{"id":1253,"date":"2008-05-22T14:56:15","date_gmt":"2008-05-22T14:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2008-05-22T14:56:15","modified_gmt":"2008-05-22T14:56:15","slug":"two-poems-by-john-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/two-poems-by-john-grey\/","title":{"rendered":"Two poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

PUTTING YOU BACK TOGETHER FOR MY SAKE<\/span>
 <\/span>

I want to make you whole again<\/span>
so where are the parts.<\/span>
Haven't the Chinese the pieces?<\/span>
Or was that the open sea?<\/span>
Your lips are intact sure<\/span>
but your tenderness is feeling up slabs of meat<\/span>
at the Stop and Shop butcher counter.<\/span>
 <\/span>
And do you really want to be intact anyhow?<\/span>
You've given your heart to the dead,<\/span>
the starving, other people's dogs and babies.<\/span>
That's your throat down there I'm sure of it<\/span>
but the words it broadcasts<\/span>
are from books and newspapers.<\/span>
 <\/span>
I still have the glue with me.<\/span>
And I can ace a jigsaw puzzle any time.<\/span>
But there's bits of you scrambling up trees<\/span>
in New Hampshire forests.<\/span>
There's more on your fancy European tour.<\/span>
What if I almost have one section locked into place<\/span>
but some tanager's stole the spirit?<\/span>
Sure I recognize the skull<\/span>
but the thoughts are Michelangelo or squirrels.<\/span>
My blueprints begin and end with me.<\/span>
 <\/span>
You've got those pretty sea shell ears<\/span>
but the hearing's off to the races, to Arabia.<\/span>
And pert nose can't smell the scent of me<\/span>
when the wind's blowing from yesterday.<\/span>
But I'm a resourceful carpenter.<\/span>
What I can't find, I'll just use shadow.<\/span>
You can't help casting one.<\/span>
And I can't help being one.<\/span>
 <\/span>

<\/font>~ ~ ~ ~ ~<\/span><\/font>
 <\/span>

TAXI DRIVER'S BURDENS <\/span>                           <\/span>
 <\/span>

There's a woman<\/span>
in a mirror,<\/span>
pecking at her beauty<\/span>
with tweezers,<\/span>
or arguing with gravity.<\/span>
And an older man<\/span>
conning over his bald spot<\/span>
to gift-wrap his face,<\/span>
and a teenager with raw heart<\/span>
beating in his hands,<\/span>
and three girls tottering between<\/span>
high hair and lipstick.<\/span>
Here's someone so hollow<\/span>
she almost floats in the back seat,<\/span>
a man who mutters “I am not dead,<\/span>
I sleep,” then dies.<\/span>
Whoever they are, he drives them<\/span>
all past everyone they are not,<\/span>
by all the places they are<\/span>
not going to.<\/span>
It.'s the one monologue<\/span>
that different ones contribute to,<\/span>
the servant speech<\/span>
of one night shift master.<\/span>
One day, a woman gives birth<\/span>
in his rear view.<\/span>
The baby cries like it already knows<\/span>
no mother's driving this baby.<\/span>


\u2022 John Grey lives in Providence, Rhode Isand, and has been published recently in <\/span>Agni, Worcester Review,  South Carolina Review<\/span> and <\/span>The Pedestal<\/span>, with work upcoming in <\/span>Poetry East<\/span> and <\/span>Cape Rock<\/span>.<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PUTTING YOU BACK TOGETHER FOR MY SAKE I want to make you whole againso where are the parts.Haven't the Chinese the pieces?Or was that the open sea?Your lips are intact surebut your tenderness is feeling up slabs of meatat the Stop and Shop butcher counter. And do you really want to be intact anyhow?You've given your heart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}