JOHN GREY

JOHN GREY

QUANDARY

To understand love

one must embrace

the allure of its paradox.

Yes, when looked at abstractly,

it can only become increasingly complex,

So best observe its results

e.g. the same person by your side

day after day.

This simplifies matters.

At least, until it doesn’t.

For example,

what of a lover’s almost entire

abandonment of romance

for the cutting of grass,

the washing of soiled underwear?

Love is too damn obtuse.

Think of it as a series of centrifugal gestures.

Or a liquid poured on the surfaces

of glances, of conversation,

so that no detail of it emerges.

Love is really an evolving continuity,

whorls of feeling that

form an interlacing skein

that can endure the imposition

of an indefinite number of outside influences

but becomes less and less

like anyone’s idea of love.

The best I can come up with

is that it’s a series of labyrinthine circumstances

mixed with both refined and coarse situations,

the result being a kind of mental and physical bond.

To be honest,

the entire arcane dimension of love

is where it loses me.

Better it be understood inherently.

It’s not at its best in the telling.

SUNDAY MORNING

Sunlight set up camp at the tip of my nose.

I opened my eyes slowly.

A curtain moved gently.

A window shone blue.

I couldn’t see Saturday night anywhere.

I rolled over

into a surprising emptiness.

It was soft enough.

The mattress saw to that.

But no way it would be

making me breakfast.

My alarm clock, as always,

ruled over the dresser.

I scowled at time.

I was expecting a woman in the bed beside me.

Not six thirty.

IN SUBURBIA

The avenue has a current

rubbed smooth from house to house,

that whistles through

what each false front carries inside,

helps lift it above

the sidewalks of the poor.

Here is the car to drive,

the garden to emulate,

a picket fence to secure the psyche

like dead bolts do the doors.

It is America.

Something is empty

but it’s not the belly.

Something is lost

but none of what has been

acquired of late.

JOHN GREY

JOHN GREY is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Poetry East and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Harpur Palate, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.