
ODE TO THE CURATOR
Wherever you hang paintings,
the walls are willing.
And every heavy sculpture
the floorboards are eager to hold up.
Wherever you put them,
all are there to please you.
If works of art were lovers,
you’d be the one they kiss.
BANQUET
I have an urge for everything forbidden
from the lick of an ice-cream sundae
to the blessed, unspoken parts of you.
Sweet-bread and flesh.
Lush tomatoes and the pleasure of your tongue.
Peach juice dripping and saliva captured
in a bright pink curl.
Honey and salt from the jar, from skin.
What if…
now there’s an unforgiving beast
that never saw a feast
it didn’t turn its back on.
So many kept apart over the years.
Opportunities sealed off.
Possibilities banished.
More regret than a heart can hold.
But forget the tempting foods
and let’s concentrate on you.
The pleasures of the table have their place
but the bedroom is a banquet for the soul.
You are ripe
And I’m feeling adventurous.
Now’s not the time to be tentative.
Remember, safe means unfulfilled
in my language.
FAMILY GALLERY
I keep the bastard
locked up in a photograph
just for old time’s sake.
The eyes glare.
The nose rises,
mouth jerks sideways,
in a snarl.
I get like him some times.
I feel what he felt –
that life can be a wretched,
cruel and debilitating way to live.
So I understand
why he preferred a more honest reaction
than a smile
when the camera clicked.
But I have a marriage to sustain,
friendships to maintain,
a job to hold down,
and an obligation not to burden
other people in the world
with my gloom and anguish.
So I keep the bastard
locked up in a photograph.
As a warning.
As a stand-in even.
ALGEBRA
as wobbly as wounded soldiers
we headed back to campus,
smelling of smuggled beers,
as prepared as we ever were
for our afternoon class
me knotting fingers, you burping,
we took algebra at its word,
with A the finger divided by B
the furrowed brow equaling
X the endearing mind multiplied
by Y the blurred vision times Z –
when the value of Z is Zzzzzzzzzzz
THE BOXER
He spent twenty years
of his life
trying to knock some guy
to the canvas.
Now he’s
brain-damaged,
his ears ring
constantly,
and he doesn’t even
know his own name.
He won fights
and he lost fights.
And he lost
the fights he won.
A HOMELESS MORNING
Morning holds on to its darkness
for as long as it can,
resisting the early efforts
of the sun to burn off shadow.
In six a.m. catacombs,
the homeless rise warily,
their territory about to
undergo its daily transformation
into the site of an invasion.
They cling to the pockets of black,
alleys, doorways, subway corridors,
the last shreds of shelter.
But eventually, commuters
hit the sidewalk like armies.
Hands reach out, begging for change.
Faces hide from the light.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”, ”Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.