A PARENT SPEAKS OUT

by John Grey

Beware stray dogs, don't you know that.
Okay, so I harped long and often
about avoiding strangers, but I meant
to include the mangy cur, the dumb
luck mutt scrambling in and out of
traffic, and especially the brute with
teeth bared and mouth foaming.
No, what I really meant was
be wary of the cute, fluffy stray,
the one that rubs against your leg,
looks up with sorrowful eyes,
skewers not only your childhood
fascination with all things small and living
but even borrows from your future feelings,
waylays you with how you will someday be drawn
to anything so unabashedly loving.
In other words, if in doubt, just
keep clear of anything and anyone.
And, whatever you do, don't carry it home
or let it follow you,
For now, make believe we are all you'll ever need.
More to the point, we already live here.

IN THE FLOOD

by John Grey

The river overflows.
Streets are hopeless.
Town planners leave for higher grounds.
Families resume life in their attics.

I prefer to be the one man wading
from the park gazebo
to the bench outside the hardware store.

My father was always well prepared for floods.
He said, even when it’s dry,
the ground we stand on is nothing
but floating cars and carcasses.
Keep your head above water
and don’t touch anything electric,
and you’ll get by.

I’ve always heeded his advice.
Up until now,
all that’s been missing
are the circumstances.

LAURA WATCHES

by John Grey

He's in the garden
pulling wings off butterflies.
crushing bugs,
frightening tiny frogs.
Four years of age
and he learns as much by cruelty
as by wonder.

Will he someday bruise a woman
to test love's limits?
Will he stomp down on others
to reach a higher rung?

It's just a stage kids go through,
says Joe.
Approaching likeness,
a father find his tongue.

SEGMENTS TO WHY I LOVE YOU

by John Grey

like a bookmark in your favorite novel
I count the words you've read
since the last time -
like the nails down your hidden blackboards
I quantify the unspoken screams

like the knots you tie
I follow the dreams
of your fingers
to their tight and binding ends -
like the bass notes
of the songs you hum
I'm there unsung but
holding up your broken tenor

like the bulb that blew
when you switched on the light
like the air between
the Venetian blinds
when you shut them
like the last breath
out of your lips
no longer air
no longer anything
I'm partial to what you deliver
and understand
what you send away

like the roads
you follow on the map
I'm thin as the blood
beaten from your heart -

THE FAMILY AFFAIR

by John Grey

Once again, my arm, swinging, waving goodbye,

already aches like an overused wing.

I have my roots to contend with,

the flight home to see who's getting married,

who's being buried, to kiss cheeks less lovely

than your own, to float through airless conversations,

dig myself out of embarrassing situations,

quell some feuds, rekindle others.

And my arm, of course, will be constantly in action,

hand-shaking, back-slapping, even knifing

if the appropriate back presents itself.

But that's my all, an evolving mix of fun and duty,

resolution and revolution, with the odd cookout thrown in.

The talk turns to pregnancies, babies, sicknesses, operations.

I sit back, imagine relaxing in your arms,

pressing deeper and deeper into your shadow,

as sea-breezes, warm and salt-scented,

flesh out our hair, ripen our breath.. .aaaaah.

Then someone is sure to ask me, for the thousandth time,

"What are you doing with your life?"

That's when I grit my teeth and think of you.

That's where my life comes in.

DIGGING IN YOUR GARDEN

by John Grey

 

Again, your head into

what already reeks of spring,

another cycle, around and around,

like breezes, as if roots at home

grow into yesteryear,

their business-like manner

centers in garden soil,

pushes the old dead out,

draws the new life closer,

as deeper and deeper, holes are dug,

dirt throws back down last season,

burrows itself in each descent

into that entangling tide of soil,

as you float though waiting flowers

already seeded,

through stones from a world

far down and gathered in,

pebble after pebble

gripped in your hands,

tossed aside, everything but

this tossed aside in face,

it's how gardening

left moonlight hanging,

moves that never learned

no longer moving,

blue eyes, now gnomes,,

other growing overdue,

once planted in rows

for random rain,

scented and soothed,

now happy that the heart's

still beating, still warm,

but taking root in botany, not love,

the pain hardly felt enough

to remember those chancy times,

when it wasn't just earthworms

that still wiggled when cut.

YOU’RE IN THE NEXT ROOM

by John Grey

I cannot see you sleeping      
but I hear you breathing.                  
The sound of you inhaling,
exhaling, is my companion.
I whisper to the oxygen
fueling your lungs.
i reach over and kiss
the gentle issue like
the slow bleed of air
from a balloon.

I lie down with the
unconscious things you do.
I walk with them
in the night forest,
show the buds on the
spring branches,
taut with waiting
for the dawn.
I promise the heave
of your breast
the first flower.

Your night noises
are beneath the open sky now.
stirring the starlight.
They break off a piece
of dazzling fire,
divide it into breaths.

OVERFLOWING YOUR BANKS

by John Grey

You say you flooded tears  
so where’s the brown water,
the swirls and eddies
up and down your blue carpet.
You want me to believe
your pain comes up to waist-level,
that the current’s too strong to swim against
and even wading is futile.
You say flood
and I think impossible swelling,
cars floating, coffins uprooted,
people on rooftops
with a few choice possessions,
not someone in a rocking chair,
face dry as moon rock.
I don’t hear a thing in your whining
about the barber shop boarded up,
farmers hustling cows
to the top of the hills.
Your life wants to believe
there’s no crops this year,
not a soybean, an ear of coin,
that the best way of moving on from here
is at the helm of a canoe.
It wants to hear how many died,
how many vowed not to return to this town.
A real flood and you’d be drowning by this.
A real flood and rescue would be one of my options.

FELLOW DRINKER

by John Grey

The man is spun into the world
by the bar-stool beneath him.
I'm not drunk like he is drunk.
My body and my head are still enjoined.
I'm not legs going one way,
mind drifting backward.
I don't see the hills above Montpelier,
the cows, the children tossing baseballs,
or young girls dipping toes in cold streams
while my knees give out
and my face slams against the sidewalk.
Waiting for someone as I am,
I'm just a little in my past.
And I know to drink just enough
to keep my bones in line.
Sure I see the hills, but the mirror
behind the bar's more clear.
And there's a few cows
but they're scattered among the gin bottles.
The bar-tender keeps the conversation going.
The baseballs whiz around his head.
And for every young girl felt up by the chill,
there's a lovely woman who'll be with me shortly.
But I order another drink
just in case she doesn't show.
My body's been this way before.
The sidewalk is on standby.

CHANGE IN LUCK

by John Grey

lime on the tongue
worm in the bottle
newspaper opened
in front of her
at the horoscope
of all places

nowhere
does it say
'you will get
horribly drunk
in some faux-Mexican bar
that calls itself
a cantina’

it merely reads
'today your luck
will change'

it's a week old newspaper
printed before her luck
changed back again

LIFE'S WORK

by John Grey

Disturbing my narrative,
the cat named Suzanne,
the sign broadcasting
sleepy motel rooms
to the speeders on the highway,
the boring conference,
the glittering disco ball.

I cannot move forward
if one-year-olds cry,
email pops up in my computer,
a slim body with firm breasts
shares the same elevator,
bees buzz,
a tattoo rises up from human flesh
in the shape of the devil.

Distractions are everywhere.
Is this what my life really is?
The sum of everything
that takes it away from itself?
I was hoping I could plot a straight line
but then a blistering hot wind intervened,
a sickness gate-crashed my blood,
it rained, it snowed, a crow landed on my windowsill.

The crush of people,
intersecting incidents:
the way ahead is leaving me behind.

YOU POEM

by John Grey

You're the reason
this is a poem
and not an essay.

It could have been
a short story also
but love prose
just doesn't
work for me.

It's not intended
to be a passionate poem.

For something in that line,
double click here
and you'll be
taken to my
earlier work.

And it's not one of
those longing, yearning,
epics either.

I've filed them
under adolescence.

This is just to say
love is
and requires no further
explanation.

And you are,
thankfully
as it turns out.

FISHING HOLE, FORTY YEARS LATER

by John Grey

I've forgotten their names.
Was there a Carl? A Joey?
I remember one had a mother
who always packed lunch for all of us.
Why can I remember peanut butter and jelly
but not even the faces
of the ones who cast their lines
like guitar strings,
one good strum of air from mine.
I can even repeat the jokes they told
though I couldn't repeat them here
What a strange fog of a past.
The taste, the filth, comes through
but not the people.

And nothing is more vivid than
the pride when we actually caught something.
Undersized river trout were
of trophy caliber to us.
I can see those sorry fish held up by their tails
as if it's only yesterday that
they bit into those conniving hooks.
But the fingers are a mystery.
The smug grins are ghosts.
The past is as welcoming as ever.
But now there's no one there but me.

SUNDAY MORNING WITH BILL AND EVA

by John Grey

The bell was ringing loudly
when Bill and Eva scrambled up the
hillside path toward the church.
They were the very tail
of the throng pouring in.
Ahead of them were glances this way, that way,
quick summations of just how good
was everybody's else's Sunday best.
He was still tucking in his shirt front.
She was already panicked that
her petticoat would show.
Sure, they had to keep their date with God
but it didn't do to arrive dressed for the devil.
They sat just as chatter turned to prayer,
and the preacher climbed the dais
to his waiting Bible.
Beyond the window, pigeons cooed
to the sermon drone
or waddled clear of boisterous singing.
And then the bells rang once more,
and people left in various stages
of comfort with their judgment day.
Bill and Eve led the pack this time,
he still fidgeting with his shirt,
she glancing down as if a stray
lace seam was a doorway into hell.
What a sight they made,
the couple, then the crowd
and, at the rear, the preacher
closing the church door.
An hour before, religion inhaled.
Now, it exhaled.

SISTER'S BOYFRIEND

by John Grey

Mr D. Always Mr D. We ate him with the roast
on Sundays. His shadow tucked us in.
Our every breath was at the bequest of his oxygen.

We were remarkable in no way. We caught
frequent colds, whined obsessively some said,
and cussed when pencils broke and dogs barked.

We were like iron filings brushed up by
the magnet of his name, his latest doings.
He was soon bigger than the sum of us.

He was the house we lived in, the gardens,
the lawn, the streets, the neighbors
We'd see a movie and he'd be everyone in it.

We'd pick up a newspaper, read nothing
but his stories. What ever happened to him?
May as well ask how did the moon

bloom up in the sky like an apple
hanging from its invisible bough -
his apple, his apple ripe and ready

to pluck and eat when we are on
our death-beds, our bodies mushy,
almost gravy, about to be sopped up

by the sheets and he's still massive
and muscular and handsome with a reach
and a dazzle to mix it with the stars.

We were just coffee stains on his shirt anyhow,
the nails he clipped that would have been
swept under the sofa or out the door

if we did not resist a little
by living these ordinary lives.
What did happen to him?

How could they have broken up so long ago?
Say his name now and her head shakes.
And it's not even his neck that does the shaking.

THAT TRAIN THROUGH OHIO

by John Grey

There's an annoyance
to its whistle,
the grind of its engine.
the rattle of its wheels,
that it has to come through here.
Why can't the coasts be closer
it seems to shriek,
as gray and sleek,
it slips by one more corn field,
one more silo, one more farm-house.
Just from the sound of it,
you can tell
it would prefer the
the tough grade over
the mountains to this.
Better the circling
back onto itself,
ten miles of track
for one mile of progress
than these long prairie stretches
where time and distance
parallel each other
until they drift off into a nothingness
as bleak, as blind, as any night.
This train can't see
you puttering in your garden,
can't feel the blush of your cheek.
It doesn't hear the birds beckon
or the horses whinny
or the ebb and flow of crying winds.
It cannot feel the thighs burn
or the sheets ignite,
or a head get the good news
from a wildly thumping heart.
Instead, the train roars off
toward the sinking sun
in the mistaken belief
that whoever it's not taking somewhere
is left behind nowhere.