For Chad Ostrowski So many nights I walk suburban streets alone. Porch lights send their luminosity through trees, allowing me to write between the lines of my journal. I can write anything about the sun setting over Central Pennsylvania, describe the burnt orange hair of a girl I once knew or wanted to know, write […]
Lonely men interrupt the dark with the snap of shoes on sidewalk. Skyscrapers just got taller, more empty. Traffic thins like blood on heparin. Solemn as a monks’ processional is the way home. But with frog-sac croaks in lieu of chanting. John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident. Recently published in New Plains […]
via “After the Bars Close” by John Grey — THE CITY KEY
Yes, death does come for all
for every summer,
there must be a fall
but we always leave
a part of us in the world
and the part of the world
which was loved always stays
in the immortal heart.
Smiles Needed a place to rest my bag, had something to put in, something else to take out. Crowded Red Line train, stood in the middle, one empty aisle seat, beside an old woman who slept, scarved head on the glass, worldly possessions at her feet, on her lap. Pilled blanket cradled slumped shoulders. Blessed […]
Nothing’s perfect
just what appears to be
but even those things
one day must fade
every bit taken away
– the only power within those
seemingly perfect things is
that for one brief moment,
they really had been.
She welcomed the end
of summer’s oppression,
the pressure under, over, everywhere
having cooked her from within.
In summer, the sun weighed
down, disheartening from dreams,
while the wandering, distracted mind
meandered, wished to be someplace else,
wished to be free, somewhere else
where she was listened to, was esteemed,
someplace else where she never had to fear
being suspect for being something
less than ideal. That place she wanted to welcome
on hot skin like a perfectly cool breeze.
Searching in cities, walking aimlessly,
looking for the past, she breathed in
remembering what she used to be,
believing, supportive, sweet.
Scanning faces futilely, she braced herself
for the realization that they really
weren’t the same faces though they appeared to be.
The ghosts haunting her wouldn’t easily
be excised, the torture of what could have been
will always continue to stay within.
