FIRST WALKFrom out of endless sex, below that shivery curtain of concealed nurse's faces, a screaming mother -can you help me to walk? I ask. From that moment, a landscape, a lullaby of blood, a tense audience to first steps and I keep stumbling as the rows of spectators clasp hands, breathe out like long legs doomed to trip me - as if my very first human step will crush them - ironic, that they smile genuinely when I emerge from flabby body to move forward another clumsy foot - nothing special, and still they cheer my movement, toes grasping at the polished floor or stepping between swords, knees giving in to gasps, hands grabbing at a sofa leg, just imitate, says my head, just imitate, bewildered by the feedback from my balance, but pressing on - nothing too difficult about this floor, surely, but to a nestling? As I collapse in a chubby pink lump, more cheap applause from the past that made me. HOW I’M FARING IN THESE STRANGE TIMESI’m stuck in the house and the walls and I have, by this, said everything we could possibly say to each other. The floor is as weary of my pacing as I am of the floor always being there when I put my foot down. And don’t get me started on the ceiling. It’s always above it all, like a foreman overseeing the boredom. Now if I could pace on the ceiling that would keep me amused for a time. Of course, there’s always books. I haven’t read everything on my shelves but it feels as if I have. And television. There’s nothing like sitting on the couch, remote in hand, clicking through the channels for hours on end. Actually, there is something like it. That something is nothing. At least, says the Governor, I’m staying safe. I cough into my armpit. I avoid contact. I only leave the house if the house can come with me. HOME AT LASTto a dark pleasure hole, a kind of low mass, labor-saving devices, dismal yellow wallpaper - no wonder a man drinks from boiling hell, a kitchen table will have to do, a series of apposite deluding sermons on the pleasures of the self- beliefs balance so precariously and here's me praising them, refusing to leave the building, as solitude stares out at the universe and then some - where the stars cheer at whatever Duchamp is painting these days, as booze reclaims its place in religion, colorless morphine for the masses turning the world away from me - what is it like out there anyhow? baritone voice through megaphone, boutique balustrades, psychotic rainbows, bums pissing in the gutter - can't clean myself up for if I shave I leave blood in traces, can't ask the light:: causality has never been so clean-shaven - heady days of the early nineties, don't wait for formal burial, enlist in a war with even electric shavers and foam licking bloody chins - a laugh riot for all who believe in the rotting worth of bodies. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and International Poetry Review.
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