Autobiography in Ruins
Every square inch of knowledge
had been trudged through
Forty years later, I wait and watch.
Had to lead them on that chase longer.
Longed to cry out in return.
Stopped. I listened to the shouts.
I was with a bunch of weary men and women
in dreams so forlorn and empty.
It wasn’t winter but not through lack of trying.
Maybe I’d found a secret place
Not likely. Only I am so vulnerable here.
Nothing rivals my heartbeat for sound.
Autobiographies Conjoined
We scrape across a wide divide.
Think of it like this when you’re left hanging.
The spilling rocks. The bloody elbow.
This is our vocabulary now.
There is no time to ask a question.
Like – what will we become?
The canyons threaten, diminish.
To come into the world will always mean
an equivocation to the lives we have to live.
To say it freely. Finally allowed.
to see, but there are ways to separate –
as if we understand the process in ourselves.
You Enter
when the blood speaks
I resort to action
abandon my alliance with furniture
as I had earlier broken with the window-pane
on your entrance –
desire is
my primal agency of motion
from wiry hugs
to lip-wide flaunts of the mouth
I strive to play
a leading role in age-old technique
ah beauty –
what appears to the eye
runs with the flesh
By John Grey
- John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.
