AFTER THE FLOOD
The flood's retreated
and the land's a sea of mud.
These are mud avenues.
The houses are mud houses.
People shovel large chunks
of that black stuff
out their first floor windows,
boot it through the front of their stores.
Tractors are freeing up
the main street.
Anything trapped inside
those fat, dark cakes
is just-shoved aside.
It is instant graves
for all inanimate things.
It is memories choked and swallowed,
piled up on top of each other.
It is something that might
have happened anyway
but here's a ton of silt
to help with the cause.
Everyone's inside their rotting rooms
threatening to start again.
Everything smells of mud
even with the mud gone.
Everything smells like
the beginning of a new world
for mud and all its people
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE
Unattainable desire.
The crazies are crazy.
The crazies are crazy.
They always will be.
And how inspiring
it to be lying on my bed naked
drunk and saying someone’s name
over and over?
If I roll around enough,
does this get to be
the banks of a river?
I am such a treat.
She won’t accept treats.
A sick stomach is fine
but I need to get back
to my visions.
This apartment is a start.
It looks out
on a graffiti-covered wall.
A HAWK IS NOT SHY
There goes the hawk
that kills songbirds.
Its wings fly free.
I live in an attic.
I’ve got brains
but I’m always so edgy.
I need to get comfortable
no matter the situation.
Proximity is my new mantra.
It helps when looking for love.
Nothing distracts me more
than that hawk.
It bears the trills of thousands in its gut
but it doesn’t sing.
And here’s me, with my one tune,
duetting with a bar of soap.
Where are the fitful, laughing women
with blouses to unbutton?
The hawk sets aside the pigeons
for winter when food is scarce.
I’m like my own planet up here.
Space travel has yet to be invented.
If the hawk sees something yellow,
he just takes it.
Even with my eyes closed,
I am still a voyeur.
THE TASK
I have not done
it yet.
It is out there.
Like footsteps.
Like drumsticks.
By day,
I’m confused
by bright lights,
can’t quite focus.
At night.
it comes so close
but I’m too weary
to respond.
I don’t know
if it is even worth doing.
But it speaks
in footsteps.
In drumsticks.
And that’s not its story.
PUPPET POEM
A puppet
keeps right on jerking.
Nothing is
its decision.
Its mind
is a string.
Its senses
are unseen hands.
It dances to the beat
of a foreign object
in an eye.
Or a rear-ender.
Or a letter from
a lawyer’s office.
A puppet’s voice
comes down
from cardboard clouds.
A puppet
has no say
in what it says.
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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