12/26/19

Alien Botany
By John Grey


It is a zarkal-blossom afternoon.

A creature, the zextotl,
buzzes its way among fresh flowers,
is attracted to what the blooms attract.

It’s a whir of wings, a sudden dive at
the most sedate of nibblers, piercing
the victim’s carapace with a syringe-like lance.

It’s the time to fill the nest with stung corpses.

Bingles, tinier than itself, are easy targets.
The zextotl stabs and injects, piles up the victims,
bears them back to its home of spun paper, river mud.

Two Earthlings, leading botanists,
watch excitedly but cautiously,
snap photo after photo
of these purple beauties.

The zarkal is a thousand feet high.
The zextotl is the size of an average Earth rocket.
Even the bingle would outweigh an elephant.

Despite their degrees,
two Earthlings cannot be conceited long.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Qwerty, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

8/15/19

A BOY GROUNDED
By John Grey


Between this world
and the stars,
I have so much ground to make up.
My imagination can only take me so far.
Now I need something
to cocoon me from the dangers
but open my eyes to the wonders –
a ship of course,
capable of impossible speeds,
powered by a fuel not yet invented.
Without this,
I am just another hopeless case,
spending days and nights in my room,
scribbling stories in notebooks,
sketching aliens and planets,
suns and galaxies,
everything in my head,
but nothing anywhere else.
I am born a thousand years too soon.
Future man has stolen my dreams.
And he doesn’t even have to dream them.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review.

7/11/19

MAKING MY WAY BACK TO CAMP
By John Grey


My surroundings
are slowly consumed by darkness,
an upper jaw of sky,
a lower of rocky soil.

It swallows the theodora stand
down to its roots,
piles on the nesting xotls.
Valleys go quietly.
Even the distant hills
are ultimately gulped
to nothingness.

Sure, a moon rises
but it’s ineffectual,
until joined by another,
and then a third.

These modest satellites
band together,
focus their reflected shine
on a hollow here,
a tree trunk there,
even a man
who’s trudging through the gloom.

The Zanxian night
makes a meal of the light
but leaves me crumbs enough.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review.

1/24/18

ANOTHER MORNING ON ALTURA
By John Grey


Machines pump oxygen
while a heart speaks like a lover.
and surely, between the hum of the computers,
the nightingale has come
to chirp by the star-lit window.

All new and strange but it's
a familiar eye that collects the fire
from suns and carries it to a breast
to ensure the dawn's brightness.

When an explorer dreams,
he makes a place in the bedding for earth,
a lover who seeps through his lowered guard,
fades slowly into him.

As a sleeper awakes,
the safety of function moves willingly aside
for the cozy wildness of remembered touch.

On a planet, three solar systems hence,
old reflections gather in faces.

In a place of red sky,
waves from that least cosmic of beaches
leap across the light years,
roll up on a purple shore.

Each planet, he bestrides,
he offers like a pendant
for her soft, white throat.

He gathers odd-shaped flowers
from a scarlet bush,
the rouge of her cheeks
still flush in them.


- - -
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.

1/3/19

TRACKING THE QUADNUCK
By John Grey


Open up in the name of a full tank of crystal.
Rat-a-tat on the door with a bucket of Aelopean brew
and interstellar radio loaded with
honkytonk angels from beyond the milky way.
No use trying to run away.
We’ve got weapons that can take out
your scutum from ten thousand paces.
And they’re silent as a sagittian moon.
You won’t know what hit you
and nor will the rest of the herd.

Of course, we’ll send out our two-headed blood terriers
to drag back your carcass.
It’s what they’re bred to do.
And later, of course, we’ll toss them a leg or two.
No big deal. You’ve got at least eight.

Quadnuck, it’s all over. Your time has come.
So sayeth some guys in rugged Levi space suits
flannel steel shirts, and tight sleeveless cosmic parkas.
And don’t forget our space helmets
with their Mac’s Hardware emporium logo.

Forget the high-legged prop and kick,
the escape into the underbrush.
Our lights hypnotize.
You'll do what we say.
Our language is death.
The accent is Earth if you must know.


- - -
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.

12/13/18

THIS NEW WORLD
By John Grey


Enough with women,
give me a gorgeous machine.
Bionic is the new beauty.
Why shouldn’t I buy in.
I can take out a loan.
I can max my credit cards.
No wait, my ex already did that.

There goes one now, perfect body,
flawless tan, long blond hair,
exquisite face, and eyes that pulse
with as much desire
as a programmer can code.

The hips swivel.
She hums as she walks.
Her pelvis surely has a dream
in its composition,
the way it swivels, rotates.
And as for her legs,
they lead where only a man
with the cash in hand may follow.
Unfortunately, that’s not me.
With my job, I can barely get by.
So it’s back to the bars for me,
back to the females who,
even when we’re both as blitzed
as a rogue planet,
can never be android enough.

The sad fact is
there’s perfection all around me
but it never will be mine.
I look at real people.
They look back at me.
Disappointment
is the new poverty.


- - -
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.

11/1/18

CONSTELLATIONS
By John Grey

- -
Constellations in the night sky,
connected only by how we see the distance.
suns as random as our thoughts
but forming lions and water bearers –


like disparate people through the years,
no association between themselves
until I map them in my earthbound sphere


join a sparkling seven year old girl in pigtails
to the burning gases of a mother
pinning shirts and trousers to a clothes line
and a teenage comet
alighting occasionally on my lips
and a woman in nova white dress and train
fighting inner tremble down an aisle -
I chart pectus pectorus - a heart -


I link works of art to books read.
Bach to the Rolling Stones,
a train ride through Connecticut
to the Angel falls -
my life's all ars minor,
eo ire itum.
musica major -


then it's back to the night sky,
the twinkling latitudes.
the howl, the head, the gleaming Y shape -
or is that Michelle or Vancouver
or the last note of the Eroica -


I’m some of what we all are -
some exclusively inside myself.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Evening Street Review and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

10/4/18

FIRST FAMILY OF AEOLIAN
By John Grey

- -
Sun surrenders sky
to a sprinkling of stars.
And the one moon rises, then another,
followed by a third.
It's as if we're witness
to the universe's biggest and slowest juggler.
The balls hang perilously
in the coming darkness
but he doesn't drop a one.
My daughter can't help clapping her hands.


The strange red ocean
fades to black like any other.
And the blue mineral hue of mountains
is tempered by gray shadow.
Flying creatures head to roosts.
Ground slitherers emerge
from camouflaged holes.
It's like a "What is wrong with this picture?" version
of an Earth sunset.
The similarities warm.
The differences excite.
My wife raises her glass to the horizon's palette.
A tiny reptile threads my son's fingers.


It's one more night
on this planet we now call home.
We gather on the veranda

as we have always done.
Only the scenery is new.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Evening Street Review and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

8/9/18

NO LIGHT ON LIGHT YEARS
By John Grey


Billions of light years distant,
we only see their ancient history.

Through the telescope's eye,
I keep staring time backwards -

ten billion years - unimaginable -
and yet there it is - imagine it.

All dead, a hole even, but living
and totally there for my purpose.

Our planet, I'm sure, gives as good as it gets.
If you're seeing me, it's not me.

The day I was born exists fifty light years away.
My parent's wedding is out there farther still.

And so on. And so on.
If you're sharing Henry VIII's choice

of a wife - don't get too involved -
there's five more - just ask someone

thirty light years beyond you.
There's some, I'm sure, who think

we're all dinosaurs or maybe just
a red-hot molten ball.

It's unfathomable
and the universe can keep it up forever.

Sometimes it feels like
everything is in the past but me.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

7/19/18

EINSTEIN AT THE BUS STOP
By John Grey


He's been standing there a half hour already,
it's cold as nuclear winter,
and he can't even wear a toke
because without that fuzzy hair
he could be just anybody.
The speed of light
he has the perfect formula for
but the speed of buses
resists all equations.
A brain massive enough
to contain the universe
bobs atop impatient aching legs.
Can't afford a taxi.
Genius doesn't pay.
But he must get back to work.
His head bulges with the proof
that time travel is possible.
But what if time
is public transport?


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

6/28/18

Nympho-Droid
By John Grey


Algorithmic passion: what next?
She transforms, becomes, a girl of such beauty,
and tilts her head to the sky,
as sun pours down to enlighten me the more.
Lovers must have someone to love.
These scientists code the foundations,
the criteria, but I make the choices.
I am her true creator.

At home, she stares at me adoringly,
speaks well of who I am.
I snap many a photograph
but none as enduring as my mind’s rotogravure.
She’s definitely a quantum shift in adorability.
Luscious, sensual, she has no other form.
The cooking, the cleaning, are mere adjuncts.
It’s her flesh that matters, soft and pliant.
She makes love like a sacred Sanskrit manual,
pleases all of my body parts
when and where required.

What is it like to live with a flawless woman, you may ask.
Sure, it’s a burden on my credit card.
But I’m paying it off month by month.
There’ll come a day when I own her outright.
And, unlike a car, there’s no need to replace her.

Some say that I live in a fool’s world,
that, for all her faults,
a real woman comes with a sincerity,
a true caring, that a shapely android does not.
Try tell me that when my lover
spreads her arms, her legs, so willingly,
when she swirls like a carousel
while I’m riding every horse at once.
A real woman would want so much in return.
My special angel requires nothing more
than occasional recharging.


It’s a new world.
We can get what we want.
No longer must we be satisfied with each other.
Sure, when the constant love-making
leads to my fatal heart attack,
her twenty-five-year-old tears won’t be real.
But my twenty-seven-year-old ones will be.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

3/1/18

ON A HOSTILE PLANET
By John Grey


Heat doesn't just happen,
it invades,
on this planet where
the sun summers year round
from burnt-grass plains
to steamy oceans.

It's like hell
and the cone of an active volcano
all in one,
feels like molten lava on a good day.
We're all cloistered here
in a dome of phony cool air
while outside
land bubbles and boils,
air whips welts into mountains.

We have windows
thick as the skin
of nuclear reactors
for an up close vista
of the local reality:
dust storms,
sunsets that just deliver more sun,
creatures mostly of the brawling kind.
Strange it is
what the folks safe back on Earth
just have to know.

It's a wonder these walls don't melt,
the ceiling liquefy,
we souls within
turn to molten crap.
For temperature's the enemy here.
It would like nothing more
than to get its devil's hands on us.

For the outside reckons it could use
our flesh, our bones, our blood
for its own searing purposes.
From its viewpoint,
every day we are not dead
is wasted on us.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

5/18/17

FIRST MORNING ON ALTAIR
By John Grey


I wake under three receding moons.
Through one, half-opened eye,
I dote on the blessed gift
of six strange soaring creatures.

Fresh silver lakes, shadows given notice,
mountains, half-hatched by light,
hum with cadence,
strident or bell-like, screeching or rasping.
Strange noises don't know where to settle,
always another snap, creak, cry,
darting in, uprooting curiosity.

A sun stands sentry at the outskirts of the colony pod,
heat triumphant,
rays frisking the upper rungs of ladder-like trees,
the windmill blades of foliage eager to be named.

Bellies grunt from distant, gray-tinged meadows.
a dull, raw canticle
for a morning of such promise.
Decaying wood snaps under unseen talons.
An odd birdlike beast droops a claw
into the lake water,
slowly roils the muddy bottom.
Flowers, red, blue and gold,
gather at the tip of zigzag breezes,
chatter like cousins at a wedding.

Radio crackle drifts in from the next room.
It's mostly Earth music, Earth news,
Earth weather report, Earth religion.
In this colony, sound mates like rabbits,
noise upon noise dripping with nostalgia.
The old days are dead in me.
Why this constant funeral service?

But in some parts of this planet,
scientists are already out collecting weird botanical samples,
catching, tagging, bizarre wildlife.
I learn those skills in my sleepiness,
empty out old thoughts,
collect the new, tag the unforgettable.
WAY OUT IN THE OUTER OUTER QUADRANT

I have a name, that's what I'm trying to say.
Consonant, vowels, syllables,
all the necessary fuel.
And I can say it any time I want.

So here we are, name,
out where void too has a name
Silence is one thing
but when there's no Earth to back it up,
then it feels more like the end of everything
than just me keeping my name to myself
for the time being.
Out here, there's no world to contradict,
nothing solid to balance a billion light years of nothing,

Still, I have my name.
I can tell myself who I am if need be,
I'm too far away from everything
to speak to anyone else in the universe.
But, at least, inside my head the reception is still clear.
It's the linkage I'm worried about,
the threads that connect me to the rest of human life.
Sure, there's memories,
and their reels are rolling through my mind now,
but they come with a label warning that
they contain space wind, star showers,
meteorites, crash landings and computer malfunction.

And there's always God of course.
So I pray to the provider of all this emptiness.
Did He run out of ideas I'm wondering?
Or was He just bloody-minded,
knowing I'd be blowing by this way some day.
I start to say my name but the silence won't have
any of that blasphemy.
It bites hard down on my word.
Lost is the scientific term for my situation.
And it's the only name I answer to these days.


- - -
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.