THE GUY
Now this is the sorry bit. I know the guy.
In fact, I warned you if you remember.
But, then again, he can charm warnings
to death. But he’s as soulless as a dime.
The fact that you’re bawling your face
to pieces - he could care less. He can
shut it down, call it off, just like that.
That’s just how he is. Time will heal you.
But it won’t change him. He’ll go on
breathing, cajoling, working, seducing,
sleeping, getting what he wants and,
most of all, dreaming his way out of
the dreams of others. In other words,
he’s full of shit. And, had you listened
to me, I wouldn’t be listening to you now.
THE JOB INTERVIEW
The question had to be asked
and duly answered:
would I, duly scrutinized,
be taken on as an
employee –
factors in my favour:
my CV -
bravely enough therefore,
I entered the room
where a man sat behind a giant desk –
a potentate
a presence
a pope –
while I proceeded
as noisily silent as scuffling slippers
a pitiful creature
he could smell the fear
before he even lay an eye on me –
sat down in the imposter’s chair
a relic from death row
where others had trembled before me:
the rejected
the banished
the suicides –
in the wind from his words
I fluttered helplessly,
jabbed by his tongue,
the remains of my confidence bled,
constrained by his inquisitor’s glare,
I muttered nothing that would warrant his faith in me:
yes I could
maybe I could
I think I could –
could I?
he read me in the face,
he read me on the page,
he read me in blobs of sweat,
in the paltry tap of fingers:
we will get back to
you –
he said that to the back of me.
THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED BUT, SADLY, NOT THE SITUATION
He told you
how special you were.
That you were better than
your siblings,
even the woman he married.
You accepted
your father's will
and the big lie
over what your
budding conscience told you.
Oh you tell yourself now
that it meant nothing,
you were just going along with it,
that you could have said "no"
at any time.
But he wasn't a man who listened.
And you weren't a young girl who spoke.
LYING IN THE MEADOW
Often I passively surrender
in hope to reanimate
as landscape,
closed eyes, diminished thoughts,
and a grass bed for my fading backbone.
What are birth and death
to the splendors of initiation?
Contact here and there
to complete connection?
Mostly I fall asleep
and then somebody wakes me.
But, for a time there,
I was the one doing the waking.
SUNDAY MORNING
On the morning after your initiation,
you wore a great long gallows face,
ravaged like the watch on your wrist,
that target of your contempt,
a haggard red right eye
with a clotted iris grazing,
jaw chewing nothingness,
and the steady gaze of temporary blindness,
stomach puckered like a giant dimple,
lips tight and thin and fuming,
and yet, you were now a full member
of whatever it was you were initiated into -
too bad you couldn't remember.
John Grey is
an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review,
Stand, 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.
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