Poems
by John Grey

 

Paper Cut

 

It’s a hazard of the job.

But it’s as rare as it is sudden.

It’s not like a razor cut

or an accident peeling potatoes.

 

Those are just

stuff that needs doing.

A slice of a chin or finger

is in keeping

with the dull, repetitive process.

 

But the paper cut strikes

in a moment of creativity.

A sudden “ouch”

when a brain bulb lights up.

A sharp critical retort

as I’m impressing myself

with something I just wrote.

 

It drips.

It can leaves a stain

on a poem that’s raw and revealing.

There’s nothing I can do about it.

Blood on the paper

meet blood on the page.

 

 

 

 

 

Pagoda

 

Up the hill from the duck pond,

a pagoda

there for no apparent reason

as any good pagoda should be –

 

I sit inside

look down at the gardens,

the trees, the tangle of brush,

some planned, some spontaneous,

as any greenery should be –

 

book on my lap,

a selection of Irish poetry -

Heaney, Yeats –

as inspiring in the touch

of its emerald cover 

as it when being read,

the way poetry once was,

and can be and should be –

 

imagining Gale,

here beside me in the pagoda,

bearing her own slim volume of something,

her head on my shoulder,

sinking into each other,

for pagoda reasons,

for greenery reasons,

for poetry reasons,

each feeling sudden, warm,

evoking my most native of responses,

like sighing,

like clapping my hands three times.

 

 

 

 

 

The Grin

 

Playing the piano,

the child is padlocked

at the hands and feet,

obeying her most miniscule

muscle memory,

to the delight of her grinning mother.

 

Ah yes, the grinning mother,

the one who sends her only daughter

out into the wilds of music lessons

that her own upbringing left unexplored/

 

Playing the piano,

the child knows nothing of this,

merely fills the space provided.

is barely conscious to how

her fingers form notes

and those notes string together,

make melodies

sweet and powerful enough

to stretch her mother’s grin even further.

 

Ah yes, the grinning mother,

the one who’s forgotten how many times

she begged her own mother

for a piano and an hour or two a week

with Mrs. Granholme who taught so many

of the kids in the neighborhood.

 

Playing the piano

with an empty heart,

the child is unaware how much

she mimics the dream

of the shadow that falls across her face,

the shadow that is all mother,

that is all grin.

 

Ah yes, the shadow of the grinning mother,

as wide as the wall-to-wall carpet

but rolled up when the music stops.

 

 

 

 

 

The Life

 

Here I am again,

in a bar,

drinking beer,

shoving coins

into the only jukebox in town.

 

Let others watch

their muted hockey game.

I’m swaying, jerking, shaking,

to some good old rock and roll.

 

Here’s the difference –

 

NHL:

a cry goes up momentarily

whenever a goal is scored.

 

Jukebox:

 

a cry goes up

and stays there.

 

 

 

 

 

A Poet

 

As a kid,

I’d tell everybody

I was going to be

a fireman

when I grew up.

 

Yet now

I’m a poet.

 

Maybe

I changed my mind.

 

Or could it be

that I never grew up.

 

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