Five Poems by John Grey

 

FLAMES NEW AND OLD

 

Smoke blew over

from the fire two counties away.

It was like some past love affair

intermingling with this one,

like some people who

can never quite leave.

It wasn't even thick clouds

of the stuff

just the merest hint of it

but that was enough for me

to see the wall of flames

consuming dry grass,

devouring tree trunks.

And one pair of eyes

can be all the eyes,

or, at least,

a pair of eyes

that's not these.

And some words

someone once said

that resound even now.

Not still in love

with that past one you understand

but I will never forget

how the fields buckled

so beautifully,

how the lush green forests cried out

for that relentless flame. 

 

 

KABOOM

 

An exploding volcano,

flames spoiling for

a fight with the sun,

air reeking of smoke and ash,

red rivers rolling down

all sides of the mountain –

 

is it real?

is it sex?

or is it some kid,

face up against the mirror,

squeezing a large pimple?

 

Herein lies the poet,

the sensate,

and the troubled adolescent.

 

They merge

into who I am now –

 

Mount St Helens

in a secluded room. 

 

 

THE ODD ONE OUT

 

A bunch of young women in the coffee house –

all except one is either

gabbing into their cell phone

or on a tweeting frenzy.

That odd one out is

writing something on a notepad.

No way that it’s just a to-do list.

From where I’m sitting,

it could only be a poem.

Hair long and silky,

eyes dark and thoughtful,

cheeks the pink of the dogrose,

lips shyly parted…maybe it is a to-do list.

But one of us, at least, is writing her poem. 

 

REPORT FROM THE WAR ZONE



It's a war zone but it's also a social occasion.

There's a bar near the camp

where pretty nurses would just love you

to buy them something pink and fizzy

and aimed at all the bad news in their heads.

And it's comforting to meet a stranger

who's sure to be unarmed,

speaks the same language that you do.

Maybe five miles away, the battle's resumed

and the dead, the wounded, are being stretchered

to graveyards or Red Cross tents

but here there's a jukebox, it plays memories,

even the ones that haven't quite happened yet.

You even dance a little in between the other drinkers.

It doesn't bother you that the hand around your waist

cleans out and bandages bloody wounds,

bathes incapacitated men.

Or that these eyes have seen it all.

And the heart that beats against your chest

has been broken more by ailing patients

than any temporary lover boy.

It's a war zone. If you don't find peace

within yourself then there is none.

This may be your only time together.

Bombs don't believe in fairy stories.

Stray bullets can interrupt a timeline any time.

But you don't plunder the occasion for meaning

or accelerate the feelings, pin golden medals on a night

that it hasn't really earned.

You merely appreciate the touch of another human being,

acknowledge how, when civilization falls apart,

men and women still feel good together.

Soon enough, the night will end.

You'll go back to being shot at.

She'll return to running

that gauntlet of bed sores and diseases.

It's a war zone.

Only when its attention's elsewhere

are there people in it.

 

 

CIRCUS TRAIN 1935

 

When we see the elephants again,

in fact, the whole menagerie,

we will know that it is 1935 again.

When we look out the window,

watch the train pull into the station,

we’ll see drab lion faces,

tears dripping down bars.

And there will be a Jumbo

with a chain around his ankle,

one eye on the keeper’s sharp prodder,

the other on the gathering crowd.

It’s 1935, the Great Depression,

with small depressions everywhere you look.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Trampoline and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Haiku Poems by Jennifer Gurney

 

Ten Haiku Poems

that place

in my heart

empty, for you

sipping

that first cup of coffee

setting the day's pace

I am the sun

dancing on your wall

my love language

my life in chapters

before you, with you

after you

loving being here

missing being home

the push-me-pull-you of vacation

just a whiff

humid fall morning

the scent of home

a lone cricket

pouring its heart out

autumnal lament

power reading

for book club

this Thursday

on every bridge

I find myself

looking for you

fulcrum point

green to golden

autumnal shift

Jennifer Gurney lives in Colorado where she teaches, paints, writes and hikes. Her poems have been published internationally, including 10 books of poems. Jennifer’s favorite acceptances were when Ars Nova turned her poem into a choral piece and performed it, a poem was chosen and printed on a yard sign in Washington, D.C., and when her poems were shown on movie theater screens in Perth, Australia. Her heart belongs to her friends and family and her cat, Adeline. But it also belongs to the mountains, the first spring rain, falling stars and sunsets on Lake Michigan. She has a freckle on the back of her hand, in the spot of her hometown, Kalamazoo. She longs for world peace, justice for those wronged and equality. Although she has written her whole life, at 62, she has finally known enough joy and enough sorrow to write a half-way decent poem, on occasion. 

Four Poems & Art by Kushal Poddar

 

All Art by Kushal Poddar

Save Her If You Can

Dream knocks on the wood, shouts,

"I need your help." I see her burning,

albeit years have passed since that night.

I shut the door, wake up, sit on the bed,

tiptoe on the molten bones of the cold

toward the washbasin, and whisper

in the ear of the water, "Let this dream

have your body and lose itself in the sea."

When I hear the rap again I think it 

is the second level of the dream,

one bubble in another, but it is a bird

crashing against the glass. Outside, 

one homeless man envelopes his figure 

in his contorted face and stares at 

my window, lit, trapped between 

the dream of warmth and realising it a dream.

I hear the noise again in the bedroom and turn.

The Marks of The Lies

Never leave spilled water on a surface.

My mother used to fuss about It's marks

and stains, "Those spread like lies."

I wipe a lie with my old trouser legs.

It still remains in abstracts.

I ring you. The noise of silence

circles itself pivoting our ceiling fans.

Those Defunct Summer Houses

When the Summer arrives

every rickety building with

hoardings of discontinued products

and defunct concerns becomes mine.

The dead leaves resurge.

I own red bricks and a bed

that sails at night, deep,

toward the bay of monsoon

through the crisscross roads,

through the vortex of potholes.

The App Cab

The driver of the app cab asks,

"Did you get in?" I do not know.

Is settling on the backseat inside enough?

A code that I should share

must have been flown in, albeit my phone

begins a long process of restarting itself

as if it too needs a moment

outside the realm of inside and out,

between the waiting to leave

my sister's place and actually leaving

her dementia behind.

Kushal Poddar - The author of ‘21 Gun Salutes and the Hemingway Syndrome’ and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has eleven books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a five-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe.

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