Poetry: John Grey

John Grey

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, “Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

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THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I CAN BE OVERWHELMINGLY PHILOSOPHICAL

Living means

a strong emphasis

on mysteries

that cannot be explained—

why the cut here?

why a representation of a thing

rather than the thing itself?

it involves not knowing

why the airplane doesn't fall from the sky

while knowing that it won't -

it's making assumptions,

being ignorant of the ingredients,

treating possibilities

as goldfish swimming around

in a bowl—

the ones you forgot to feed—

the ones that all died -

it involves having something

that is not yours forever,

and using the word "empty"

to mistakenly describe

the contents of a space -

it's adopting a singular style,

a keen technique,

anything to power the facial muscles

and the waving hands —

living means

being aware that it will

all end someday

while, at the same time,

coming up with an excuse

like religion or metaphysics —

I am alive—

you are alive—

that's all the proof

living needs.

***

EXPERIENCE TELLS ME

The people of my time

are dying in theirs –

I said to my friend

from the other side of the glass –

and I’m no longer

the hero in my own story

being one of the survivors,

just there for advice

that is rarely taken –

friends are the business

of the hospital and the church,

all of their work,

their families,

packed in boxes,

to be passed down

or, more likely,

tossed out –

just today,

I was out walking

and I came upon somebody

who knew someone 

that I knew –

no words were exchanged –

he was no one I knew. 

***

THE WOMAN WHO IS THE CURE

Pine trees line

the steep streets of the avenue.

It's early April

but her son's body is stuck in Winter.

She drags groceries up the front path

while he looks down at her

with the palest of yellow eyes.

At least he's alive, she thinks to herself.

The doctors only know half the story.

They're not there when she lugs

meat and milk and vegetables

up the hill from the grocery store.

They don't the sweat on her brow,

feel the ache in her back.

They're too busy drawing the boy's blood.

It's the effort she makes to vacuum the rugs,

scrub clean the soiled underwear,

brush the spider's webs out of the far corners

of his permanent sick bed.

They've got medicine on their minds, not mothers.

Last visit, they said they give him six months.

But they don't give the six months.

She does.

***

LIFE IN TIMES OF WAR

It's coming on night

in the delta.

She stands over a stove

that smells of dog and dung.

Better that than the odor 

of bodies floating downstream. 

Rotting flesh, rancid smoke –

it's a battle fought with stink.

She says to herself, 

"There's no God in war." 

So without religion, 

there's just jungle and sweat

and agent orange. 

And a devil snake slithering 

across the bare mud floor. 

It's as red as the rising moon

but elusive to the broom she wields

to sweep it outdoors.

The reptile is not poisonous.

It's contagious, more than anything.

***

WELCOME TO THE WAR

You said it would be easy,

battles in their microscopic larval stage,

hardly a war at all.

Besides, we'd be thrusting freedom 

down the gullets of our hosts.

A day or two of skirmishes, 

and democracy would 

settle on the country like silt.

So some innocents would perish —

we're growing something here. 

Think of the seeds they'll make.

The westernizing to come

That was alt talk. For here we are, 

stuck in the mud of eternal fighting. 

Weapons and bodies litter the land.

And warriors are, at best, survivors. 

At worst, so many headless 

ghosts crawling across the sands.

***

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Setu, December 2024