So it's years, dear one,
and faces, desire,
and states and cities and neighborhoods, savior.
But no histories,
just allegories.
A jacket here, a pipe there,
And maybe a chain of tiny gold circus acts.
People have romanced here, sure,
but no one you'd know.
It could have been you
and you wouldn't even know.
Some wine. An apple plucked
good-naturedly by Eve.
And, respectfully, a wedding tower,
with the cake eaten
and the bridge and groom in ashes.
There's stairs where people tumbled,
cracked their heads.
And photographs of a “friend to all"
who became the sworn enemy of children.
Triangulations don't work
in sizing this place up.
But marks on walls could.
A boy was five feet tall in 1962.
Anything else is the distance
from a rusty wrench to Jupiter.
And it's rooms, wallpaper,
and floorboards, ancient carpet,
and radiators, beggar-man at the door.
It's the zodiac of people,
nothing to do with stars,
a cup here, a saucer there, knives, forks,
and a vapor trail of flesh.
Let me lead you to the attic
where yellow paper
clouds over old words.
Or the cellar where the dampness
trumpets school books in exile,
treasures in decay.
Look in closets, seedy clothes,
lunch baskets for moths,
shoes too ill to ever fit a foot,
and gangrened ties,
remnants of an ancient work force.
So it's televisions, wall-plugs,
and hair-curlers, dripping tap,
and alabaster, ceiling stain.
It's the devil of a cough
multiplied by arctic blizzards,
terminal ingratitude,
and divided by how long the grass grows
in summer before someone summons
the will to cut it.
It's headstones in old term papers,
cemetery flowers in report cards,
scribbling in a Bible,
and nothing in a notebook.
Who lived here?
Not I, said the sparrow.
I did, said the marble bag.
And the forgotten copies of Sports Illustrated.
The couch is insistent
I confess that it was me.
But living, what is that, toaster?
And me…out of hairspray, mantle,
ironing board and piano stool…
which of them is me?
John Grey is an Australian born poet, playwright, and musician. His latest book is What Else Is There from Main Street Rag. His work appeared recently in The English Journal, Northeast, and The Journal Of The American Medical Association.
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