Monday, June 24, 2013

John Grey- Two Poems


LEAK IN THE MASK

Thought is the riverbank,
anxiety, the rushing current.
Drowning man can't get
to the safety of his mind,
grabs at his hallucinations,
kicks at his luxurious memory.

He's going-under in the watery flames,
the tumult of a withering brain storm.
Ideas can't spin their satellites
through his flooded hemispheres.
His body is a cripple
struggling to clamber up
on the rungs of disappearing function.
Nothing matters but
the crushing of the lung.
Only his tattoos can dream.

Drowning man embraces the unreal,
expands into the chloroform
of all-absolving death.
He's a planet trying to lasso into orbit,
a meteorite striking the landscape
of himself.

Look up in the sky,
see bear and archer, shimmering lion.
But see drowning man
pulled under by the cosmos.
See drowning man
bouncing off the metal of his ship,
fragments of death
sucked up by life's sleek magnets.

 

EXPLORERS

In this age, the stars are all.
On one side, Gamma Cassiopeiae,
on the other, Mu Cephei.
A jaunt through Bode's galaxy -
some samples gathered,
rogue planets avoided,
a thousand angry rockets
firing at our sparkling tail.

For our lives to be elsewhere,
acceleration, warp, is all that's needed.
Throw away the books.
Facts come at us like lasers.
Blue cascading mountains,
three headed creatures,
hitchhiking thought forms,
unbelievable beauty
stepping from a water-fire.
Space and vision lock in
and away we go.

It's a golden time
for travel, for exploration.
Juice up the engines
and distances fly from us.
City and jungle, hill and ravine –
we name them after dead men.
We zip by other adventurers
from far-flung worlds.
Their missions mirror ours.
They must have some
dandy words for Earth.

Here comes a great blackness.
Blackness - another word for revelation.
More dangers. No problem.
Strange sicknesses -
meet the universe's
premier med lab.
And look, this army
tries to blast our hide.
Can't hurt us.
Our ships have shields.
Our egos likewise.



John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze” with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review. 

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