Sunday, January 5, 2020

John Grey - Three Poems

1 GRADUATE Z

A girl from Missouri
blooms in the bowers,
the showers.  I like the
wind’s preposterous violincello,
the flying sequoias 
coursing through the park.

I watch the medicine man
in snow shoes
lassoing dawn stars.

Like shadows trumpeting,
nights breed fireflies 
in a wild-cat town,
a whirling fantasy of candles,
alien & vain.

Sunset’s harp-sound
the white quartz shine
& blind man song
humming root  dim fields of ringing bells.

A new graduate  
lean as wheat 
her gratification vast & weird.   
I could shag & twist
and come out tangled & awry.

But the skies
are the very whimsy
and their sails, bark temples


***

2 END GAME

the list of service personnel
sober rejoicing    addressed to press 
& radio   an official announcement
followed by ruthless aggression & brutality

for several days   the issuance
broadcast a communique    reliable
   information
that this is true

aroused speculation 
encountered little or no resistance
various scattered pockets
secured free passage
possibly loaded with troops

aside from actual operations
require vast amounts of equipment
& will no longer complain
about being orphans
able to see from a foxhole
a spokesman on the way out

***
3 JEALOUSY

very pretty girl stood at the edge
accidentally fired indoors.
with the kids that still thought
in terms of 
the next playing field
maybe they want the heart-song for themselves.
         &  now that stitched emissary
pride shrunk down to trembling,

she smiled warmly, sweetly,
graveyards feast on dead voices. Tombstones can't wait to
weep  for Hemingway or O'Hara or even Tennessee Williams.
as eyes would have it,
            she figured if you want someone to make you omelets
bats & balls must be left behind

become the softest option
broken bedroom windows were forgotten.
the act ends with two encores
what's hummed on the way home
& then a distant crash of glass










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