Poetry: Selections From John Grey

O SOUL ME-O

 

Is the soul sharp, like a switch-blade?

Or is it hard, like a lump in the breast?

Sure Aretha had one

I hear it when I play her music.

But what about the woman 

berating her child in the park?

Can a soul get so angry

it can render a face red,

barely hold back a hand

that’s about to do some slapping?

And, if the little boy has one,

does it ever learn?

And, if he’s done nothing wrong,

does it ever recover?

I have other questions 

like what’s it made of,

and are animals soulful,

and what about trees and flowers.

But there’s a line between

what is known

and what can never be known.

Imagination can cross it

from time to time

but it cannot stay.

But I can’t help wondering 

if the soul and body 

are so intertwined,

so reliant on each other,

that when one gives out,

the other follows.

Or does the soul really 

have an afterlife,

floats off to heaven

or into someone just born,

while flesh and bone 

are left to burn or rot.

Something within me 

keeps asking this stuff.

If it’s the brain,

it will go on asking.

If it’s the soul,

how come it don’t know already?

 

 

 

THE HUMAN

 

head, legs, arms and torso -

everything is required

nothing is surplus -

flesh, in the main,

sits comfortably on bone

and understandable sounds

are emitted

when we open our mouths,

manipulate the voice box -

we have faces to represent us

and innards .

to run the show

and we live long enough

to die when it's called for —

there must be something about us

for all this to happen -

my mind

is currently

working on the problem -

it's puzzling

but not fatal -

there's a reason

mere thinking

doesn't draw blood

 

 

 

PRICE

 

It was the great, underground and singular American guilt.

The joy of owning nothing. Not a damn thing.

 

In a neighborhood where accumulating stiff

and virtue were one.

 

Guilt like a traffic cop crouched behind every advertising sign.

But he was walking, not driving. 

 

He had failed advertising, failed the goods

that corporations pressed upon him.

 

Yet, just this moment, as he stood idly by,

he had seen the true American pass him 

 

on the narrow tenement stairs,  clutching bags 

of basic needs, unhindered and unaided by others.

 

Outside, he was on his own. Listening to river talk,

doing his best train imitation. And what a train.

 

Across the distant bridge. Beyond the smoke stacks.

Toward the horizon. And then it elevated. It flew.

 

 

 

DRINK UP

 

The garish bar didn’t like his act.

The drinks with names were beyond him.

He settled on a beer of less distinction.

 

He gave off that wondrous glow of ill health.

Uninvolved with social success, he looked around.

Unarmed but with a sniper’s mind.

 

The woman sitting next to him

was the subject of random hits.

Occasionally, his eyes pretended to participate.

 

But she grew stale in his company, with her pennant lips 

and jailhouse perfume. Such a bazaar. 

Many inviting stalls.  But goods grubby with self-mockery.

 

 

 

THE OLD GANG

 

All night        they argued 

and they laughed

and even the most dissolute of them 

            flickered

            like a bare bulb

in a cheap apartment .

 

as the threadbare remains 

             of many an old joke

waved its soiled rag of a punchline

 

like a crazed peddler

            in a bizarre bazaar

 

who knows nobody will buy

yet waves his solitary soiled possession

 

            and screams out

            but it was funny once!

 

 

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.