AN AMERICAN POEM
It snowed overnight
and here come the Klu Klux Klan
all toting volunteer shovels.
"We'd be glad to dig you out
as long as you're a white man."
they tell me. "Or not Jewish. Or Catholic."
I'm none of these, I swear,
and the Grand Imperial Wizard
forswears his divine mission
for an hour or two
of slapping around in mounds
the color of his robes.
It snowed overnight
and my dreams volunteer
to help clear out the driveway.
The one where I ride off
on the back of a goat
is already chiseling away
at the hard, crusty, icy, stuff.
And that's me, sitting for
the big exam in my underwear,
taking a little time out
to brush of the car,
uncover the front steps.
And would you believe,
the monster in the closet
is knocking those icicle daggers
from the eaves.
It snowed overnight
and snake-dancers arrive
all the way from Kentucky
to push that blower around.
Likewise a Nuba man
painted in ashes.
And the earth spirit
of the Ahsanti tribe
who hasn't even seen
a flake of snow
in his hundred lifetimes.
I can always count on Asmodeus,
the demon of lust
but who'd have thought
an astral body would have
all the right equipment
and Romulus and Remus,
teat suckers from way back,
would offer to sweep my path.
It snowed overnight
and St Uncumber,
everyone's favorite virgin,
is assuring me,
"We'll have you out of here in no time."
And the God Uranus
dropped down from the stars,
says he'll melt some of the stuff
if that is okay with me.
Even Dickens rolls his sleeves up
and Varney the Vampire
risks a killer sun and heat
of 21 degrees.
It sure is good to know,
when the work needs to be done,
I'm not alone in this world.
Side by side, even with the enemy,
the mystery, the exotic and the freaks...
if I can't get my car out
then who knows what the future holds
for any of them.
The Grand Wizard
doesn't even seem to mind
when the wind blows clear
that Nuba man's white ashes.
It's enough to make a grown man cry.
And maybe that crying grown man
will shovel me out next time.
DIVORCED COUPLE SELL OUT
You have not only purchased the house
but also the garden. Yes, it looks so
frail now. It's the season. It's the sentiment
our home exuded knowing it was on
the market. But don't worry. In decay, there
is color. In wither, a running commentary
on new life.
So work at it, like we did fifteen years ago.
Few will see your bed sheets after all
but many a thousand will spy your flush
geraniums and make their judgments.
Sometimes, flowers judge us. Like these,
crying out for fertilizer, for water from
that green hose that just lies there like
a dead snake.
You're new to this business I can see.
New couple. New house. Believe me,
the coming days, you won't stand for
anything that's dying. You'll take to
spades, to rakes, and churn your
precious miracles. The garden will prosper,
I guarantee. New blooms for old.
It's a sale.
TO AMOS, MARRIED TO THAT SIXTIES' REVOLUTIONARY
To think, the woman once
railed against Castro,
no better than Batista,
and now he's old, his beard
is white, and he can't even
get those good Cuban cigars any more.
He probably has Alzheimer's, she says,
forgets there ever was a revolution.
The people, she sneers,
they've been screwed by everyone
from emperors to presidents.
And they even screw themselves, I add,
though she doesn't hear.
Time is such a grim watch-dog.
It once felt like Now.
These days, it's retired and playing golf,
figures it can shoot its age,
never does.
And to think she kept the love-letters.
What are the words to her?
More Castros?
Except of course, their betrayal happened
over years.
And perhaps, she encouraged that treason.
Two people, both Cuba, both Castro.
Only she has no beard thank God.
And what's on at the Multiplex?
A movie about Che. Please, don't
get her started. That's how things end.
AVERAGE JOE
It’s a crazy death, a man underneath his car, in his own driveway,
doesn’t realize the brake is off and that vehicle rolls over him,
crushes his legs, his chest.
No wait, that’s not it, the scene is his driveway sure,
but he backs up, smacks into his five year old daughter
who’s playing with her dolls, squashes her like a gnat
against the garage door, cracks open the head of every doll.
But no, that’s just the worst that could happen,
not what did happen.
He made it to the street safely, and his family were
all safe and snug indoors.
But not the boy on the bicycle, a neighbor’s son,
he didn’t miss when that kid pulled out of the side street,
smacked him six feet in the air, bounced him off the car roof,
sent him sprawling bloody and dead, face down in asphalt.
But that wasn’t how it happened.
Nor did the truck cross over the center line, smash into him on.
And he didn’t slip on ice, crash through the guard rail.
Nor did he pull up suddenly, get concertinaed by the traffic behind.
It’s a crazy life, all of the things that could happen that don’t,
to him, to loved ones, to strangers, but they’re there in other lives,
the papers are full of them, deaths and disasters, there on every page.
He’s at his desk, car safely in the office garage, sipping coffee,
flipping through the newspaper before work begins.
On page three, ten dead in a mine cave-in. On page seven, a man struck by lightning.
He wonders where do they get these people.
CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS
Much talk,
garbled, gulped down with
Swedish meatballs over pasta,
odd friendships
yapping around a table.
Dave speaks and eats,
hard, staccato, like
pounding a ball in his glove,
Anna whispers Polish joke to Carl,
Lin is unhappy for all who did not make it here
It’s Jenna’s house,
photographs hang ghost faces,
ancestors years and oceans away,
yearning to be near
in sweat-shirts, jeans, and close cut hair.
No Kazlowskis’ here, not a Chin,
nary a Martini or a Schmidt,
intermarried, anglicized,
and all together, chatting the concerns
of romance, not races.
Slurp, laugh and on to the next
is the way their history happens now,
every look not catalogued,
every word not written down,
yet here they are, none of them.
John Grey
