JOHN GREY - POEMS

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline,
Chronogram and Clade Song.

​FOOL ME

The flowers are 
not the fool that I am,
rising on a February morning
to the crackle of sun
warm before its time,
thawing and lighting a room
not so long ago,
a safehouse for nightmares.
  
Nor are you the dupe,
merely the absence
it takes a moment or two 
to recognize
and those rays,
an ally a breath ago,
now shine the sheets
somewhere beyond loss.

Then comes the phone call,
your voice, more Indian summer,
as familiar as hunger, desire,
solitude, regret.
You ask “How am I doing?”
“Fine,” I say.
The sun agrees.
But the flowers keep their own counsel.

​

A DARKENING
​

A smart kid, they said,
but that was never the whole story.
Always up on that tar roof
listening to his tiny transistor radio.
Who remembers them?

Look up and you could see his face,
emerging from the smoke,
sometimes with that dumb kid, Ernie
(the one who stumbled through a plate glass window)
but mostly by himself.

Even come dark,
when mothers cried out for their sons
to come get dinner, he stayed.
Even when his shouted name
sounded like a warning, he stayed.
Because no one his own age
ever said “Come down from the roof.”
But kids didn’t understand,
didn’t figure it was incumbent upon them,

No, he remained up there,
filled with his imagination,
that gathering place of heroes.
Not for him, the ordinary creatures 
pushing and shoving on the sidewalk.

He stared at the weakening sun.
the bright syllabus of stars.
And then when the moon rose,
with that smell of car-exhaust and garbage in the air,
he praised his own impending flight.

He jumped
just as the lights blinked on
in the tenements
and his father coughed his way
through the front door
after a hard day at work.
The old man spat cigarette ash
in a puddle on the kitchen floor.
No more, no less, 
than a darkening sky would do. 

​

​THIS CHANGE

After all the huge stuff 
too much for my hands to hold, 
now the little things emerge. 

I peep under the winter crust of leaves,  
run fingers along the naked branch
in search of new bud speed bumps.

The songs of the warblers
are no longer in addition to something
but are sweet trilled entities in themselves.

My life lets go people
it had no grip on anyway
for what fits easily into the palm
of eye or ear.

Bark sheds nerve ends,
grass ruffles the heart,
earth guides the recycled trip
from old feeling to new footprints



​

​DUALITY DAYS

A man can be where he is and where he
is not. Likewise, my cat is crawling
out from beneath, the sofa, a mouse
in its jaw that it hasn't even caught yet.
A magician is pulling a rabbit out
of his hat while that same rabbit
merrily munches a carrot in its cage.
Traffic outside, every car home in
its garage. Boy holding hands.
with the freckled girl, with the TV star.
I kiss you on the lips the same moment
I kiss my grandmother on the cheek.
I pray to God and the New England Patriots
field-goal kicker simultaneously.
People of the inner city, do you hear
the wolf howl as I do? Creatures
of the deep woods, sorry if the cries
of starving children disturb you.
A man is silent with himself while
talking to his neighbors. He's regretting
what he's done though he hasn't done
it yet. And then there's today,
two different days at least,
and that's not including yesterday.

​

DAUGHTER BLUES 
​

Roseanne left the church 
I used to drag her to on Sundays 

and now what:
the road to hell and damnation

lost her soul
to the purple-haired nose-ringed girlfriends
she hangs out with at the mall

not forgetting
mister tattoo
the feckless aimless so called fiancé

and those clothes she wears -
the short shorts,
grubby t- shirts

I plead with her
to come with me
to the big tent,
listen to pastor Jimmy

last week,
he laid hands
on Betty Sue,
cured her warts

damn but warts
sure would suit Roseanne
right about now


​