REGARDING SEX

We didn't know a thing then
but it's not as if all that we
were ignorant of
wasn't everywhere around us,
inside us even.
But, over time, we learned
a thing or two.
Why shouldn't we,
with it all so close.
So close, we could touch it.
So close, it did the touching.

- John Grey

SILENCE AT THE OTHER END

Phone rings. I answer.
No response. Someone's there.
I can hear breath, background noise.
I string together some "hello"'s,
a "what do you want."
I don't hang up. I take
the silence personally.
I need the contact. Anonymous
will have to do. Then I go quiet.
The mystery on the other end
continues. No crime by this.
Maybe the heart that has no way
to speak. Maybe the past, so lived
it can't live any more.
Eventually, a faint click on
the other end. Dial tone.
I hold the phone, connected
now to nobody but me.
I listen to darkness, pain, despair.
The message is from everything,
anonymous excepted.

- John Grey

MY AFFAIR

Time clock, my lover,
coaxes me out of figures
into slender steel arms,
always an hour up there behind that face
to draw me nearer to the bliss of five o'clock,
to sweep me out of the legendary insistence
of balance sheets, of pie charts,
of memos from head office.
All day long I have spoken
to its cherubim: office chit-chat,
bubbling water coolers, the private phone-call, the bathroom sanctuary,
but now it tempts me with the real thing,
freedom deeper than a kiss,
and, no longer ashamed of our relationship,
this unwilling conscript drops his weapon,
that gregarious mouse, zaps his P.C,
watches the monthly report on stationery charges
pop like a thought balloon,
a perfect green likeness of my absence
filling the terminal in its place.
I elope with the roller-coaster ride
of my own laughter
in tray and out tray abandoned
like unlovely twins at a dance,
my cubicle's cheap walls
shaking in the blessed fury of my rail-wind.
Down the corridor, past the guard-station,
until there, at the rim of the parking lot,
my body empties itself of
everything business mandates I should know,
gives birth to sunset beaming red and gold from
the midsize American car,
the gift of love my pay-check sends me.

- John Grey

NEWER THAN NEW DEVELOPMENT

another stretch of virgin woodland
bulldozed by developers

houses spring up
like weeds

Shady Acres
they call it

"For Sale" signs everywhere

what used to be
get it while it lasts

- John Grey

DRUNK ON LOVE

You haven't been drunk
until you've stumbled, tumbled,
fallen into a snow bank,

2 a.m., January,
prone and laughing,
moon overhead,
full and yellow.

chill coming at you
from all directions
but the warmth in your gut
from all that whiskey
convincing you it's
fighting back.

Haven't loved either
until the same thing happens.
You drop down into
the drifts, stay there
like a snow carving.

There's a grin on your face
like you're showing that
full moon what a new moon
looks like.

And you're taking in chill
from everywhere.
And the warm
can't give it away.

- John Grey

DEAR SIR OR MADAM

I write to an author
and tell him I'm an author.
I say I've read three of
your books so now it's
time for you to read
one of my unpublished ones.
I love lovers don't I
and they sure love back.
And whenever I'm on
foreign soil that foreign
soil gets onto me.
So, in the next mail,
expect a two hundred
page manuscript of
me reading you.
Sit back, enjoy,
the fruits of you
getting your stuff out there.
Just don't steal my plot
for your next one.
Or, at least, not
until I steal it.

- John Grey

THE ART OF KISSING

a daub of sweat
like a silver freckle
on your nose

a tuft
of yellow hair
escaping its barrette

lips slightly
fluttering ajar
like a curtain
in light wind

a sudden dip
of a shoulder

a slight concentration
in one eye

and the tremble
of a blue water lily
in the other

all at the moment
I suddenly
put away
my looking

- John Grey