THE WOMAN IN THE QUITO BAR
Here and there, I catch her
eye.
A moment in her vision and
then
a long time suffering through
her blindness.
It's my fault I'm sure.
Sometimes., I'm all I've ever
been.
Others, what I have come
to.
It all depends on what she
gets for her glances.
The guy with the gray-flecked
two-day growth,
head hung low over a dying
beer.
Or the one who's cruised the
world,
who's taken part, acquired and
given.
I could be a drunken fool by
night's end
and her looks will find better
things to do.
Or I could push the glass
away,
stand to my attention,
exit that bar on a back street
in Quito,
continue on my journey,
propelled in part by her
admiring stare.
In the first version, I'm here
and lost to her.
In the second, I'm gone but
remain.
ART'S PROPOSAL
Sick and sore. It's the
arthritis.
Will you marry me?
I take a pill in the
morning
and one before bed-time.
Can you remember that?
I am deathly afraid of
fire.
And yes, I smoke two packs a
day.
I have my habits.
And I snore like God.
Plus I spit a lot and wipe
it up with my wrinkled
feet.
And the TV must be loud
so I can hear it
and you must be soft
so I can hear the TV.
I sing old war songs in the
shower.
And I show old war scars
to strangers.
My mother is a sacred
animal.
And I don't believe the dog
I
had as a boy is dead.
My memory is going
but don't worry,
I'll write your name down
some place where I can always
see it
Sex? I'm male
as if you didn't know.
And income? There's my
army
pension and I still own
that
desert block in Texas.
Most of me works.
And the parts that don't
are great for offending
cousins.
Please, please,
if we don't wed soon I'll be
dead.
Still available
but I won't go into
details.
WATCHING SKATEBOARDERS
Four kids, baseball caps worn
backwards,
t-shirts, jeans and Nikes,
skate-board the slopes of
the old dried-out canal.
They leap, they dive,
sometimes crash,
but mostly they swerve around
each other,
come to rest in the dregs of
slime,
high-five, back-slap,
sigh.
I watch from a bench high
above,
in a fit of long time jealousy
-
if only there is something I
do
that is such a willing
synthesis
of coordination and dare,
limits and beyond,
camaraderie and Quixote,
proud bumps, glowing
bruises,
instant gratification.
One boy ascends in a mad
dash,
brakes at the horizontal,
then pushes off
from concrete catapult,
flips over, summersaults,
lands halfway down the
slope
with ease.
I'm flabbergasted.
Up to that point,
I'd have been content
enough
for my pain to want me.
John Grey
