John Grey
A random, adult muted child, myself,
one more aftermath of innocence and guilt,
walking through the garden,
analogous to that. incessant lines,
and all that’s against them, like human wakefulness,
I hum along, just like a buzz would do,
as a person may be said to,
as deep memory and gold broaden their glow.
I am unable to turn back,
my body bent by instruments and blue-notes,
but something must be elsewhere
otherwise my constant searching,
my subject matter,
are merely interchangeable whims.
Meanwhile, clouds commute
between death and living,
my sorrow reaches into another world,
every dresser, alarm clock, pillow,
an extension of the misery,
even the figure who passes me
going in the opposite direction.
Gesture: How in the world?
Where is the softness that must be my relief?
Human touch, that warm addition to the rituals of sleep?
I listen like bees do to the machination of their hive,
identical to the stop and go of traffic lights –
in a car one thinks to obey,
in a garden, there’s instinct,
a bee in its angelic breastplate,
a pool of last night’s rain…
just music.
I thought I knew how lines are drawn,
the logical schemes –
so what’s that moving in the distance?
I seem to be in isolation from itself,
touched by danger or despair,
when what I really need are
bedspread, rug and curtain.
Anything that won’t let loose the terrain in me,
whose loving doesn’t permeate mine,
nor overflow with celestial song –
I feel as if I’ve been in this park for hours,
regretful bribed by diffuse passageways of night,
all smooth as shadow, moonlight –
a strange feeling of everything taken away –
talking and chanting,
this tangent in relationship to sky.
And air this year
is thinner than light,
the transparent skin of the dream inside the dream.
I continually wake up in a different place,
walking in concentric circles.
No one takes responsibility –
what feeling has brought me here, what story?
Whatever has happened?
Perspective sacrifices truth for want.
Trees all around
but who listens to what’s green?