John Grey

THREE POEMS

INVADERS

Alien craft over Washington DC
or was that a Mexican truck
heading north toward the border.

Four-eyed monsters,
says the supermarket weekly.
Illegal monsters,
declares talk radio.

They’re armed with ray guns,
their technology is so advanced,
they intend us great harm...

They’re squeezed into
the truck’s secret compartment,
sweaty and starved of breath,
one or two already dead,
and yes, they intend us great harm...

Their planet’s dying.
They want ours.
Their country’s a basket case.
They’re looking for work.

THE HOOKER WITH THE ROSE TATTOO

A tattoo is nothing more than a look back
at the night you had it done.
Were you drunk? Did some guy dare you?
It’s a lovely red rose but it’s a flower from seven years ago.
Today it would be a heart saying “Michael”
or maybe the devil or a diamond or a star.
A man rubs your back, thinks what luscious petals,
but that’s not what you’re giving him.
He gets Michael, the guy you’d rather be with.
Or the devil, the imp that sleeps with all comers.
Or a diamond, the moneyed dream that pretends
to make this worth it.
Or that star, the ultimate in elevations,
the coldest for all its bright light.
So let him have sex with his nose in yesterday’s budding.
It’s wilted. It’s dead.
You’re wilted. You’re dead.
It’s a skin to tell a lie.

CHIPS ALMOST CASHED IN

It's 2046,
the oldest living Deadhead
is on his deathbed ...
the marijuana's medicinal,
the music's immaterial
because he can't hear it anyway.
Over and over,
he mutters the word 'Truckin"
to the great-grandchild
seated faithfully at his side.
Soon, he'll join Jerry Garcia
in that great outdoor concert
in the sky.
It's as he's always said:
Life sucks,
then you tie-die,
then you die.

© John Grey 2013

John Grey is an Australian-born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review.

John Grey

SUDDEN DUST STORM

In the particles of dust, some of the face
gathers filthy pink and grubby-blue-eyed.
The day is willful. Human flesh is on trial.
A tempest hums inside this fog of dirt. Shards
of petal, waxy and green, surrender to the
imposition of some distant desert. In dead of
lake, water cries out to be saved. Wind whips
up the haze. Skin croaks froglike. The
earth crouches back inside its hovel of oxygen,
refuses to remember the better days. A solitary house
disappears in a powdery flood. !f only it would rain
but moisture has been warned off. The sun is cruel,
joins the rampage, rides roughshod over shutter
blinking air. What happened to paradise? Eden fights
for breath, its lungs clogged. Sorry, it says. I never
meant for this to happen. The map just laughs. You never know
what's coming when you live next door to the devil.

Inside, you frantically shut blinds, tape windows,
as if the weather's coming for you. A bad dream
finds itself with feather duster in one hand.
The determined gray splatters the bedroom,
screams underneath the kitchen door. It knows
no human laws. Brows knit with grit. Appetites
cower before the mighty horde. The artificial
perfect lawn is the first to go. Roses die, praised,
at the end, for their shriveled candor. 'The world
convenes as an army of whips. Drunken ash grows wings.

ON THE DEATH OF LUELLA

Something huge and luminous fell out of the sky,
The earth surrendered, somewhere in its oceans.
Lower depths ran for their lives.
The sea-bed rose like a sudden heaven-bound tide.
You sat on your veranda, watched the bleak horizon
fire hoses at the stars.
The harsh red of the following day flung itself backward
against the bars of night's dark dungeon,
exploded in a scream of strontium and blood.
The moon dripped like a wax candle.
Orpheus gathered everything he could
from the crumbling underworld,
streaked across the wretched firmament. .
And a great tsunami headed your way.
You were on your third rum.
Your chestnut hair did nothing to discourage
your throat from sighing softly.
It was that night when it happened.
Your lips lay like a lovely child
in the cradle of your mouth.
Your eyes were at the height of their ascendancy.
And your skin announced to all and sundry pearlers:
dive here.
But your dog licked your fingers
like no man could.
And you laughed at the belligerent burst of water.
The sound of your voice did nothing but tree you.
Long after you were swept away,
you poured yourself another rum,

THE DRUMMING OF THE ETERNAL

Eternity lacked blue eyes and long blonde hair
despite what the nuns had told me.
Sure, it stretched farther than any time had a right to

but it was missing the touch of a soft hand on my wrist bone,
the attentive breath inches from my ear.
And if feeling couldn't see reason, then what could reason feel?

First Communion threw up its hands at all physical law.
Gravity? What is that? Evolution? Who invited it to the ritual?
It was wafer and wine or nothing. And there I knelt,

all body and blood and, despite the priest's exhortations,
unable to taste the likeness.
And there was eternity, the ultimate reward,

the payback for the childhood bullies, the dud romances,
the lousy jobs, the pain in the gut.
But what of those who lived among equals,

who loved the here and now, who wrote for a living,
whose health ticked blindly on.
Heaven, for all its scrubbed walls and floors,

its blissed out angels, was more nursing home than shining apogee.
I still had a life to lead, a good one. It would be nothing compared to all of time.
But something sure could learn from nothing.

© John Grey 2012

John Grey is an Australian-born poet, who works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Poem, Spindrift, Prism International and the horror anthology, "What Fears Become" with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Pinyon.
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