A POEM CAN BE

VISITING THE OLD PRISON CAMP

Don’t leave me to perish in this crawl space

where previous occupants have withered
away to nothing and now, their pain,
their fear, their desperation,
is everything, leaving little room
for me to move or even breathe.

My limbs are starting to atrophy,
my brain is as numb as a stare,
and my heart struggles
to achieve sole dominion
over feelings that are history’s business.

I’m on my feet
but the ground feels sideways.
Face to wall,
human horror is suffocating.
My lungs are full
of impalpable names.

A POEM CAN BE

A knotty tree,
an ache, a gnawing need,
tanned arms glistening,
hair tied up in ribbons,
a birth song from out of a wobbly throat,
snapped twigs on a trail,
cheap whiskey, a come-on,
constant breath in your ear,
a shattered heart, a breached soul,
the edge of emptiness,
sex-slicked evenings,
endless airless heat.
every broken body,
a scalded hand,
a gaze strung taut like summer before rain,
a nest falling from a branch,
hayfields at sunset,
a cover for bloodstains,
a place to hide in the hollow of night,
wisdom disguised as a cypress tree,
a cell where the prisoner is fed mostly adjectives,
light needling a windowsill,
the orange glint of a robin's breast.
scent of a mint leaf,
a way of quietly paraphrasing a scream,
rusted hinges, weary locks.
a star to set you up inside.
shoulders slumped and knees raised,
an in-depth study of the blues,
a sickle moon wielded by the grimmest reaper,
spider silk, a spell cast, the underside of ice,
stacks of sun-dried firewood,
a longing stare,
moss on a fallen oak,
a stranger's face, warm tea,
a rock breathing, unseen sweat,
the wants of nature,
an impassioned plea from what hasn’t been written yet.

NEW WORLD

So what experiments are these?
Blue-faced men on porches,
somehow rocking
even if their eyes don't blink?
And here are the women likewise.
Good breeders, I heard somebody whisper.

Really, it's no better than what I've seen in caves:
mold and smells
and grunts and unruly appetites.
The porch people are fed by tube.
Someone tosses raw meat to the cave-dwellers.
I wonder how they don't devour each other.
But it's all hunger.
All the body's brute demands.

Then, of course, there are the winged folks.
They feed, they sleep, they procreate,
without ever setting foot on earth.
And the mole creatures,
underground mostly, feasting on
worms and tubers, with just the occasional
nasal periscope for air.

The things they can do with DNA these days.
They breed anything and anyone
though the race of supermen arc still beyond them.
Half-man, half-horse, trots by even as I write this.
And there goes the spider woman,
skittering up the wall to her apartment.
Almost time for my poetry injections.

THE GUN

He shows her
where the pistol is kept,
what to point at,

how to pull the trigger.
That’s supposed to keep
her comfortable

and warm at night
when he’s working
his third shift security detail.

He’s arming her
for his absence,
the silence, the loneliness,

that would be terrifying
if her sleep
weren’t packing heat.

And yes, he even tells her
what to say to the cops
when she has to explain

the dead body
sprawled across the kitchen floor.
Or the hole in the wall

when the gun goes off by accident
or she thinks he hears something
but it’s really nothing.

At night, she has a weapon
instead of a husband.
Love for it, he figures, will come in time.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.