Four Poems| John Grey
THE GUITAR
I pick up the guitar for no particular reason.
It’s an old friend
that I’ve neglected these past few years.
I start with a simple e-chord,
strum with the back of my fingers.
I listen to the blend of strings,
then pluck them one by one with my stunted nails.
I prefer the audience of just myself these days.
A few sour plunks – who’s to know?
It’s like I’m just learning,
amazed by the music
taut thin steel can manufacture out of mere touch.
Even the polished body in my lap, flush against my chest,
is a revelation.
No songs today.
I let the instrument do what it wants
with my doodling.
As always, it’s what I want.
MOVING THE PIANO
On the stoop,
Amy is side by side with an oversized piano
and a doorway too tiny.
“What about the fire-escape,” says Dylan,
“the one to your apartment window.”
Amy’s wondering
why everything in her life
is the wrong size and shape.
Dylan has all the comments,
all the cynicism to overrun
the slightest hint of tenderness.
Bert, silent type, the guy she’s keen on,
merely nods his head in agreement with Dylan,
with the laws of geometry and physics.
Amy feels the music so close,
she can smell its keys,
would grab a stool,
play something right there and then,
if she weren’t accompanied
by two of the many tone-deaf men in her life.
It’s a summer’s day
and sweat sprays her clothing from within.
“Maybe we could come back in the fall
when it’s not so hot,”
says Dylan, who hasn’t changed
a bit since he became her ex,
forever hawking his great talent
at avoiding hard work and even harder thought.
Bert is more circumspect,
having read Spinoza in college
awaits revelation,
something that can stand the test of truth,
maybe some divine authority
with the muscle to back it up.
“Men,” Amy shrugs, as if feminism began
the moment some guy decided
the relative shapes and sizes of things
couldn’t be defeated with mere muscle,
while women finagled
with the merest turning on the edge,
playing with the angles, moving in
sideways and upside down at the same time.
Then Dylan suggests they take the piano apart.
Amy’s having none of that.
And then there’s Bert,
sorrowful because he’s being no help,
still promising,
because he’s not as inane as Dylan.
One time, it almost happened,
a lecture on modern poetry at Brown,
two legs scraping together, making love
like trees do, but afterwards,
ice-cream and then nothing.
Bert could do it, she’s sure,
but he enjoys everything more
it seems, when it’s not about him.
So he moves aside,
while Dylan takes the biggest step forward,
then an even larger step back.
Finally, Dylan shrugs his shoulders,
mentions a meeting he’s already late for.
Bert pulls out a cigarette,
drags on a might-have-been.
Her ideal man is the one
who can appear out of nowhere,
load that piano on his back,
and take those stairs two at a time.
Meanwhile, her ideal woman
calls in the professionals.
AFTER THE TORNADO
Weeds and debris drowse in communal twilight.
Everyone’s still in Kansas, not Oz.
That’s weather. Bulimia one minute,
anorexia, the next.
The air is calm now but not reliable.
What happened before can happen again.
A barbecue heats up a backyard.
All are invited. Even the city reporters.
Look at the landscape. It’s a lamb’s world.
But, every so often, a lion drops in.
THE WRITER’S BLOCK ARMIES
For every sequence,
there’s a checkpoint ahead.
So unfair.
A bar across the road,
for the likes of me
who needs to get his own way.
There’s soldiers, well-armed.
If I try to make a break for it,
I die, flat out on the asphalt.
Imagine my consternation,
uniforms of drab gray
with splashes of red,
pointing me back the way I came
with rifle barrels.
No point pleading my case.
Their faces are immune to conversation.
So much to remember this by.
Tanks cars queued by signs
in German, French, English and Russian.
Helicopters hovering above.
There’ll be no extension to my theme.
Just tears rolling down cheeks,
frustration out of all proportion,
and hatred bloodless
against the overwhelming might
of that blockade.
So I’m in a kind of desperate malaise,
because I’ve yet to cultivate a relationship
with anger.
I take a drink to numb me into night.
Maybe if I fall asleep,
imagination will call off the roadblocks.
Dreams create an easy way through.
Ideas on the horizons,
madness in the rear-view mirror.
Photo by Soundtrap on Unsplash
Bio:
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
