Poetry By John Grey

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.  

IN EARLIER TIMES

I found that romance
required a rich and vigorous vein
of artistry, virtuosity,
that peaked right at the moment
when true love came along
and killed it.

It was a magnificence
that I didn't see for what it was...
sunset.

Now, in my memory,
I have a superb set of women
who could have been the one
but weren't.

Looking back,
I see in chat-up, braggadocio, gesture,
and some showboat dance steps,
the same telling gestures
embedded in the long history
of novels, painting, music in fact every art form -
including the circus -
tricks, gags, routines,
yes, especially the circus.

And now. the circus has left town.
Of course, the cleanup afterwards is amazing. 



CHECK-UPS

I take a deep breath,
count to three,
then blow into the tube
until my face threatens to burst.
Lungs empty out
and the needle on the gauge
nudges its way hesitatingly toward
a passing grade.

Then, thanks to an octopus
with suction cup feet
and a meter for a brain.
my heart receives a glowing report.
As does my blood pressure
once that thin red python
is done squeezing my upper arm.

My blood has no dirty secrets to reveal.
My urine speaks well of me.
This grand tour of my body
stamps my passport for another year.

When I was younger.
there was no such thing
as an annual physical.
Life was stages,
not years.
And. barring a shot or two.
my body was its own doctor.

Now, once every twelve months,
I'm told that I'm good for my age.
That's like telling the dead
they're as dead as can be expected. 



WHAT TO DO

Maybe go over to the other side.
They do have a swimming pool after all
and today could be as hot as a spa in Hades.

Or maybe get into klezmer.
Nothing like a cimbalom
to get the toes a-tapping.

I could join the Rosicrucians.
Do they still exist?
Or chain myself to the White House gates.
But first I need to figure
what I'm really upset about.

I could always build a doll-house
though I'm useless with my hands.
But that's the point isn't it.
There's nothing as enjoyable
as what I'm hopeless at.

I might go have a tinkle.
But that's nothing new.
Win, lose or draw,
I'd be doing that anyhow.

Perhaps I could find myself a platinum blonde
with eyes mountain-lake blue.
And we could go swimming together
except the pool is on the other side.
And I can't do two things at once.

Today could top ninety
so the weather channel tells me.
Doing nothing should see some action. 




REMAINS TO BE SEEN

A photograph of an oven
filled with charred remains -
you've stopped to see -
now how do you extract yourself?

Bodies black
like spilled oil hardened
to be packed in tiny coffins
and buried unknown.

No identities,
just waste collected -
you can only look away
but you cannot keep it confidential. 



AS RELATIONSHIPS GO

You told me to watch out
because there were times you were out and out poisonous.
But I nibbled. I even ate.

And the longer we were together,
the more you declared that we were on
the point of collapsing.
I was happy enough to patch the walls, apply duct tape.

You were no great advocate of the future,
scoffed at marriage, often said that
no children in their right mind would want you as a mother.

To you, people were like a swarm of ants
attacking the one dead grasshopper.
You thought it crazy that one ant would take the time
to write a poem about what another ant is like.



INACTION

Goggles in our eyes, bandanas strapped to mouths -
welcome to the desert.
Better a convoy stuck in sand though
than an air-lifted body bag

This is rehearsal, so they tell us.
That's why we're on this long road
and Blackhawks are flying so perilously low
I can almost reach out and touch the undercarriage.

Today's takedown is a triangle defense system.
An old basketball strategy from what I remember
though the scattered snarling spectators make it plain
that this is not our home court.

Win this game, so the generals tell us,
and it will be our salvation.
But war doesn't even play by its own rules.
I live with that like a parental reminder.

Our Humvee is stuck in the sand
about a hundred miles inside the Iraq border.
We have yet to fire a shot as we await rescue
and our next round of plodding orders.

Ticks nibble on our flesh.
Cows crisscross the road.
We're instructed to be as patient as monks.
Maybe we can inscribe the Bible

on the head of a pin while we're at it.
We're like actors, hungry for applause,
except we don't as yet have a play.
Then, when it does appear, our excitement

is tempered by the fact that
many of our characters die long before the third act.
Meanwhile, our job is to believe it's real
while we wait until it is.

Poetry By Gale Acuff On Father's Day 2017

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Poem, Adirondack Review, Coe Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Arkansas Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals, and has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). Gale has also taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

Reading Lips

                                 Matthew 22:30

              
Above the roof and therefore the ceiling
of course is the air but somewhere up there
in the topmost layer, the topmost of
the air that is is Heaven and in Sun
-day School our teacher tells us, Miss Hooker's
her name, that if we want to go there one
day and not just go but live there and not
just live there but dwell there then we children
had best believe that Jesus is the Son
of God and was crucified for our sins
and not just our sins but our manifold
sins, and then that way when we're dead we'll be
in one of the mansions in Heaven, one
per customer you might say, children and
grownups, too, Miss Hooker's 25 so
she qualifies if she's taken away
before her natural time, whatever that
is, old age I guess, and I'm only 10
but what works for her will work for me and
then when we're both dead we'll be the same age
--that's not in the Bible and Miss Hooker
didn't say it, it just came to me, like
a revelation, The Revelation
to Gale you might say, it came to me just
about when we were finishing class by
reciting the Lord's Prayer a second
time, right before the Amen we holler
all of us together like one great big

voice--maybe it's the voice of God Himself
--so after class I hung back and then helped
Miss Hooker get her gear together, her
Bible and the hymnals and our crayons
and paper and then I walked her to her
International Harvester pickup
and then told her about my revelation
and told her that if I never marry
on Earth, maybe because I'll be dead, I'll
marry in Heaven and she'll be the wife
to my husband and the other way a
-round and she laughed but not mockingly
and leaned over to kiss me on my fore
-head and I guess it kissed her back, that's what
I call a miracle but anyway
after she pulled away from the suction
and straightened up again and looked at me
as if it was too bad that I'm so young
I said, I'm sorry that you're so old, and
then we held hands or maybe it was shook
them, sometimes it's hard to tell when your soul,
your immortal soul, is on the line. Then
Miss Hooker unlocked her door and climbed in
while I looked away because after all
women can be funny about rear ends,
at least their own, and then she shut the door,
which sort of startled me to looking up
to see her face shining down on me or
maybe it was just too much makeup in
the morning sun and she mouthed Goodbye
and I'll see you next Sunday and I aped her
and then she drove off. Who needs ears to hear?


                                           --Gale Acuff
________________________________

Poet Gale Acuff

Heroics

Other children have picked through all the good
comic books here at the Rex-All Drug Store
and I'm left standing like a spinner rack
that isn't being spun. Still, I spin it

clockwise and counterclockwise again and
again but it always stops at nothing
I want. Most of the superheroes are
gone--what's left is Archie and those funny
animals and a few war comics. But

I want heroes in spandex though I don't
know that word too well--tights, I guess I mean.
In masks and capes--the heroes, not the tights.
Gloves and boots and utility belts and
custom cars and secret identities
and hideouts. It's 1965 and

I've just finished supper with my parents,
next door, at the cafeteria, where
they gave me my allowance--a quarter,
which will buy two comic books at twelve cents
each, and a penny for tax, but I can't
find even one magazine I like, and
we don't drive into town too often--once 
a month, if I'm lucky, and it's too far
to walk. I'm not leaving emptyhanded,
though--it just isn't fair. And I believe

in justice, because this is what heroes
ought to be fighting for, a little boy
in Marietta, Georgia, and littler
because his folks are teachers and so his
family's poor. He sleeps in the attic
and there's no central heating in the house
and no air conditioning in summers.

His parents teach those snotty kids whose folks
have good jobs at Lockheed and the Air Force
base in Smyrna. And they have basements, and
TVs in their bedrooms, and hi-fi's, and
brick houses and garages and carports
and more than just one car to park in there
and new shoes whenever they want them and
meat for supper everyday. And dogs
--not for supper, I mean, but to love them.
Cats. Tropical fish. Hamsters and gerbils.

So they're evil, but in a way beyond
me. Or I'm jealous because they have more
but I know how they treat their comic books
--they fold the pages back, dog-ear them, or
throw them away when they're finished. I save
mine, in a box in my closet. God loves

us all, I hear at church. I fall asleep
in the pew sometimes and dream of money
but wake to the plate being passed around.
Death will make us equal in the end--he's
my hero, I guess, although he scares me.
And when we all start off new in Heaven

maybe they'll be my friends, even tell me
Gee whiz, it wasn't our fault that our folks
made more money than yours, or that we had Spyder
bikes and Beatle boots and color TVs
and German Shepherds and slot-car racetracks 
--won't you please forgive us? I'll make them wait
and I can't get too upset because God
might deport me, but if His back is turned

I'll give it to them good: You laughed at me
and made fun of my clothes and our house and
our car and the lunches Mother packed me
in brown bags when you had cool lunchboxes
and how long it took me to learn to tie
my shoes and blow bubblegum and catch balls.
And I'd tell them all to go we-know-where
but it's too late now and serves us all right.

Before I leave the rack I spin it one
last time. I'll never see it stop, even
slow. I'm going to find my parents, who
are looking for sales at Rich's, next door.
I hate to say it but they're my heroes.
I'd tell them but I don't want to scare them.


                                            --Gale Acuff
________________________________


Family Drama

Miss Hooker's my Sunday School teacher but
almost every night she's my wife, I mean
in my dreams. Last night we were on the couch
watching TV. I had my arm around
my dog on my right side and her on my
left, so she was closest to my heart. That's
love. Bonanza we watched, those Cartwright boys,
Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe, and father
Ben, of course, and when we have kids they'll be
sons and we'll name 'em for them, unless they're
daughters, which are as good though we'll need new
names but Miss Hooker's smart, she'll think of some.
I don't know where babies come from yet but
she's a good teacher and can demonstrate
and I'll take careful notes and use them 'til
I've got the procedure memorized. Then
I'll throw the notes away. I think it helps

to sleep in the same room, like my folks do,
and in the same bed, and to close the door,
then lock it, and put something over the key
-hole so nobody can see in. It must
be dark, too, even nighttime, and you'd be
surprised at how much just one eye can take
in squinting when the whole house is dark, not
that I ever really tried. I take it
back--lying's a sin but to be fair I
couldn't see anything. But my ears did
and it was laughter, Mother giggling or
maybe it was Father. It's a good thing
I didn't ask them about that next day
or I'd have given myself away. I
guess I just want to know where I come from.
If I'm going to marry Miss Hooker

I need to know. Some dreams you can't trust so
if I dream again tonight we're married
and she shows me how to make a baby
how will I know she's not putting me on?
Then sooner or later you fall asleep
after you shake hands and kiss each other's
lips, all four of them, not once or twice
but half a million times is my best guess.
Then I guess the sun comes up and you wake
to the sound of someone crying and that's
the beginning of your family. Funny
how it commences with crying. Maybe
death ends it that way, too--I know even
less about that but I will in time but
first I have to be old enough to be
too old to live and that's only if I
don't die some other way before then, get
run over or struck by lightning or choke

on a corn dog at the county fair. When
Bonanza's over we ride off to bed,
my dog and Miss Hooker and I. I get
as far as turning out the bedroom light
and trying to find our bed in the darkness
but before I can shake her hand good night
let alone kiss her it's morning and she's
gone and just my dog lying beside me.
It's like we're separated once a day,
I mean Miss Hooker and me. It hurts but
at least it isn't real, only the ache.
One day I'll be old enough to have both.
Then I'll be grown up. I'll drive and shave, too,
and have a deep voice and a lot of hair
in goofy places. I hope she won't laugh.

When In Scenic El Paso Pancho Villa Makes Sure To Stay At the Beautiful Motel 6: Story and Photos By William C Crawford

My Late Night Rhapsody: Catching Up with Pancho Villa at the Motel 6

By William C. Crawford

Jimmy Pro delivered; he always does. He promised clean, cheap lodging. But no gurantees of peaceful, uninterrupted sleep. We could save some big bucks booking by the week, the length of our West Texas photo shoot. Hard by the interstate, nestled in by the sprawling railroad yard, the El Paso Motel 6 was legendary in Jimmy Pro’s mind. And this was with good reason.

Urban skyline. Cheap, centrally located lodging. All night train traffic from adjacent sprawling rail yard. Rumbling, clanging  trains were part of the late night rhapsody. Golden hour sunshine that soon gave way to a howling West Texas wind. But on this Saturday, we just sucked on Tecates in our shirt sleeves.

He stayed here in relative solitude countless times. This dated, gritty sanctuary helped to launch his plodding photographic forays along the nearby Border and beyond. He swilled plenty of early hours coffee carried upstairs to his habitual third floor haunt.

He stayed here on holidays so slow that his rental car was the only vehicle in a deserted parking lot. Jimmy relished the empty motel when it came to pass. He never really got lonely,  and after all, there was the teenaged Latina desk clerk who was always good for an impromptu rap.

My jet lag left me and I lit up with excitement. I toted my ponderous photographer’s bags up to my third floor room via the worn, outside concrete staircase. I slid my key in the door which swung open to reveal a spartan, plastic appointed room which looked like it had been frozen there in 1974.

Room 309 as I swung the door open. Stephen Shore might have shot this in 1974. Would the obligatory Gideon Bible yield an inscription from the the trailblazing photog?

The acclaimed pioneer, minimalist photographer, Stephen Shore, could easily have shot a classic, color pic here. The caption might well have read “Racine, Wisconsin, 1974” instead of “El Paso, 2015.” I half expected to find a Gideon Bible with “S. Shore” inscribed inside the cover squirelled away in the ancient night stand.

I hurriedly pulled out my Nikon wide angle and grabbed three quick perspectives leaving my bulging luggage outside and out of my shots. I was checking into a funky museum outfitted with a sleeping bed!

We shot hundreds of images around El Paso barrios plying the expansive Border underbelly for the funk which we revered. The forensics here were highly favorable. The tricky January weather alternated between the Sun Bowl and the howling winter wind of West Texas.

As the weekend arrived the Motel 6 filled with shoppers and revelers of various persuasions. We turned in early after long days of desert shooting. Well after midnight, the unmistakable clicking sound of high spiked heels echoed off the concrete veranda outside my door.

No Ladies Of The Night in this late afternoon shot of the infamous veranda.

A wry smile creased my sleepy face. Lady of the Night, I reckoned! Nobody else up at 4:00 a.m. on Saturday. The sharp click, click, click stopped just beyond my door at the next room.

Sleep for the next few hours came hard. The dude next door was putting the Lady of the Night through her paces! He alternated between loud groans of ecstasy and shrill squeals of agony. The Lady was, however, stone silent. All the audio was wildly masculine.

Along about daybreak as I finally dozed off, I heard the sharp spiked heel strikes of the departing sex worker. Click! Click! Click! I mused that a good time was had by all next door, but over here in 309, Crawddaddy had lost plenty of sleep to the boisterous frivolity.

Later in the trip we foraged in Columbus, NM. This drug ravaged burg hard on the Border was once the home of the real revolutionary & bandito, Pancho Villa. Note signage.

After a few more minutes of fretful dozing, I struggled down to the far removed office to grab some free java. I immediately encountered the bleary eyed Latina desk clerk who was also just waking up. As she fiddled with her ever present smart phone, I posed a not so subtle question. “Who is that guy up in 310?”

I caught her off guard for just a moment and only half awake. She stumbled straight to her computer terminal and tapped in a query. “Pancho Villa,” she mumbled sleepily, unaware of the uncanny absurdity of the terse response.

I turned quickly away juggling my two cups of steaming coffee not so carefully balanced. I wanted to come back with an equally inane, historically related retort like: “Yeah! I just saw Davy Crockett up in 319!” But I settled for muffled laughter as I controlled both my unsteady coffee and my disbelieving reaction.

The next night served up a reprise of romantic gusto in Room 310. I noted that more frequent, intermittent clicks of dangerously high heels seemed to signal the goings and comings of three separate Ladies of the Night. A near traffic jam was building just outside of my door!

The previous night’s script otherwise unfolded remarkably the same. My sleep went by the bedside as I again enjoyed the edgy dialogue of masculine groans and squeals. Three rotating Ladies of the Night offered up no discernible audio. Maybe Pancho Villa was gagging his lovers, revolutionary style? You know-a bandito thing for the flashy dressed hombre!

Later, as I swilled my early morning coffee in Jimmy Pro’s room a few doors away, the subject of Click! Click! Click! happened to come up in a casual conversation about onomanpoeia. Jimmy had heard and immediately identified the origin of the passing nocturnal cadence. Moreover, his room was too far removed for him to savor the enthusiastic sounds which I enjoyed.

I relived my previous inane dawn exchange with the senorita at the desk. Jimmy remained stoically nonplussed by the senor’s creative choice of a nom de plume.

However, when I posed the nagging questioned as to why I only had heard male audio from the busy room next to mine, he responded with laser like clarity. He regarded me with keen intensity. Then he answered firmly with his thick Maine brogue still present after decades Down Under. “Well Crawdaddy, it might just be that Pancho is doing all the hard work in there.”

The simplicity of his brief reply was unnerving. Hell, I should have figured that out on my own! Jimmy Pro had delivered again; he always does.

Pancho checked out at Sunday noon replete in resplendent vacquero’s garb! My late night sleep soon settled back to normal. And Jimmy Pro didn’t have to answer any more of my dumb ass questions.

When I checked out a few days later, I noted wryly to the shy senorita on duty that it was great to have seen Simon Bolivar outside at the vending machines. She looked away and cooed some soft Spanish that was above my pay grade.

She regarded me further with polite but obvious disdain. Then she retorted, “That was General Santa Anna out at the vending machines. He is a chocolate freak.” Loosely interpreted I think  she meant something like: “gringo imperfecto!”

Plenty of spectacular views like this from vantage points around the 6! Oz Travel, Jimmy Pro's mythical booking agency, ensconced us here for $35 a night! Weekends were a bit more, probably to cover the late night entertainment. I paid extra for high speed internet. A photo I mailed out the first night was still uploading a week later when I checked out. And I ain't bullshitting!

William C. Crawford is a writer and photographer from North Carolina. He longs to become a spokesman for Motel 6.

.

Why Does Thomas L. Vaultonburg Have a Blog?

Why do I blog? I'm not a real expert on anything. My education maxed out with a useless B.S. degree in psychology, but I'm no more an expert on human cognition, emotion, and behavior than your local meter reader. I write a lot about sports, but my fantasy football teams are all 5-4 or 4-5 after nine weeks so I haven't shown any real proficiency there. I write reviews of movies, but a cursory search of the internet can reveal the same movies have been reviewed just as thoroughly and interestingly by others. Politics? Culture? Seven million bloggers wake up every day and have more to say about it than me. 

So, why blog? 

I suppose if I had to defend my blog my answer would be "Why not?" Cyber space is limitless, and no one is forced to read anything I write or look at anything I create. And for the most part, 99.999% of humanity doesn't. Which means I suppose I have very few people to apologize to if they find my ramblings deficient of meaning or substance. It's rare for me to blog about anything personal or tell the reader what I had for lunch or what I'm wearing or how I feel about almost anything. Largely I consider this a creative blog. Poems. Webcomics. Art. Any day I wake up and have something to eat and can create something anyone else sees that's a good day.

The kicker is I've never even enjoyed writing. I find the process excruciatingly dull and painful. The fact is the new paradigm of the 124 character message aimed at a readership with an attention span that won't allow for much more suits me fine. I don't have the concentration to say more than that, and I don't feel I've earned the right to place more of a demand on the reader. I sincerely admire a writer like Stephen King who wakes up every morning, goes to an office, and writes like a machine. I saw him on C-SPAN one morning addressing a meeting of writers and despite his detractors he's every bit as much a writer as William Faulkner in my opinion.

Mostly what I'm doing is distracting myself from election coverage (to bury the lead horribly). Not that the election results will do much to affect my life directly. I'm in a groove and an orbit I've worked most of my life to achieve and things are solid, strong, and consistent. I'd like to sell more books or know that more people are turned on by my work, but I can live without that. That act of creation is the essential thing and every day I wake up and I make something. Sometimes people say they like what I make or even give me money and that's pretty groovy, but not an essential part of what I do or why I do it.

If being a writer, an artist, or any kind of esteemed content generator were as easy as throwing out whatever were at the top of your head to an audience that was pre-disposed to eat it up like truffles everyone would want to do it. I have over 25 years as a published writer now and virtually no successes to speak of. The muse visits me infrequently and casts her laurels upon others. I'm fine with that, they probably work harder than i do and deserve what they get. I just like knowing once in a while the muse has something for me. A scrap. A trifle. A trinket, and she keeps me in mind.

I think I'll go fire up the television now and watch election results and see what fresh hell awaits us all in the future. 

The poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg imitating the actor Tim Stotz crossing a bridge in a caption only the poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg will understand or care about.