Five Poems by John Grey

 

Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards; But It Must Be Lived Forwards." – Søren Kierkegaard

YOU WHO PAINT SCREAMS 

 

Whether you've been layering anguish  

in pastel streaks, retouching the sky’s hysteria,  

or smoothing the jagged edges of despair –  

that’s between you and your palette. 

 

All I know is that while others marvel at the frame,  

admiring brushstrokes, concocting theories,   

you love/hate the canvas before you,   

sometimes admiring the terror you’ve captured,  

sometimes scowling at the flaw you missed -   

a scream too regular, a horizon too serene. 

 

I get it. This figure isn’t a person, but a mannequin  

of panic in a shop-window of art.  

Yours is a world of feeling as palette,  

and bodies scaffolding for color choice. 

 

The rest of us can only stand and stare. 

 

 

 

 

SCREAM 

 

air cracks and shivers between pulses, 

red sky and fractured sound - 

silent echoes - a shriek rides the  

spine of dusk - hold breath - hold frame - 

the fjord grinding thought  

a flock of hours rushing past, 

rattling the sky – warped tight  

carves us into primal beings - we clutch 

at panic, ripple and collapse,  

turn ourselves into something  

approaching raw noise 

 

 

 

 

BEGATTING 

 

I wonder if my parents had second thoughts 

when they begat me – 

got to love that word begat – 

like something brandished by a begangster – 

 

looking back, it hardly sounds rational  

 

being long after my three sisters drew breath 

 

but maybe they thought, 

as they were getting on in years – 

like both being 32 or the like – 

that it was last chance for them to produce a male 

 

with his brains and her looks 

or his fishing skills and her way with a lemon meringue pie – 

 

they never told me of any weighing and measuring 

in the leadup to unprotected sex -  procreation – 

 

or it could be it was just animal spirits 

overriding sound judgement 

on some otherwise uneventful day in mid-November – 

 

actually, from my own experience, 

I am in no doubt that 99% of what we do 

is totally irrational 

 

and children      being like a tax on the flesh 

  that can’t be written off as a loss 

 

occupy the realm of – 

poverty and  

so what if they were all girls 

isn’t three enough? 

 

I was the last   

so they did finally wise up – 

 

I was happy enough without any younger siblings – 

I was happy enough to end the begetting there – 

and I still wave my begat at people – 

aside from my nose shape, 

that’s all my parents left me

 

 

 

 

PHONE CALL 

 

Life looks better backward. 

Hindsight makes for a much more likely truth. 

A pane of glass: push becomes pull.  

Grief twists simple physics. 

Dad says “Drive safe - watch for kangaroos.”  

I hear what he won’t say. 

 

I say “love you” to end the call  

before regret speaks out of turn. 

You said I only saw  

after things left. Too right. 

You packed. I fumed.  

The light dimmed  

but I didn’t see  

until the bulbs went with you. 

 

The bowls – yours – 

only noticed when the pasta  

needed some place to hide. 

Don’t remember me  

blue-lit in the phone’s rectangle,  

stirring last night’s waterlogged regrets. 

Don’t picture the pot - no plate, no pretense. 

Picture me at the wrong side of the door,  

pulling what only ever pushed. 

 

Still here.  

No dial tone.  

No way off this call. 

The shoreline waits. 

 

 

 

 

LIFE IN TIMES OF FUNERALS 

 

I’ve been to many funerals. 

They do not vary. 

The regrets, the sympathies, are interchangeable 

 

The facts of life, by my reckoning, is really the fact of life. 

Or, as my grandfather would say, “The only certainties 

are death and taxes. And you can cheat on your taxes.” 

 

Life is this lifelong flood, famine, earthquake. 

There are no survivors. 

 

Somewhere, someone at this very minute 

sits at a desk, is confronted by two trays. 

One contains causes of death. 

The other is awash in birth certificates 

They look the same. 

They are the same.

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Spotlong Review and Trampoline.