Poems
by John Grey

 

Wait!

 

He calls after her –

“Wait!”

But she will not wait.

 

She slips away into the night.

And though his shouts

grow ever louder,

rattle the windows

of the nearby apartment buildings,

she does not stop.

 

His hip is bad.

He can’t run after her.

A crowd gathers.

They see him.

They don’t see her.

 

For she is already dissolving

into the dark like a wick burning down.

She becomes shadow.

And wind.

She becomes her own name

spoken only inside herself.

 

And she’s gone.

Of course she’s gone.

Women like that don’t wait for men like him.

Men with bad hips.

Men who treat them like a possession.

 

And though he keeps calling,

the night smothers her ears.

She moves beyond the reach of his sorrow

and does not look back.

 

Someone asks if he’s okay.

He laughs -

a busted, rusted laugh -

because what the hell kind

of question is that.

 

 

 

 

 

The Fight

 

I’m cornered in a dark alley

by two huge tattooed bikers.

Just my luck

I ended up in this place

and they knew where to find me.

 

I pray to a God

I haven’t thought of in years,

while looking up at the night sky,

the twinkling stars

that the first punch to my jaw replaces.

 

I’ve been living cheap

but not laying low enough.

I owe money I haven’t got.

God might well be on their side.

He could be a banker at heart.

 

After three more punches and a kick,

they leave me

in that garbage-strewn hellhole,

a crumpled-up bleeding mess

 

“That was just a warning,”

according to the bigger of the two.

It felt more like something

to be warned about.

 

I stumble to some public restroom

so with water and paper towel,

I can get my face back.

But I still look like a plate of chili.

 

Some guy asks, “You bin in a fight?”

Sure, I’ve bin in a fight.

I’m still in a fight.

I’ve always bin in a fight.

It was the doctor’s first slap

on my back that started it.

 

 

 

 

 

Cheap Beer

 

America

will never run out of cheap beer

and parched throats –

 

oil and gas maybe

but there’ll always be

plenty of crosses along the highway

to signify less-than-fairytale endings

 

and strip mines

and razed forests –

 

but don’t worry about reality:

that’s where the cheap beer

and the parched throats come in,

not forgetting the heat

rising off the interstate

and the trucker who has been driving all day,

leaning over woman in the bar with too much makeup –

 

no one’s crying out for the state of the world

or coming up with ideas years ahead of their time –

 

for there will always be lies told to impress,

and guys staring off into space,

and one totally out of it,

face down on a table,

and the rugged individual

staring down his own myth

while he throws up on the sidewalk –

 

acid rain,

shuttered mom and pop stores.

closed factories,

couples beating up on each other –

there’s still plenty of that

 

and the beer is cheap

and the throat won’t speak up,

would rather be quenched anyhow.

 

 

 

 

 

Elegy In Headlights

 

The car’s front end folds like a dying star.

Glass speckles the air.

She keeps her hands on the wheel anyway.

We’re moving on

while going nowhere.

 

We’re already welded to the pole,

metal praying against metal.

I’m in full-scale inventory mode –

do I have my limbs?

But her mind slips its tether,

rewinds like a crazy clock -

the road is a mirror,

fate is black ice,

everything is yet to come.

 

I touch her arm.

She pulls away.

In her head’s timeline,

impact could happen any moment,

Then her leg trembles,

her head snaps back,

her hands lose all control.

 

So I pull her in,

not gently, but necessarily,

whisper into her bloodstained hair:

you’re here, you’re here, you’re here. 

I hold her tight enough

that she might believe

there was never a pole at all.

Her body finds mine.

A soft collision

perfect for busted bones.

 

 

 

 

 

The Swan In The Park

 

The swan seems to float

across the surface of the pond.

But it’s paddling furiously below.

 

It’s as peaceful to the eye

as the warm sunny morning in the park

but only last week

it attacked two kids with its ferocious beak.

 

Then someone feeds it breadcrumbs

and I can’t get the image out of my head –

man and nature as one.

 

Of course, the bread is not good

for the bird.

It could easily choke and die.

 

I wonder where I can go

too see things as they really are.

 

If anybody knows of such a place,

I’m listening.

 

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