John Grey

Yellow Mama Archives II

John Grey

A NEW LIFE

by John Grey

Deep in the woods is a clutch of graves

and the man who killed them and buried the bodies

now dwells in a metropolis two hundred miles to the west,

where he lives with his dear, dear wife.

He seems right in the head now he shares an apartment,

and sleeps far from the scene of all that butchery and digging,

and the cottage, now burned to the ground, along with every bloodstain.

He keeps the two separate— the second floor flat, the undiscovered crime scene,

the wife that he loves and the strangers who just happened to be there.

Two worlds— one that puts food on his table, warmth in his bed,

the other where every human tic was cause for dismemberment.

Deep in the woods, the shadows never lift.

In the city, sun’s reliable, breaks through each morning.

All he needed was love to emerge fully from the darkness.

No more stabbing the irate neighbor or the coughing boy.

No slaughtering the obese woman or the girl with the stammer.

No beheading the man who looked at him oddly.

He and his wife live happily and solitarily.

Other people can safely go on with being human.

A NEW LIFE

by John Grey

Deep in the woods is a clutch of graves

and the man who killed them and buried the bodies

now dwells in a metropolis two hundred miles to the west,

where he lives with his dear, dear wife.

He seems right in the head now he shares an apartment,

and sleeps far from the scene of all that butchery and digging,

and the cottage, now burned to the ground, along with every bloodstain.

He keeps the two separate— the second floor flat, the undiscovered crime scene,

the wife that he loves and the strangers who just happened to be there.

Two worlds— one that puts food on his table, warmth in his bed,

the other where every human tic was cause for dismemberment.

Deep in the woods, the shadows never lift.

In the city, sun’s reliable, breaks through each morning.

All he needed was love to emerge fully from the darkness.

No more stabbing the irate neighbor or the coughing boy.

No slaughtering the obese woman or the girl with the stammer.

No beheading the man who looked at him oddly.

He and his wife live happily and solitarily.

Other people can safely go on with being human.

MOIRA WALKS HOME LATE AT NIGHT

by John Grey

It was late at night,

the streets were dark and empty

and she had the feeling

she was being followed.

Only ten more blocks

to her apartment house

but it seemed miles away.

She heard no footsteps,

no cough, no breathing

and, when she risked

a glance behind

there was nothing but shadow

in the shape of the buildings

she’d hurried by.

She knew she was being foolish.

Her imagination had created

some creature out of nothing,

and that was her mystery pursuer,

a figment, threatening, deadly,

but a figment, nothing more.

But then suddenly she did hear footsteps,

and a cough, and breathing.

She began to shake,

Her forward progress was more

of a sideways wobble.

“Is that you, Margaret?” said a familiar voice.

It was Mr. Benson,

the man in the apartment below.

She sighed with relief.

But also disappointment.

Her life was safe.

But her fantasies were on shaky ground.

THE HEAD

by John Grey

Don't start thinking

I'm a mere parlor trick

performed by the one

who brought me here.

I can see and think

for both of us.

And all this without a damn thing

below my severed throat.

No windpipe of course.

No veins and arteries

flowing back and forth

from the heart.

A machine does the work

performed formerly by my body.

He's placed me on a tabletop

like a vase full of flowers.

But, instead of petals opening,

I provide, for your enjoyment,

lips like mating slugs

mouthing silent sounds.

Some would say

that I am not really alive,

just a simulation,

some electronic wizardry

fronted by a borrowed skull.

But see my eyes blink.

Watch my nose and ears twitch.

Take time to read

what my slave has written here.

CONTENTS OF THE ATTIC TRUNK

by John Grey

Moldy letters,

jigsaw puzzles,

bronzed baby shoe,

faded photographs,

Uncle Jake’s handwritten confession

to the murder of Aunt Lucy,

a moth-eaten wedding dress,

false teeth in a bottle,

a severed hand,

Aunt Lucy’s I expect.

THE DEAD MAN TO HIS HEIRS

by John Grey

The view from the coffin

is a welcome change

from what I saw

through bleary eyes

on my deathbed.

Despicable relatives,

treacherous so-called friends

and all manner of toadies

no longer hold their breath

for my last puff of air.

Now, their nerves

are on high alert,

in anticipation of the reading

of the will.

The words of comfort

are as insincere

as a Tammany Hall politician’s.

The tears are still fake.

Even the one who smothered me

with that pillow

could give a bawling crocodile

a head start

and beat it by a lachrymose gallon.

They’ll get their share

and then their descendants,

their hangers-on,

will wait impatiently

for them to die.

They think they’re getting money.

But I will to them voracity,

distrust and hypocrisy.

Oh yes, and a pillow in the face

when they least expect it.

HOLDING OUT FOR A RAINBOW

by John Grey

It has

been raining for days.

The grass is green and lush

outside

but here,

in this rank and ratty

second floor apartment,

the fungi and mold

sprout.

I sit in a kitchen chair,

elbows on table,

head in hands.

That is,

when I bother

to get out of bed.

The slime is oozing

out through my brain.

And I’m cursed with inward eyes.

THE TIDE

by John Grey

I’m by the ocean, on the beach,

body attentive to the sun’s last rays

but mind distracted by the idea of darkness

and its promised full moon.

It’s a particular kind of hunger

that nature, for all its wild beauty, cannot sate.

I can only make footprints in sand for so long

before they turn into pawprints

and the trail leads away from the beach,

to where people live in their supposed fortresses.

Horizon streaks with blood.

Streetlamps flicker on.

I’m little changed on the outside

but, for my innards,

there’s a seismic shift.

I lope more than I walk.

I growl instead of speaking.

Don't be surprised if, within the hour,

I'm at your doorstep.

It’s a different world

to what God had in mind.

Civility has gone out on the tide

and I am coming in.

FOLLOWED

by John Grey

I can’t be at ease,

not as long

as I walk these dark streets,

tracked and followed

by a sound.

Call it a cough,

a clip-clop,

even a heavy breath,

it’s always back there somewhere.

Touch may never come into it.

I could die of what I hear.

HE KNOWS

by John Grey

The vampire is aware of every virgin

tucked away in cottage beds,

or in rooms above the tavern,

fifty, at least, in the village

as if they were items on a menu,

fulsome, buxom, fair-haired and blue-eyed,

each dreaming a hopeful story

like the reading and rereading of a fairy tale,

a tale that can’t survive

the lure of an open window

to the messenger of death flying by.

It’s an old Transylvanian fallacy

that nighttime’s as safe as daylight

with a cross between breasts,

garlic flowers hung from walls.

But each is an Ariadne’s thread

through the maze of darkness,

a sign that here is something precious,

a damsel worthy of protection.

But it’s an unfinished circle,

an incomplete composition,

an aura ripe for penetration.

A man of centuries

knows the lay of the land of dreams,

the grammar of soft breathing,

the rituals of fear.

Fresh blood runs like a stream in spring

and his is the perfect passion for it.

SCALING THE WALL

by John Grey

It’s crawling vertically,

and side to side.

The thing is

just below

your wide-open window,

about to scutter up

onto your sill.

It could be

a vampire

or maybe just

some kind

of venomous arachnid.

You could die

a slow death

or a quick one,

passionately sucked of all blood

or terrifyingly

paralyzed in a heartbeat.

It’s all your mother’s fault.

She only ever warned you

about married men.

ON THE COMMUTER TRAIN

by John Grey

Baron Frankenstein's head

is buried in an old yellowing chemistry book.

Igor sits beside him, hands fidgeting,

the ones in his large brown bag likewise.

Larry Talbot rubs his chin, wonders,

"Did I shave this morning?

Does that even matter?"

Count Dracula is primping in a mirror,

combing, adjusting, fiddling,

until he can't see a thing.

Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde

almost didn't make it . . .

a half hour trying to convince

the ticket seller they should

only pay one fare.

The Mummy just wants to

add a momentary doze

to his many centuries of sleep

but the nouveau-frightful,

Jason, Freddy Krueger, and Chucky

are being loud and obnoxious.

And the alien boards suddenly

and violently, tearing

through the ceiling of the train.

"Decrepit mansions not good enough

for you," sneers the butler

from the old dark house.

A gaggle of ogres is ogling

She-who-must-be-obeyed.

"She can give me orders any time," one snickers.

"Tiny out of the way English village"

and the invisible man departs.

The Witch-finder General gets off

at seventeenth century superstitious British Isles.

Various poltergeists detrain at American suburbia,

giant bugs at the 50s stop.

More journey. Another station.

"Fog shrouded Whitechapel in the 1880s!"

screams the conductor

A well-known artist, a member of the royal family,

a Russian sailor, a Hungarian butcher, and a Harley Street specialist,

all glance up.

PREY

by John Grey

The spirit is so weak, it’s unwilling . . .

surrounded by listening devices,

ripple-faced, hiding out in dreams,

writing notes to myself

away from probing eyes . . .

outside, the threats draw closer—

hook-clawed creatures

and the rotting smell of night.

How unearthly the Earth at such times . . .

health collapses, surrounds pantomime

with flickering light and wall-shadow,

enlist the thugs of darkness, buzzing insect

satellites, bizarre cannibals of the latest technology.

And how drawn this mouth, the last

smile from what seems centuries ago,

turned upside down, distorted,

pungent, green, warped . . .

to name just a few of my companions.

How pointless these defenses . . .

I turn myself inside out

and yet it’s still me, a broken toy,

the split wires of a powerline,

loveless among uncaring ghosts,

threatened by gangsters, Russians,

monsters, artificial intelligence

and barons of the black arts.

Now, I am a flesh and bone alarm

with a bell that rings in my head—

the sound is the same as always . . .

what bothers me is the frequency.

SCREAM

by John Grey

A woman screams from the house next door.

Windows rattle.

The flowers on my kitchen table fold up in an instant.

I drop the book I’m reading.

A shudder ripples through me.

Sure, there’s been reports of monsters in the neighborhood.

And my doors and windows are locked with bolts and chains.

But high-pitched cries can go where intruders cannot tread.

Her terror is in the room with me.

I can fight off an intruder but not the beast of sound.

THE LEAKING FAUCET

by John Grey

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The bathroom faucet leaks

and, despite his best efforts
with wrench and washer,

he’s clearly no plumber.

His brain sometimes resounds

with his mother’s words—

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

But now his mind is consumed

by that persistent drop

of water on enamel.

Madness is such a shape-shifter.

He can terrify women,

hack up whores,

show his mother what a man he is.

But pipes are a maze of metal,

so many joins, so many cracks,

more weak points

than a drunken date.

When his mother speaks,

he can take to the streets,

the clubs, the cafes,

stalk and seduce and strangle,

show her how wrong she is.

But when the faucet leaks,

he’s the only victim here.

THE SILENCE

by John Grey

The silence of a place

where people once lived

is eerie, cruel even.

Eerie, for how much

the creak of my foot on a stair

echoes through the rooms.

Cruel, for how those

who dwelled here are forgotten.

so forgotten,

it’s as if they never were.

And the silence of a place

where people once lived,

can also be gruesome.

Gruesome, for the rotting,

cobwebbed, bloated corpses

hunched around the dining table,

with scraps of a rat-nibbled long-ago meal,

on cracked china plates before them.

But that silence

can also be reassuring.

I can move in here.

The rent, undoubtedly, is cheap.

PACING

by John Grey

By day,

you pace the many rooms

of the old manor.

At night,

you blow out the bedside candle,

dark clouds encumber the high window

and, as you lie back on your pillow,

pull the blanket up to the crest of your chin,

it’s time for another kind of pacing.

Your mind is the floor this time.

Your memory provides the footsteps.

As does your guilt.

And the ghosts.

Back and forth,

back and forth,

by the time you fall asleep,

your evil history

has worn a hole in your head.

POEM FOR AN EX

by John Grey

There were nights

when I saw hands

and only hands.

Tiny or large,

floating in the darkness,

flexing their fingers,

easing to the left or to the right,

as if angling for

the clearest, quickest route

to my bare throat.

There were no bodies.

Not even the shape of one.

Just hands.

Old wrinkled hands.

Strong sturdy hands.

Even the occasional child-like hands

that lunged then drew back

as if the act of strangling

a man in his bed

was beyond them.

But some hands persevered,

drew closer and closer,

prepared to wrap around my neck,

and choke the life out of me.

They were my hands.

You peeked through the keyhole,

watched the goings-on

appreciatively.

HIS GALLERY

by John Grey

At first, she's impressed, awed even,

by the stuffed and mounted heads on his wall.

"That rhino made the mistake of charging me,"

he says, as she admires the huge gray head

topped with one, erect, threatening horn.

The lion is even more dazzling.

His mane is high and proud.

Those intimidating teeth

look set to rip a man's flesh from his bone.

"It was either me or him," he explains.

But when it comes to the smaller, cuter creatures

like the rabbit or the squirrel,

her mood droops like her face,

is overwhelmed by sadness, sympathy.

"Practice for the real thing," he says.

And then, beyond these tiny feature creatures,

the display turns into something more horrifying.

She trembles at the sight of a human head,

a middle-aged man with florid cheeks,

eyes bulging, mouth wide open,

frozen in eternal castigation

"The old man and me never did get along,"

A few more young men follow.

"You tend to have a lot of enemies in this business."

And then a beautiful, though sour-faced, woman.

"It never did work out."

There's one space on the wall,

room enough for one more trophy.

Before she can ask for whom or what it is intended,

he whispers in her ear,

"You know something, you could very well be Miss Right."

She smiles

but then realizes,

her tour began from the far left.

DEAD WORK

by John Grey

It's exhausting
but it's the dead's job
Walk around
when your legs are rotting.
Touch
when hands crumble
at the merest contact.
The dead are under orders.
Exit coffins. Burst through earth.
Wander neighborhoods after midnight.
Enter houses, bedrooms.
No one alive can be relied upon
for vigilante justice
So shriek though

your tongue's worm-riddled.
Flap and flail at the risk
of losing the other arm.
Press your decomposing cheeks
hard against the face of
the one who did this to you
until they die of fright.
Remember,
revenge is a dish
best served dead.

HOW HE DIED

by John Grey

The soil has memory

but no conscience.

It knows where the bodies

are buried

but cares not a grain of dirt

for how they got there.

Died peacefully of natural causes

or smashed violently over the head

by some guy with a shovel—

it’s all the same

to the three feet of earth

that buries the bones.

The soil will just go about

its business of gnawing away

at the body,

using the crumbs of flesh and bone,

for its own ends.

But the tree it nurtures

is a different story.

Some trees bend and moan.

Others stand mute and upright.

They tell you

what the soil will not.

THE MAN IN THEIR MIDST

by John Grey

He’s where he is and he’s where he is not.

At the exact moment that

he’s stroking the fur of his cat,

he’s praising his pet for the mouse

she hasn’t caught yet, that will flap

in her jaw, sometime near the witching hour.

What is now a good cup of coffee

will be a triumph of bloodlust come midnight.

And as he looks out the window

at the young woman passing by,

he foresees his eyes as hands,

her confident walk

as an unwitting stroll into terror.

Anything flying free in the morning

will flop dead on the floor of its cage.

The healthy will sicken.

The dying, die all the more.

Everyone’s out in their latest summer clothes.

Too bad the fashion around here is body bags.

John Grey is an Australian poet, U.S. resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Covert, 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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