victim of his wobbly movement,
of the revenge he plans
but cannot act upon -
someone shows him a family tree
with his name high and to the right,
and many limbs below -
but the ones he remembers
have already rotted and fallen -
it's not the names that remain,
just the stink -
people say they love him
perhaps they do,
more likely it's what they're after,
so he pretends it's all providence -
they'll get whatever it is of his
that they have coming —
money, most likely -
spit if he could.
war has broken out
in a country with no running water
you choose drugs
over newspaper headlines
you comb your hair
to the intermittent tap
of the dripping faucet
those brown threads
crackle like an electrical fire
black walls give off light
blind rain bumps into
the bathroom window
you are as brackish
as a swell of tears
as heavy as a well-fed python
your brain is a pill case
only your nostrils retain memory
your nerves are questioned endlessly
they bear no legitimate answers
Too trembling, too distressed,
for any calming this day.
With every breath, new angst.
Even now, in the distance,
more worry boils,
will be here in no time.
Too much grief to imagine
wounds as shallow as a kiss, a hug,
a gift wrapped with a bloody bow.
All around me, agony in trenches,
worry on the march,
all of life at opposites,
afflicted meteors pounding into
my beleaguered planet.
Everyone out to get me,
all of one kick to the teeth,
knife in the back,
bullet to the heart.
Smile why don't you.
Uncork the champagne why don't you.
Pass the canapes.
Unleash the poisons.
Happy birthday indeed.
Oh how civilized the butchery,
the phoniness of every good wish
in their ranks.
So do I beat them back?
How can I
when every friend, acquaintance,
family member, allies with them.
Upset plies a spear of conversation.
Torment bids me pucker up.
Agony says, you gave us much,
we're grateful.
Gratitude, that pagan general,
he's their leader this cruel day.
The Morning After She Leaves for Good
My eyes are open but the rest of me is still shuttered.
One sense is working but I’m not so sure about the others.
And even what I see lacks for coordinates.
Then my nose kicks in. I can smell.
The air is fresh enough to pass for life.
I’d hate to be dead and this reassures me that I’m not.
What about the ears? Where are sparrows when you need them?
Luckily, a car rumbles by my house.
And suddenly, my hearing is so sharp
I can make out the brand and model by the sound it makes.
And is that a heartbeat I hear?
Maybe that organ is not as broken as I thought
Now if I could only move something.
But where are fingers, my toes, in relationship
to the few body parts that appear to be working?
I have an inkling that my brain needs to get involved
if the likes of rising from the bed and heading downstairs
to the kitchen are to happen on this day’s watch.
But, wait a minute, I think I just touched something.
And my voice-box is stirring. I don’t have to write this down.
I could give a running commentary on every step of my waking.
And yet, my eyes are wide open.
I don’t see anyone that I can tell it to.
The stream, incautious as a child, runs by
our tent, our fire, and then with a scramble
over stones, a twenty-foot fall followed
by a widening rush, flows into a lake.
On a cloudless sky, moonlight tamps
both flame and faces, gilds the restless
current, as movement by movement
in its realm becomes moment by moment in ours.
You are the one familiarizes me,
who evokes latent backwoods instincts,
now awakened by the touch of your fingers
and the constant toot of saw-whet owls.
and always, the roll, the lapping, of waters,
the breezes with not a hint of city in them,
a place where you reiterate what you have
always been, and I slowly become enough
of myself to couple with you, transfixed
by company as others are by light’s play.
The stream has such a restlessness,
always moving yet always there,
as fast as it rushes off,
it can’t take itself away from us.
We have that in us like we have
the granite of the rocks.
A permanence…so why not permanent love?
Sense of smell gets there first –
the perfume of another living soul.
And dawn’s not just light show
but human.
The hour is a woman
as much as it is brightness, warmth.
Sheets, like hands,
gravitate to softness.
and breath, moving on from sleep,
intermingles.
That’s why my mouth
links with kisses
before a word is spoken.
And my eyes are grateful that,
as their need arises,
they are wide open already.
The dream, just concluded,
was pleasant but it lied to me.
This may not be infinite
but it’s infinitely better.
A rumble in the earth below,
A shudder and a shake,
A crack, a fissure mountains deep,
A veritable earthquake -
Out bursts a chariot of fire,
Hades with whip to stoke
Four steeds as red as serpent's blood
‘Til nostrils disgorge smoke.
Meanwhile, the fair Persephone
So innocently rests
Upon green banks, beside a lake,
Plucks white narcissus crests
To wear in her curled locks of hair,
Suspecting not a thing,
Is suddenly swept from the earth
By that underworld king
And slapping flanks and roaring pride,
He steers his kidnapped prize
Down deep into a dark abyss
Before bewildered eyes.
A miracle, each crevasse heals,
All fractures disappear,
There is no evidence to prove
Hades was ever here.
another year gone
another year arrives
a fresh tomb
all that is new
is old
balloons float
so much begins
memory in rewind
bronzed shoes
burial ground
child speaks
man becomes citizen
dead reappear
living keep their distance
nothing for the one
but a festival for the many
a field
in the middle of everywhere
grass blades blowing
like handkerchief
some left
highway
vacation
space shrinks
seems as if they were just here
but no they weren’t
less and less of them in fact
burden is lighter now
a lot different here
a man fell in this very spot
while listening to a marching band
(not famous enough for a monument)
just a favorite tune of his from time to time
whistled by the public fountain
someone
no one
got it right
got it wrong
where people used to go
and where the come now
photograph on walls
of how it used to look
public view of the past
in a bubbling present
quiet nook
amid the remains of so many
remember them as roses
or boarded-up stores
silence
heard above the traffic
words spoken
to ghosts
time for an unlikely visitor
from the nether
waiting here
saying to myself
there was a time
and now it’s right here
just as it was then
as if we are to be
who we have always been
living here one moment
what happened here
the next
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.
