John Grey

A YOUNG MAN FACE TO FACE WITH MORTALITY

By John Grey

I see a body in the river.

He is in the shallows,

water rippling his lips,

sunlight pecking at his cheeks

like gulls.

He may have good reasons

for being where he is

but the current peels away,

the liquid rots,

the body mutates

into something rancid.

This is a peaceful place

everywhere but in his eyes.

He looks as if

he's suffering for being dead.

I should go get help.

He needs to be hauled out of there,

interred properly, humanely.

But this is my secret place

and he my unwitting treasure.

I get down on my knees,

peer into his face.

My reflection takes up

half of his expression.

The rest is green and purple.

Yes, every time I look,

life floats atop death.

But I know it can't keep this up forever

NUMBER 1073

by John Grey

The house is old and infected

with churlish darkness,

the eyes of the grave,

the dusty smell of malevolence.

In even the emptiest of rooms,

a presence pricks the skin like needles.

And, when it’s gray and damp outside,

old despair seeps tears from every ceiling.

So many have dwelt within these walls,

the cruel, the evil, the unrepentant,

a diabolical den of debauched lives

without the prospect of heaven.

Even sleep is morbid restlessness,

a wearying collision of dream and haunting.

The moans from within, without,

keep all four posters of the bed awake.

VANTAGE POINT

by John Grey

In a narrow side street,

down below my second-floor apartment,

the routes by which

the bogeymen, demons,

grotesqueries and monstrosities

enter the inner city,

come together

in a tight space,

of muted light,

and no other foot traffic.

Tonight,

I expect, once more,

to take up my window vantage point,

watch, in both fascination and terror,

as they resume old feuds,

attack each other violently,

ripping and gouging,

biting and slashing,

in one great battle-fest

of torn skin, fur chunks,

flying eyeballs

and cannons of blood.

But, this night,

their usual growls

are merely murmurs.

Their lashing out

is no more than shoulder taps.

And those grim faces,

normally so intent

on menacing each other,

look upward.

One long scaly finger

emerges from the cloak

of some grizzle-faced ghoul.

It points directly at me.

MY WIVES

by John Grey

My wives don’t

bed down with me at night.

Instead, they walk the hallways,

ascend, descend, the stairs,

dressed in threadbare wedding garments,

gripping tight each other’s hands.

These brides

have nothing to do with love,

only presence.

They speak in a whisper.

But without words.

Just sounds that become a language

with repetition.

They do not look in on me.

They know my history well enough.

And what are my present circumstances

but a bedridden, crippled old man,

attended to by a mute male nurse

and a deaf cook—

a prime receptacle for pity

whose only source is myself.

My wives

are incapable of human contact,

impervious to what I might say or do.

Their strength is in having each other.

Their weakness is

that I have not passed over yet.

A VIVID IMAGINATION

by John Grey

A child,

fearful of nighttime,

in the despairing fields

of lights out,

bedcovers up to the throat,

casts his nerve-end’s net unwillingly,

hauls in a vision

of devils and demons,

phantoms and zombies,

in fact, everything

but random strangers,

the kind that prowl

his neighborhood after dark.

The Loss of a Son

by John Grey

To you, he is still the baby

with the head of curly black hair.

To everyone else,

he’s the town pariah.

Villagers come to the door

and you're wondering what

could possibly be their purpose

on such a dark, rainy night.

Did he steal another boy’s bicycle?

Was he involved in a playground fight?

They ask you if he lives here,

say his name slowly,

take you back to the day

when you first came up with it.

You almost expect them to preface it with,

"If it's a boy we'll call him . . ."

The frenzied mob descend the cellar steps,

wielding axes and crucifixes,

garlic flowers and long, sharp pointed sticks.

Loud shrieks can be heard from the cellar.

But when weren’t there loud shrieks

from the cellar.

Suddenly, your boy stumbles up the stairs,

mouth bubbling blood,

face as pale as a yellow sac spider,

and a stake sticking out of his rib cage.

He kicks and struggles

as two burly men hold him down

and the town butcher raises his chopper high.

You always said he’d end up

like his old man.

For two hundred years,

you’ve been saying it.

John Grey is an Australian poet, U.S. resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly, and Tenth Muse. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and Memory Outside the Head, are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa, and Shot Glass Journal.