Four Poems by John Grey

DEEP AS THE BEAR
 
Above me, the big bear
growls silent in the northern sky,
ascends through clear darkness
disappearing endlessly as it does.
I want to lie down here,
the bear asleep on my ceiling,
and breathe like the tiny window bells,
a slow stirred cream of soft notes and stillness,
but what I want is nothing to the world.
 
I envy the rock, the leaf, the crumpled up paper,
natural — tree after tree,
hill upon hill, sealed off by moonlight.
But silent and still
and anonymous as I struggle to be,
my lungs rise and fall with my name.
To be as fixed as the stars,
guided by nothing but the ripple of my lips
toward the new horizon,
while frogs drum, breeze flutters,
I’d be self-satisfied,
except there'd be no self.
 
 
 
 
 
 
IDENTITY
 
Come morning,
for a brief moment,
you're unknown to me.
 
In dream places,
I've been with dream people.
You were not among them.
 
My mind is temporarily unavailable.
A stranger occupies
the tousled sheets.
 
Never touched this woman.
Nor threaded her hair with fingers.
Nor pressed my lips against her cheek.
 
My desire's waylaid by a phantom on a horse.
My pulse still beats for
the lady flaunting blue crinoline at the ball.
 
But then, summoned by the situation,
a name forms on my tongue.
I'm more and more confident enough to speak it.
 
"Hi," you whisper through your own personal fog.
You're at the end of your identification process.
I emerge clearly from the last time you saw me.
 
Side by side all night but only now are we together again.
You slowly rise. I follow. Another day
when a name is as good as any place to start.





NEIGHBORLY
 
They have their lives
and I have mine.
They peer in their own mirrors,
sleep in their own beds.
Likewise, my mirrors are
for my face exclusively,
my bed comforts nobody but me.
I wave, I say hello,
and they return my greeting.
That's enough to preserve
the sanctity of our mirrors, our beds.
Neighbors confirm
that I'm who I am,
they're who they are.
Anything more
wouldn't be neighborly.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
YOU HAVE YOURSELF A POET
 
A cheap suit claims a cheap soul,
a coward's curses get off easily,
a hunchback is lost for words,
a traveler is a traveler all over again -
ah poetry,
it always exaggerates
in the face of personal history -
and a poet is never in exile -
if poetry's to matter,
he's always under our beds.
Yes I'm ripped and ragged
and if you saw my underwear,
you'd have me neatly pegged.
And I'm a belligerent wanderer.
Even the gypsies stand clear.
Get you gone, says the landlord.
Give yourself up, repeat the cops.
Just not to us is their caveat.
So I blow my nose,
I scratch my arm.
I don't hesitate to shine anywhere I can.
I scream from the parapets of Notre Dame.
I'm a wreck in Rome.
A bum in the frugal warm of twilight April
in New York City.
Boston won't have me.
I'm as disheveled as a vacant lot.
That's me - gone to seed
in as many places as there are places.
But, without me, who sees
mocking moon, self-absorbed stars,
who reveals the panic?
Ripped jeans, dirty collar.,
I report the fever,
rising from my throat,
take the world's hottest hour
and settle on a blistering moment.





Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review,
Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.