Proposal
Oh yes, I can still rise with the best of them,
sink with the worst.
I can play my violin outside your door
as easily as spit on your roses.
How would you like your jazz?
Perfectly syncopated or horribly atonal?
I got the sun in the morning
and the stinking pelts at night.
If I don’t shave, of course, no stubble can grow.
I bleed all colors when I slice my finger:
red, naturally, but also blue and yellow.
I wrap the bandage hard or I drink at the wound,
invite friends to do the same.
I have lived long enough to qualify as a hypocrite,
and a good fellow for all that.
Don’t you just love swans…
the way their wings flutter, their necks snap.
I hate to think of cycles,
prefer contradictions in terms.
The clear-thinking drunk. The sour smile.
And here’s to the rainbow, every color black.
And death…life’s good deed for today.
I have a tremendous brain in which to know nothing,
an incurable web to tease both bug and spider.
And I’ve great journeys ahead of me
and I’m hoping you won’t mind if I make them staying here.
God himself, I’m sure, has something of the devil in him
so why should you mind if I’m heavenly, hellish,
in the elevating dark of day, the crushing light of evening.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.