WHAT I GET
This is what I get
for being at this after-work get together,
some kind of pseudo-modernist
drinking establishment,
shiny metal stools
with seats done out in intense leather,
drink choices floating through the ether
of an overhead flat screen —
their colors enhanced,
their prices in small print.
What I get is delay -
feeling obliged to stay
until everyone around me
is suitably drunk enough
to make sexist comments
about the woman behind the bar
or the local office fare gathered in clumps
of faces, legs, perfume and hairspray.
at a nearby table.
What I get is a feeling
that I'm no longer comfortable
in such a setting,
that I'd rather be home,
settled in nice and cozy some place
where the work day
can ooze right out of me,
where I am never less sorry
to see it go.
And what I get is a hard truth
hitting home loudly,
that I can no longer join in
when there's so many people,
that the noise, the alcohol,
send my mind to the exits
even when my body remains behind.
I get not being where I want to be.
I get not doing what I want to do.
But sometimes a guy has to pretend
that he’s something he’s not.
I get it.
ARROGANCE DIMINISHED
Racing the sun for the rights to disappear first over that hill. Sure ol' Sol has him
in the grandeur stakes, great fiery ball roasting the dusk orange red and yellow.
And he's just a broom whisk from here, wheels and skinny back all of a one.
But that sun sure takes its time leaving while he pedals faster than knitting fingers
and I feel his speed in the velocity of his shrinking. He's at the highest point
while the day's still rolling out its glowing goodbyes. Then down he dips,
is gone in an instant, like the speed of light when the light's not watching,
A tongue, an apricot, streaking motorcycle, thinning hair on a sunroof head... what says spring
the loudest? Maybe me, I'm beginning to look theatrical in shorts, rehearsing Hamlet on an outdoor stage, with stick for sword, tee-shirt for vest. "Alas poor Yorrick" whistle the song sparrows. A groundhog at the far edge of the field muscles in on theater. And where's Ophelia? Smoking a cigarette down by the porta-johns? Live it up while you can, suicide blonde.
A director with a red brow, hyacinth, traffic stopped for ducks to cross... where is the desire I read so much about? Maybe it's a desire to know one's lines when the time comes.
Such aspiring hands these. From pruning climbing rose to stabbing step-fathers, from Prince of Floribunda to irresolute Dane, already imagining the moonlight and the crowds who wouldn't know the Bard of Avon from the beer they drink in heaven...spring, a worthy answer to "to be or
not to be.”
FOREST FIRE
Devouring the oak trees
down to the very last flicker of ash
from this firestorm
came a ceaseless salvo of gunfire
as loud as if it had taken over
my entire head
and with the variations in pitch
from a scream to a stabbing blade.
A universe of stars
was rounded up in smoke’s oblivion.
Life only went as far
as a mighty low-hanging cloud
DARKEN THE DARK
Night filled with cloud,
no moon anticipated,
no resurrected stars,
just drops of rain
tracked by fingertips on glass
No way through the murk
to distant hills, to forest.
Even the sounds are muffled.
I feel my way
to the edge of the outside.
Just chill.
And I know no hymn of praise
to that.
Night is more than just
the time that closes in,
but its unholy brethren,
the smotherer.
My world’s hemmed in
by the fall of water.
And the kind of weather
that can even darken the dark.
You tell me
not to take it personally.
But who else’s hand
is pressed against the pane?
Whose reflection
is so gloomily imposed upon?
POEM FOR THE ONE
She is the one.
No one else is.
A miracle or sheer coincidence
I do not know.
Cereal, milk,
she pours the coffee,
senses how much
milk is enough,
how much sugar.
No one else
is aware of this.
That woman
on the park bench,
beautiful as she is,
could not get
my coffee right.
Whose turn to take the dog out?
It doesn't matter.
Someone always volunteers
and never the same
person twice.
And not once is there
a line to the bathroom.
Our needs coincide
but do not interrupt.
There's no place for strangers
in all this.
For she is the one.
And that precludes
the rest of the world.
And I must be the one
because here she is
after all these years.
And we divide
up the newspaper.
We each take
the pans we love
and none left over.
Other people scratch
their heads over that.
But there's still a newspaper,
a whole newspaper,
if they only knew.
ABOUT THE POET
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.
About the Author
