John Grey

Poetry of an Australian Elsewhere

 

 

 

The Risks of Sleep

 

The insects are out there.

Laura can hear them buzzing,

prays the mosquito netting

is as advertised,

a protector of fair skin

from biting blood-sucking varmints.

They swarm around the tiny holes,

looking for a way in.

There's nothing in the room

that excites near as much

as her soft juicy flesh.

 

On the other side of the world,

her cousin Sonja also seeks defense

against all that comes for her in the night:

garlic flowers strewn about the room,

a crucifix dangling from her throat

as something fanged and bat-like,

ravenous and red-eyed,

peers in through the bedroom window.

 

Laura prays she wakes next morning

without the tell-tale lumps and bruises

of a night of beasties feasting.

Sonja will be more than relieved

if she finds herself in her bed come dawn,

and not cocooned in a coffin.

 

Nights and beds,

the vulnerable and the lascivious marauders

turn off the lights

and let the vagaries begin.

 

 

 

Surprise, Surprise

 

At the rim of vision,

a shudder of curtain,

a blur, something moving.

 

As indecision chills,

your nerve ends

struggle to the surface,

badly bent.

 

Claws and fangs and

hiss and eyes as red

as a bleeding fox -

 

all on a list

of things you never figured

would happen to you.

 

 

 

Ripped Apart, Seeing Angels

 

Life's always dragging me

toward some place

I don't want to go.

amid all this carnage, flames.

an animal control officer

confronted by his animal nemesis,

chest an assembly line of throbs,

an echo off the bloody walls

a shudder of divine ignorance making such waves,

weeping ancestral tears that cannot be heard,

eyes, brow, flooding like a barroom full of booze

to the frenzied caws of overhead crows in black cloaks

as tumble-weed roll though my head,

thoughts like falling fruit,

brittle and red,

rock in the most incessant,

artless of winds.

 

So embroiled in what could happen, will happen,

why do I still think of her,

with the beast upon me,

why is the face so barely wrinkled despite her age?

Body ripped apart,

bone poking through my brain coral.

Prayer? Forget it,

he devours this rainbow burst.

Hunger and his deliverance -

whatever is meat,

the beast doesn't miss it.

 

 

 

Fear

 

Thanks to wind rattling windows,

radiators groaning,

floorboards creaking,

fear is sound effects.

But because of the way

the heart over-beats,

the stomach drops,

it's also a sickness.

 

But then there's

the hastily buried

body in the backyard

to be considered

for fear is also recent memory

so incessant

it's as if it's happening now.

 

And fear is the antonym of sleep,

a secret door

in the familiar rooms of reality.

And that wisp of white,

like a moonlight skein through shadow

that's fear as sculptor,

forging a semblance of the dead,

with the merest of materials.

 

But, more than anything,

fear is fingers,

nervously skating the trigger

of the bedside pistol.

And then fear is direction -

at first pointing at the intruder

then turning one-eighty,

brushing barrel and forehead

of the would-be shooter.

 

Then fear is a brain obliterated.

No wait, that's not fear.

It's just where fear gets it from.

 

 

 

You Ask Me What I Think of Your Painting

 

A sickly green. A cowardly yellow. An intimidating red.

I’m imagining how this world would look

to someone suddenly un-blinded.

As usual, I say the wrong thing.

But later you call and I concede., lying my way

out of art critic into prospective lover,

I should agonize less over results from now on,

Better to take up with inspiration.

I’ll admire a woman's free verse in advance.

I'll hum her songs even before I hear them,

I'll turn one chapter of her heavy prose

into a book of light but learned reading.

Or, better yet, I'll abandon the art world for the real one.

Christine's office manager gives her a sparkling review,

I'll bathe in the shine. I'll even tell love

to keep up the good work.

And, of course, I always hide my stuff from-interested eyes,

I write for the disinterested.

When nothing's at stake, greens can drip,

yellows take flight, reds come out swinging.

Who we really are ought not to interfere

with how we wish to be perceived.

So you stare at your canvas. I'll read my poem.

We'll meet at Starbucks at seven.

 

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.