Tag: John Grey

By John Grey

 

 Big Kid
  
 Kids play street hockey.
 Orange pucks clack 
 from stick to stick.
  
 Matt has at least a head
 on all the others.
 And he’s wider
 than any two of them.
  
 “Shoot it Matt!” 
  screams a teammate.
 “Thump him Matt!”
 yells a voice from the sideline.
  
 But Matt doesn’t shoot.
 Nor does he thump anyone.
  
 He fears what his powerful shot
 would do to the face 
 of that trembling knee-trembling goalie.  
 He worries that a body slam
 could be some poor opponent’s death-knell.
  
 His body’s the biggest, 
 the strongest, there is.
 But he only occupies a part of it.
  
  
  
 The Eel
 
 The eel is long,
 slithery,
 snake-like,
 a bottom-dweller,
 round in front,
 flattened behind,
 its tiny-scaled skin
 coated in slimy mucous.
 
 
 The creature is silvery-brown above,
 paler below.
 Its fins are low
 
 its dorsal continuous with tail.
 But its mouth is large,  
 
 with pectinate teeth,
 and the lower jaw protrudes slightly.
 
 
 One or more of them
 are somewhere down below
 these brackish waters.
 Their bite is harmless to humans  
 
 but their ugliness is not. 
  
  
  
 Spring Morning as played on a Flute
  
 I hear what I hear,
 not a single reed.
 That’s about it.
 A sigh for the unspoken.
  
 Today is one 
 for the heart to memorize,
 a lovely day
 to tweak the fingerholes.
  
 The forsythia is game,
 blown through a woodwind,
 with fluted bright yellow,
 a perfect chord.
  
 It lines the busy street,
 so perfect, so perfect,
 and stretches as far
 as the one note off key. 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

By John Grey

Camping Out

.

The night is the sky mostly.

Trees are one heaped shadow.

The lake’s lost to its shore.

Mountains retreat beyond the eye.

Only high, do shapes remain.

.

My fire gives details to my face

but no one’s here to see.

My sleeping roll

unfolds to its edges

and no further.

Shadow, night, sleep, blackness –

I’m at the rim

of every known dark.

Hunger

Hunger tells you stories

of hot wind across desert,

of sheet lightning,

of trembling guts and empty pockets.

.

When the city noise

is too loud for it to shout over,

it keeps the tale going from inside you,

becomes more circumspect,

speaks with a crackle,

like an old phonograph record

of a politician giving a speech.

.

Hunger needs an audience

and it always knows where to find you,

under the same overpass,

with the usual cronies,

all green teeth, ratty hair

and breath like gasoline. 

.

Sometimes hunger comes in disguise

as thirst,

and it encourages you

to take a swig from that bottle you found

that could be whiskey,

could even be kerosene.

.

Hunger can sing soft but compelling

in the voice of the one who last

provided you with three meals a day.

That’s years ago now.

Hunger has no memory

but it assumes that you do.

Death Valley

.

Sand abbreviates a ghost town’s story,

shutters the mine,

buries the roads leading in and out.

.

A lesser history gives birth to saltbush,

No trees. No shadows. 

The sun’s advance is unstoppable.

.

Grainy winds

blow from the West

Dust devils dance

on the rocky floor.

That’s it for movement.

.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.