Poems
by John Grey

 

Ray Describes The Current State Of Marriage

It's dark, quiet but for the fan hum.
I'm atop the sheet, she's beneath.
It feels like we touch but when was
her skin ever sticky cotton.
These days, it takes a heat (not ours)
to get us even this close.
But the narrative ends in drops of sweat.
And it's the fan, not the passion,
that flutters them away.
Everything changes the subject.
Sleep. The temperature. Those whirring blades.
The wants are different.
To be tired. To be cool.
To hear and feel the breeze
and not its mechanical third cousin.
And when it's light,
what do we do but make our own paths in a house,
assuring that they never cross.
She puts down a dish, answers a phone.
I slip on a CD, tap my toes
to a song that's a favorite just to me.
And she has recently discovered gardening.
Maybe that's the man she wanted all along.
The one who comes into her life as seed,
who's watered constantly,
grabs the sunlight where he can,
grows and blooms, is plucked,
sits in a vase a month then dies.
And I'm into heavy reading.
Last month, I courted Shakespeare's Lady Of The Sonnets.
I slept with Lady Chatterley,
was tempted by Lolita but thankfully kept my distance.
And yet, here we are together, in the dark,
sheet between, fan spinning,
no gardens, no books,
no ways of avoiding touch
even with the sheet between.
We've been doing this for years.
Man and time. No one else would have me.

 

 

 

 

 

Observations On A Stormy Night

 

Sideways rain

mistakes the horizon

for the earth beneath

my feet.

 

Black water

is just water

without the ripples,

the reflections.

It can support ducks

but only if

they’re lit up

independently.

 

When I hear thunder,

I imagine a sky in pain.

 

Lightning doesn’t strike twice.

But it is yet to strike me

the first time.

Should I be concerned?

 

An empty dry house

is better company

than a gathering in the rain.

 

 

 

 

 

As Rick Glides

You said, don't worry,
the glider's as safe as houses.
Whose house, you didn't say.
Meet you in the bar at 8.00,
you shouted as you bounced down to your car.
Nothing like being a bird,
you'd often tell me.
But I've watched birds
and I can't say
I've ever been envious of the lifestyle.

But you needed to soar apparently.
In the air of all places,
not content to do it in your head.
As safe as houses, so you said.
And we all waited in the house
for your return and, I can assure you,
none of us felt the least bit safe.

I couldn't get out
from under this image of you,
wings strapped to your side,
diving off the edge of a high cliff,
flapping for a moment,
then dropping like a stone.
Sometimes you even crashed through the roof,
splattered all of us.
Safe as houses, indeed.

Nothing is safe
for all of your "don't worry'"s.
And especially not houses.
You weren't here to see
how dangerous they really are.
Mother was in tears,
already mourning you.
Father just sat in his old rocking chair,
said nothing to anybody.
And I paced my bedroom floor,
stopping only now and then
to watch the birds land safely.
None of them were you.

 

 

 

 

 

Pistol

 

A pistol may have a click teased

out of it by an empty chamber.

It may explode like TNT would,

in your head, if its detonator was your finger.

 

A pistol could be as silent as

a knife thrust between the ribs,

or a poison delivered straight

to the nerves and muscles.

 

A pistol may sound like a waterfall

crashing on rock, a hurricane upending

a tree, a thousand uprooted, unhinged things, 

battering what’s in their way.

 

A pistol may merely rest quietly on a table,

awash in sunlight, glistening gray steel

in the company of other weapons,

in the shadow of its wielder.

 

Or a pistol could sound like all these things

set off together, its purpose plotted

meticulously, to boost admiring eyes,

or a suddenly empowered hand.

 

It can be held against a temple,

or in the grip of a pulse ticking noiselessly

but insistently, filling a void,

where it can sound created in the moment,

 

like the stars, by a brilliant burst

from some heaving and overwrought feeling.

expanded into the surrounding air, in an instant,

making the world mean and loud and nasty and yours.

 

 

 

 

 

Cupid's First Arrow

 

There I was caught red-handed

by my supposed friends,

scratching a heart on an oak in the woods,

and an arrow,

that skewered my initials

to those of the prettiest girl in class.

 

They laughed.

They jeered.

They taught me bullying

was more than just shoving

the small kids around.

It was doing the same to small feelings.

 

Of course, they didn't leave it at that.

Not when they could

sing-song my name and hers

as she was walking by,

rewriting the pop songs of the moment

to include the two of us.

 

Her face went scarlet.

Mine hid in books.

Even after I scratched out the heart

and their teasing moved on

to a whole other prey.

 

Something approaching an adolescent feeling

showed up dumb and unprepared,

was transcribed by a pen-knife

into the bark of a tree.

 

The girl's reaction, so I heard second hand,

was something on the order of

"Boys! Yuk!"

I had gotten some place before she did.

I' d been subjected to the harm in that.

 

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