THIS ACTING GIG
The world is overrun with plays,
with busy sets,
overwhelming characters.
The actors are passersby, strangers,
who fire their perverse blanks
inches from my temple.
The cars, the trains, are part of it.
The ruined buildings and
their ceaseless shadows too.
My footsteps on the blunt sidewalk
are the interminable soundtrack
to the tale which keeps on telling.
It’s a love story.
But I’m not the leading man.
It’s a drama.
Simple conversations
are so fraught with dread.
It’s a comedy.
The audience awaits
my very next pratfall.
Sometimes, I wonder
what am I doing in the cast,
why are they all looking at me,
what do I say next.
But then comes the great relief
of forgotten lines
suddenly remembered.
I’m an actor again.
I inhale my motivation.
I exhale my interminable bows.
DIARIES
Each cover had a lock
And there were five of the books in total,
one for every year from when she was 12
to her time as sweet 16.
She says she recorded everything
from the most mundane
to her deepest, darkest thoughts.
A page might consist of
what she wore to school
coupled with her feelings
toward her stepmother.
She held nothing back.
I asked her whatever happened
to her diaries.
She replied that she had stored them
in the drawer of her bed,
until she was twenty
when she took one out, began to read it.
The author was a stranger she concluded.
And it wasn’t much of a story.
So she threw them on the fire.
And those five years seemed grateful
to go up in flame.
They crackled and spat for a time
but ultimately were nothing but ashes.
Only the locks remained.
She let them simmer there.
For all I know, they simmer still.
HAVING LOST SOMEONE
In the darkness,
overcome with grief,
maybe a hundred,
a thousand, restless souls
throughout the city
whisper as one,
“What do we do now, sad people?”
I’m not saying
they’re the ones
gathering under the streetlamp.
But there’s a great sob
coming from that direction.
And I can’t believe
those are tears of light.
THE OSPREY IN THE MARSH POND
Sheer horror in the water,
a young osprey floating on the surface,
wings fumbling for momentum,
puncture wounds oozing blood.
One of the young birds I’d been watching,
so near to being fully fledged,
but now turning in an infernal arc,
as the parents screech from somewhere above.
Feathers that dealt him flight,
now tilted and waterlogged,
dark eyes scanning his slim chances.
I lift him up, place him on a rock.
No gratitude, just all fear.
My trespass shrinks before his dying breath.
It’s quiet in the clifftop now.
Noon sky turns to midnight.
THOUGHTS OF A WRECKING BALL
The building is flattened,
steel and brick and glass
scattered in all directions.
The wrecking ball
sways slightly back and forth,
like a mind ticking over.
124 North Main is a done deal.
What’s next?
120? 128?
How about the fast-food joint?
Or the book store?
Or the restaurant with the fat cakes in the window?
And there’re always the guy,
one good swing away,
riding high above the ground
in his little cabin.
He’s God.
I’m his wrath.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.