Poems
by John
Grey
Refugee
that river was there
in front of me,
begging to be crossed,
and I figured that
if I held my head high enough
then maybe I could do just that
not that day, but someday
the kind of thought you have
before life leaves you with
a sore back and a limp
but some things only happen once
like a good woman
or a clean break
eventually, the ones nobody wants
figure out how to stay
where they’re barely tolerated
it’s not acceptance
but it’s a roof over the head
a place to sleep
and sometimes,
if you keep your mouth shut
and don’t stink too bad,
they’ll even pay you to stick around
The Hungry Man
To the hungry man with the rifle,
whether his prey was a duck,
a goose or a turkey,
was immaterial.
He was after meat and muscle,
protein beating its way
through the air.
He lined up his sights
on a place in the sky
where he anticipated
such a combination
would, at any moment, be.
He held his breath, said to himself,
“If only, just this once,
the heavens would get
their dumbass act together.”
But he was shocked
to the very wobble of his trigger finger
by the creature that returned
his startled gaze with such a sad expression.
Not a plump bird. Not a hearty meal.
It was Monique, his ex.
She hovered there.
His heart froze.
Then she gave a shrug, drifted off,
was soon well out of range.
“Hell,” he thought.
“It wasn’t meat I was after.”
He was hungry.
But this was hunger of a whole other kind.
And the world…it had its surprises
when he’d figured
there were no more to be had.
The sky was empty now.
No flocks, no Monique.
But it still had possibilities.
And he had never been more hungry for them.
A Car On Empty
My advice,
stalled car in the desert,
is to curse your driver
but since you can’t,
I will do it for you –
damn but I’ve never seen dumber.
Who’d ever think
there’d be a gas station
on a flat stretch of lonely road
just when the warning light came on
to tell the doofus
he was going on empty.
Life’s not like that.
Sometimes, nothing turns up
and you’re done for.
I feel bad for you, car.
Your mechanics are not the issue.
It’s because of that fool behind
the wheel that you can go no farther.
The intense heat is no help.
Nor are the stands of prickly cactus.
He’s looking into the distance
on all sides
for the sign of a house or a store
or another vehicle with fuel to spare.
But his eyes can’t even
conjure up a half-way decent mirage.
He’s alone in the world.
He’s going down
and taking you with him.
Look around.
Human carcasses and the likes of you
are scattered across the desert.
The fool is not a recent invention.
As A Result Of Your Leaving
Driven
by restlessness,
by the long reach
of your supposed
golden age past
and uncertain future –
your eyes,
reddened,
turned from me
out of a kind
of self-imposed indignation.
Then after you,
the rooms sagged,
grew cold.
And the cost,
unimagined by you,
remained with me.
I asked the question,
“Why? Why/ Why?”
No bed,
no dressing table,
no table and chairs,
ever bothered
to reply.
The Heat Of A Solitary Summer
Summer in residence, hot morning,
welcome to my sealed jar.
Light climbs a ladder,
breaks into the walls and floor
but the bed remains unlit.
The outside momentum
is as thoughtless as ever.
The coastline cries out –
hedonism this way!
Cars don’t need to be asked twice.
I stay behind.
The mind has its own weather patterns.
The forecast is confinement.
I have always been this way.
After all the other loners
have made their case,
I’m the loner with no story to tell.
Companionship has always
been a kind of pantomime to me.
It’s a series of gestures
more suited to making
shadow puppets on a wall
than any true connection.
Even affection, the kiss, the embrace,
has always left me wondering
why the body,
mine or another’s,
should be the vessel for such mystery.
And yet the body persists, doesn’t it.
Maybe that’s its own kind of hedonism.
What I’ve called solitude might only be
the mind’s long apprenticeship to itself.
What I’ve called distance
is just a way of touching the world
without disturbing its surface.
It’s summer.
It’s stifling inside these rooms.
Inside me.
Maybe I need to get out more.
