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SOMETIMES THE ONLY SONG A MAN HEARS IS HIS ANGER

2007-07-26T23:46:00.000-07:00

At night, dreams flash by like slide shows.
But the frames are alive and move to a ghostly cadence.
Figures of the past dancing in and out of the picture
In cinematic jump cuts.
A dimly lit flicker of nonsequiturs.
A woman I once loved and lost appears and speaks softly,
And the only song I can hear is my own sorrow.
Then, flash -- the scene changes,
Like someone flicked the carousel
To a rural homestead, with Mestizo hired hands in tow,
A clan of people so poor
They only know essentials.
And the sky over the homestead
Turns from a deep cool blue
To a swirling cold gray.
Twin tornadoes dig viciously into the northern horizon.
A woman in the kitchen, a grandmother,
And a man in overalls, a grandfather,
Gather us, hired hands and all,
To crawl into the cellar.
But I can't take my eyes off the storm,
Even as they call and call for me.
The twisters draw closer and closer,
And the only song I can hear is my own madness.
Then, flash -- the scene changes.
And I hear the suburban concerto of an old friend,
A boy too privileged to know anything of essentials,
An innocent heir to a soiled fortune.
And in my trance I've forgotten that he no longer exists.
But the lyrics linger in the dream theater
As we down ancient beers in honor of the lost day.
And the only song I can hear is his naivete.
Then, flash -- the scene changes
To a dingy room and the flicker
Of an old TV set, black and white,
The kind you have at the beginning
And the end of your life.
I'm alone, watching the ghostly parade.
And the only song I can hear is my anger.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 2000.

THE PURSUIT

2007-07-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

As my cool, efficient car
Cut a metal swath
Through a brisk night
Of early spring,
I saw a muscled mastiff,
A strong, joyful machine,
Dart across the road
And narrowly out of peril.
Suddenly I saw his mate,
A virtual clone,
Eyes dazed and gleaming
With the pleasure of the chase.
I dared not stop
To see the living
Complete the race alone.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1988.

FAUSTUS INCORPORATED

2007-06-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

We all serve the same firm
It just has different names
Draftees in an army
Playing the same war games
But today you got commissioned
In trenches I'm confined
You've sold your soul to Lucifer
He's only renting mine
We all must feed ourselves
And so we compromise
There's very few above the game
And hence we swallow lies
For me, it's been necessity
For you, the party line
You've sold your soul to Lucifer
He's only renting mine
We've heard the tales of death
In gulags and the purge
There's other ways to kill a man
When subtle powers merge
The many you put on the street
Drink vodka as if wine
You've sold your soul to Lucifer
He's only renting mine
Yes, it's only business
And business must be done
I've played my own less crucial roles
In battles that you've won
So feast upon the flesh of fools
In finest restaurants dine
You've sold your soul to Lucifer
He's only renting mine

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in January 2002.

YET ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL

2007-05-27T00:03:00.000-07:00

In spaced-out Houston, Texas
Stands a stately pleasure dome
That opened with a towering home run
By a sober Mickey Mantle —
A dome now vacant, save for occasional
Tractor pull, or private party,
Its manmade turf curling with age,
And Mantle’s ghost haunting home plate.

Not far away, on Death Row,
Hundreds of killers, and perhaps a few others
Wait their turn to draw wretched last breaths,
Shuttered away, at the end of a pitiless needle,
With sober, victimized few to witness.
As Camus once said,
If this is being done in our names,
We should be permitted to watch.

So, sell tickets! Raise money for the dome,
Fill the bleachers, and raffle off retribution
To beer-bold executioners,
As condemned are strapped to gurney at home plate.
Perhaps I’ll win! And save the Astrodome
Like a drunken Mickey Mantle with syringe,
And show the wildly cheering fans
How glorious is revenge.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory.

ELVIS WAS A REDNECK CRACKER WHO COULDN'T WRITE A SONG

2007-05-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

They say they found his body
In a bathroom, bloated and shit-smeared.
Fell off the commode with a coronary
While reading some kind of sacred text.
I think he might be in heaven now,
But I'd bet a rock star's drug budget
That his house don't look like Graceland.
Twenty years after they found his obese corpse,
The faithful flooded Memphis
For the biggest velvet-painting convention in human history.
A reporter asked a man on the street
What he thought about the shindig.
He said, "I think it's all very nice,
But I prefer to worship God."

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Published in The American Dissident, Summer/Fall 2007. Written in 1997.

PIGPEN PIETY (Dedicated to Robert Tilton)

2007-05-03T23:42:00.000-07:00

Now is the time for all good pigs to come to the aid of
their poke.
The master beckons, and you all
must come,
rooting and grunting with porcine joy.
The day of judgment is at hand, and you all
will atone.
The Durocs will be separated from the
Poland-Chinas.
Also the boars from the sows, 'cause master don't want no
needless sin.
And if you're right holy hogs you'll go
to that Great Smokehouse on
master's estate.
O Beatific Bacon!
Hallelujah Hambone!
I is borned agin!!

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Published in The Dallas Review, July 1992.

CHIMNEY

2007-05-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

I'd slept most of the day away
And suddenly found myself atop
My roof, inspecting a metal screen
Held onto the chimney top by three bricks.
The business wasn't interesting.
But a rapidly changing tree
In a neighbor's yard was
Turning red, setting off the yellow
Of our backyard trees.
And I suddenly felt like it
Was worth it to have lived this long.
Standing atop my house like a king.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in November 1998.

EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

2007-05-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

Death is the candyman
Who lurks beneath the sugar coating.
And by and by,
We all taste his brittle sweetness
On a day when leaves
Turn a sickly yellow,
The color of a lifeless
But well-preserved worm
Pickling near the bottom
Of a bittersweet bottle
Of Oahaxan mescal.

Death is the candyman
Who leads a procession
Of portly mourners
Marching to a sweet mariachi beat.
Most didn't know the deceased,
But sometimes a wake
Is one hell of a party.
So, let's have a shot
And praise the departed.
Death is the candyman
Who sugar-coats the night.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written on el dia de los muertos, 1998.

ON LONELINESS

2007-05-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

You tell me you're so lonely.
When were you ever alone?
You never left home
Or roomed among strangers.
You never went someplace new
To reinvent your life.
Even your hardships,
Many as they numbered,
Always were familiar ones.
You never knew the starkness
Of night's open road,
Or predatory faces
Of nameless fears on lamplit streets.
You never took warm pizzas
Into cold massage parlors, porno shops,
Or the blackest alleys of midnight.
As death lurks in the next room,
You'll learn in your old age
What I discovered young.
Our souls are all quite alone,
Even with family and friends.
So learn to savor quiet.
There may be much more of it.

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Published in Contexas in 1992.

THE BLAND TOWER

2007-04-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

They worship at the monolith of mediocrity,
The bland tower that the river of invention below
Cannot dampen, let alone flood.
And it shelters many.
Atop skeletons of common sense
And the blood of angry prophets,
It stands undaunted.
Even mosses and mold cannot surround its windows,
For it permits nothing new to grow
Except paunches on the servile,
Those who dwell safely inside,
Shielded from cleansing elements.
The sheltered gorge on platters of spiceless chicken,
Toss bones and gristle
Down to malcontents outside
And belch up homilies for each other.
Revolutions come and go below,
Markets boom and bust.
Genocides and pesticides
Befoul the waters outside,
But the monolith stands,
Sheltering many,
Oblivious and undaunted.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Published in The American Dissident, Fall 2001/Winter 2002.

CINEMA VERITE

2007-04-25T14:01:00.000-07:00

The rapture of light
And shadow and muted color
On the human face
Has given our lives
A fourth dimension,
While tearing our soft bellies
From the umbilicus
Of the other three.
It seduces and destroys
While bringing beloved myths
Into luminous view.
It makes stars
Of beautiful illiterates,
And computer clerks
Of would-be bards.
It frees the imaginations
Of good peasant stock,
Yet as surely ensnares
In a flabby, living room prison.

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Written in 1991.

POSTMODERN POEM

2007-04-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

They're sending up a press release
On the Minister of Pleasure --
Recently deceased.
The boxing days of Nebraska
Are over on this island.
We are adrift with no compass,
The world in sweet reverse gear,
And logic a luxury we can ill afford.
I would sing of the death of reason
As if it ever really lived,
But I can't make sense of the melody.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1994.

SEASIDE DREAMSCAPE

2007-04-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

Have you ever stayed out all night
On a beach where it sometimes rains
Parisian toupees,
Or seen the headless, handless girl
Pass out leaflets by the pier,
Or conversed with the mangoes
Who have steady jobs at the marina?
Come morning, there are no miracles
On the ship's breakfast menu.
And years from now,
When floating elephants drink
The last of my smuggled whiskey,
I'll be buried in the dunes,
Plotting escape from my shell.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 2004.

2007-04-22T02:28:00.001-07:00

THE WAGES OF MERCY
A Short Story

By Jon Gregory

These were especially depressing times to be a sinner. In the Oklahoma hamlets, and even in Oklahoma City, the one thing everybody had plenty of was dust. Red dirt was swept into towns by wind that lifted poorly tilled topsoil, leaving the land behind parched and stripped. Wind made a desert out of land that stretched like a billiard table all the way to Saskatchewan. Dry, red dust rose as high as squinting eyes could see, blocking sunlight but mixing torturingly with the heat.
It turned once-fertile farm country into a wasteland.
Hardworking, virtuous folk were hurting enough. But it was really hard for a sinner to find good diversion. Most of what there was to do didn't have much kick to it. There was the local picture show, where shoot-'em-ups and sometimes more sophisticated Hollywood fare were featured. In the fall there was high school football. Most houses had a radio by now. Newspapers occasionally carried accounts of bloody shootouts between lawmen and bandits, between details about the Legislature's latest follies and advice for the lovelorn. On Saturday night there was bootleg whiskey. For those who could afford children, or the condoms the druggists discreetly sold -- and for some who could afford neither -- there was sex. Married or illicit, it was somehow always furtive.
This was summer in 1936, when the faith healer came to town for a tent revival.
It was late afternoon on a Saturday, at the nicest motor court in town. The faith healer was walking back to his cabin, coming from a diner with a couple of hamburgers and some french-fried potatoes in a sack. He was passing by the gas pumps, beside the motor court, where a thin, sunburned man in khakis and a t-shirt would fill your tank. Travelers from the Ozarks were there, on the way to Pike's Peak.
The man of the family, a short, snappy Rotarian in a white summer suit, looked around at a dim afternoon sky almost crimson with dust.
"What is this, the end of the world or something?" the Rotarian asked the attendant, who silently filled their tank. He was daydreaming of somewhere else.
"I think we may stay at this motor court," the Rotarian said. "Don't think I want to drive through this after dark. Anything for folks to do in this town at night?"
"Not much," the sunburned man slowly replied. "There's the picture show. Oh, yeah, there's the tent revival. Feller says he can heal sick folks. Lotta bullcrap if you ask me."
The faith healer was still within earshot. "Oh, ye of little faith," he said as he walked on to his cabin.

That summer was the worst in anybody's memory, so the town was ripe for Christian revival. A couple of lonely freethinkers blamed their ills on bankers and politicians, but the devout knew their famine was of the spirit.
And so, the contrite crowded into a big tent on the edge of town, forsaking the latest Hollywood horse opera to toss their loose change into the collection plate. Salvation, it seemed, was no more costly than a theater ticket, and it might be good for eternity.
Matthew John Solomon was not the only faith healer, but he was the best. He worked miracles as far south as Brownsville, Texas, as far north as the Dakotas, as far west as Los Angeles and as far east as Tennessee. He left an Oklahoma farm at 17 to follow the call. At 35, he was king of the traveling prairie evangelists. Some Presbyterians called him a charlatan, no better than a peddler of snake oil. But when he came around, town drunks swore off liquor for as long as a week, and cruel husbands thought twice before raising a fist against their wives.

At an hour when card games, and what few brothels were around, were starting to liven up, Solomon was alone in his cabin, contemplating his future.
He had finished the next-to-last sermon of his revival in Pallequah, Oklahoma, curing the fake mute who was his plant in the congregation that evening.
Solomon was tired of the road. He was thinking of using the money he'd stashed in assorted banks to set up a permanent, respectable church in the Southern Rockies.
It had been a good 18 years, getting through to people who otherwise dozed through the monotones of conventional preachers. But he was tired, and bored. And he had long lived in fear of exposure.
What he could see ahead on the current road, if his luck held out, was more time spent in motor courts. Surely a temple was the next step: donations mailed to a central office, and perhaps even broadcasts.
And no more faith healing. I've outgrown it, he told himself.
Solomon went to the mirror. He was beginning to go gray at the temples. Why spend more years going from town to town, waiting for the day that some disgruntled "gimp" would threaten blackmail, or just go to the local Gazette and tell all?
Resolving that tomorrow night's "healing" would be his last, Solomon decided to break the news to Tiny, his manager. Tiny was supposed to be there soon with something to drink.
One thing the road hadn't taken from Solomon was his health. He was still built much like the boxing champs he had idolized in his youth. He'd spent a lot of time working out during the long afternoons. He hadn't been seriously ill since childhood. All the more reason to get out of this now, live a more settled life, perhaps get married. There were plenty of women on the road, but he was also tired of sneaking around.
There was a knock at the door. Solomon knew it was Tiny with the whiskey.
Solomon was a moderate drinker, but Tiny drank very hard -- so hard at one time, he drank himself out of a newspaper career in Kansas City. He'd become more discreet since getting into the revival business, but he was still apt to go on serious weekend benders.
After Solomon opened the door, he could see it was one of those nights.
"Greetings!" Tiny, an immense man with an ironic nickname, weaved into the room and parked his disheveled, obese frame into the chair next to the bed. Solomon sat on the bed.
"Well, another night, another few hundred suckers," Tiny said. He cradled two sacks, one with the fifth bottle he was drinking from, the other an unopened pint for Solomon. He held out the smaller package.
"Nectar of the pagan gods," he said. Solomon, unlike many other preachers, could appreciate irreverence. He smiled as he took the bag and opened his bottle. The first sip went down fiery and sweet.
Tiny took a big swig from his bottle, then searched his trouser pocket for a King Edward. For an educated man, Tiny had a curiously plebian habit -- he ate cigars. He didn't just chew them. He literally ingested several a day. Solomon wondered what his insides would look like if they opened him up after he was dead.
Tiny found his cigar, but set it on the bedside table before starting it. He pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from a back pocket and blew his nose. He had caught a summer cold.
"Nothing like a snort to make you forget about a cold," he said.
"As much as you put away, you can forget about a lot," Solomon remarked.
Tiny, with bloated red face, smirked. "Save the preaching for the sharecroppers. It may have some effect on them."
Solomon could see that this wasn't the night to tell Tiny about his plans. Tomorrow he would propose a new direction.

That night Solomon slept fitfully. The searching eyes of the blind and the twisted limbs of the crippled came to him in the dark, begging for help he could not give. He had seen them after countless sermons.
Waking in a sweat, he saw a pillar of light at the foot of the bed.
The light spoke gently. It called itself Jehovah, and told Solomon that it forgave him for his dishonesty and knew the guilt he had suffered.
You sincerely want to heal the sick, it said. So, I give you the power to cure with the touch of your hand. You will have this power for one day only. It will be gone at midnight, so use it generously. The light disappeared.
Solomon slept no more that night. He had seen the face of God.

He had forgotten the speech he had planned to make to Tiny. As they ate lunch at the diner, Solomon watched the community's few prosperous families, who came after church for Sunday chicken.
Tiny, normally a gargantuan eater, was working slowly on pork chops and mashed potatoes. He was a little queasy after a night of whiskey. He paused to talk business.
"The guy will be wearing blue denim overalls," he said. "An Okie type." He sniffled, nursing a low-grade hangover on top of his cold. "He's gonna have a red bandana around his neck, and he'll walk on two canes."
Tiny noticed that Solomon wasn't really listening. "Hey, wake up," he said. "What's wrong with you?"
Solomon touched the first person he had touched since last night, fearing that his revelation had indeed been only a dream.
Tiny pulled away. "What the hell's wrong with you?" he said. "Are you turning queer on me or something?"
"How's your cold?" Solomon asked.
Tiny sniffed through clear nostils and swallowed with a clear throat.
"Well, I do feel a lot better, since you mention it," he replied. He noticed that his hangover was gone, too. "May just have been hay fever after all. All this dust, you know."
Solomon knew what he needed to know.

During his sermon, Solomon saw more maimed and disfigured bodies than he had ever seen under a tent. It was as if all the arthritics and blind men who had followed him all these years finally caught up with him that night.
Among them he spotted his "plant," the two-caned cripple in overalls. He was there for money, as all the others had been. Tonight, for one night only, Solomon would touch only those who had come for help.
"And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean," Solomon thundered. "And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
"When the even was come, they brought unto him any that were possessed with devils; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick; That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses."
Solomon gazed out at the congregation of a few hundred. "And now I ask you all to come forth," he shouted. "All the maimed, twisted bodies racked with pain, all the blind, the mute, the incurably ill. Tonight the Holy Spirit shall know no limits. Come forth, and be healed!"
In front, Tiny sprang to his overburdened feet. He saw impending doom. Waddling toward the pulpit ahead of the surging crowd of crutches, canes and dark eyeglasses, he grabbed Solomon's arm.
"What the hell are you doing? This will ruin us! You've been overcome by the Spirit, boy -- overcome, see? Collapse! Fall down, now!"
"I have the power now," Solomon replied calmly. "I cured your cold today. Please stand aside. Don't interfere."
Tiny was soon engulfed in a writhing mass of the sick. He pushed his way out of the scene. This is the end, he thought.
One by one the ailing climbed onto the pulpit with the help of the abled-bodied. The first was a bald man wearing sunglasses. He tapped a cane before him as he walked.
"I'm blind, Brother Matthew. Can you heal me?"
"Have faith, brother, and do not despair," Solomon said. "Our Lord can restore the gift of sight." He removed the man's dark glasses and enclosed his hands over moist, unseeing eyes. Then he pulled his hands away.
The bald man looked around in wonderment of all he could suddenly see. Whimpering, he tossed his cane aside and groped around, touching everything and everyone around him like a toddler. People embraced him and wept.
A middle-aged woman -- the blind man's wife -- pushed her way to the front. She faced her ecstatic husband, who had not been able to see her for half their married life.
She grabbed her husband's shirt and blurted, "Is it true, Ezra?"
He looked lingeringly at his wife through eyes clouded only by tears, and then embraced her.
Onlookers cried, "Praise God!" and "It's a miracle!" A bigger mob soon formed before Solomon. Tiny, who had been moving toward an exit, thought at first that the Okies were ready to send out for tar and feathers. Hearing the pious fervor, he drifted back and sat, watching the stricken and deformed being healed one after another.
"Holy shit. He can really do it." Tiny's imagination conjured up majestic temples, coast-to-coast radio broadcasts, and enormous stacks of money.
On they came. One hour passed, then two. Solomon was still healing the sick, with minimal effort.
There were no clocks in the tent, but in the town a few chimed. It was midnight. At that moment, beneath the red dust in the Oklahoma night, in a tent on a barren plain, Solomon was healing a woman hopelessly crippled by polio.
He became conscious of a sore throat. His nose began to run from a summer cold.
As Solomon drew his hands away from the woman's useless legs, his own wilted beneath him. He fell as the woman awkwardly drew herself erect on the first strong legs she had known in many years.
But she screamed as she saw the fallen Solomon's face assume the horrible scars of a burn victim he had healed earlier. Soon his eyes did not see, and he began coughing like the tubercular man who was healed just after eleven o'clock. Boils, arthritis and assorted cancers set in.
A few were still in line as Solomon fell. They came forth subbornly and began to grasp weakly at the figure before them, which was gradually losing definition as a human body. In time, the police arrived to save what was left of him.
The next morning, a new wind from the east blew into Pallequah, carrying away the apocalyptic red dust that had shrouded the area for so long. People went to work in the fields, opened shops and loitered in front of domino halls under the first azure sky they had seen in weeks.
The faith healer was taken to an Oklahoma City hospital, where he lingered for three days as a testament to the wages of mercy.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1998. Published in The DFW Poetry Review.

IT'S JUST MY LUCK

2007-04-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

It's just my luck
To move into a dark, romantic mansion,
A labyrinth of morbid, decadent Victorian pleasures,
And find I've got Fidel Castro
Hiding out in my attic.
I wake before dawn
After a sleep that seems like decades,
And smell his pungent cigar smoke
Wafting down in musty ribbons.
I look out on the porch, and by the front door.
Khrushchev has left the plans
For the short-range missiles
Neatly rolled and secured with a rubber band.
I decide to carry them up to the attic
And introduce myself.
But I flip the switch by the attic stairs,
And the hall and stairs remain dark.
He's taken all the bulbs while I've been sleeping.
It must be fate for me to walk these darkened rooms
Like a long-dead, bourgeois, gringo Che Guevara,
And smell that pungent cigar smoke
For all eternity.
It's just my luck.

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Written in 2003.

UNDERWATER CONVERSATIONS

2007-04-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

It was a memory of yielding and of peace,
One of being contained and protected,
And we know nothing matters anymore.
We're safe inside the liquid womb,
Sinking near its murky bottom.
I mumble small comforts to the others,
Though my lungs are too wet
For me to even cough.
But it doesn't matter, I tell myself,
Until someone opens the door,
And they shake my shoulder.
And I am rescued for another day.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory

PAINTED DREAM

2007-04-21T02:19:00.000-07:00

When the immortal drunken artist
Promised that after I bailed him
Out of jail, he would paint me
Canvasses like none other,
I believed him.
But I became a dissatisfied customer.
He promised colors that would put to shame
The oranges of August sunsets,
Deep grays that would be more profound
Than the cloud cover of December,
Electric blues more pure than the azure skies of April.
He said he would stick needles into my ears,
And inject my brain with acrylic magic.
But not enough appeared.
There just weren't scenes vivid enough,
Colors rich enough,
Manifestos strong enough,
Lives profound enough.
Next time
He'll have to post bail
Himself.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory

STOP

2007-04-21T02:13:00.000-07:00

Every day you lived that word
You stopped growing
For 24 hours.
And when you'd lived that word
For a thousand days of your life,
That was when
You began to shrink.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory

A LEGAL PRAYER

2007-04-20T03:08:00.000-07:00

May I approach the bench?
Your Honor, I wish
to make a statement.
I ask You only for time
to argue and plead
my case completely,
and for a fair judge
to hear my plea.
For while they say
that justice is blind,
I hope that You will see
my motives much more clearly
than I could ever hope
to witness Yours.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Published in The DFW Poetry Review. Written in 1995.

HOME

2007-04-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

Gray mist hung over the place
I once called Home
Just as it did
In fresher winters of youth.
The banana tree that bore no fruit
Still stood beside the house.
The rest was strange to me --
Neglected, disheveled, collapsed,
Like rags clinging
To a toothless, rasping bum
Whose face is too familiar.
And a world that seemed so huge
And ripe for winning
Was just a stunted miser,
Clinging like dark, gray mist
To a place he now calls Home.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written sometime in the 1990s.

IWORK YOUWORKALL GODSCHILUNGOTTAWORK

2007-04-14T01:16:00.000-07:00

"I always knew I'd reach the top,"
You said with perfect candor.
"There never was a single doubt."
i tended to agree,
As You wiped my nose
With last week's payroll.

"We worked so hard to get this far,"
Your Dacron wife explained.
"It took so long to close the deal
"When Daddy bought the business."

Your busty secretary grinned
And rubbed her legs together
As she scribbled out a pink slip
For the cretin boy
Who punched in late.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1980. Published in Contexas and a few other journals I don't recall. Perhaps one day I'll look them up.

KNIFE EDGE

2007-04-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

Slipping out the back way
Will just open the wound inside her deeper,
For he pursues with the jagged blade,
And slips it neatly and discreetly
Into the folds of her soul.
He is the assassin of her dream,
The dark-eyed procurer
Who puts her on the black-tar street
To poison for lust
And lust for poison,
And long by night
To die someday
On knife edge.

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Written in 1999.

WINO

2007-04-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

Leroy Johnson lives in the Regal Motel
In scenic downtown Sedalia.
His father shined shoes.
His grandfather was a field hand.
Leroy is 60, a one-time Baptist who's been too drunk
To go to church for the last 35 years.
His beverage is often Falstaff beer, which he likes to drink
Alone on the streets at night, taking in the cold
Inside and out.
His smoke is a cheap cigar,
Whatever gets nicotine to the blood quickly,
With the least nausea.
He eats cheaply -- rice and beans and vegetables
With just enough hot sauce,
On a hot plate in his room.
He was once a tough little fellow.
Respected in all the taverns in town.
Now he tries to stay out of everyone's way, for his belly
Is soft, his hands slowed, his reflexes listless.
His clothes are mostly black and brown, matching his skin.
His income used to come from the numbers,
sometimes from whores, now from dishwashing.
He could have been a mathematician.
He is as American as a baseball game,
And as much a stranger in his own land
As his long-lost appendix is
To his own bloated side.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1988.

WHERE THE RUBBER FINALLY MET THE ROAD

2007-04-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

It was the day the Goodyear blimp
Came down over Shacktown
And crashed on the highway
Next to the wrecking yard.
Winos put their bottles down;
Hookers spat out their johns;
The cops stopped beating Rodney King;
And chop-shop bandits dropped their tools
As flames scorched the brown ozone sky.
"Oh, the humanity!"
A reporter cried out in vain.
A few days later, a charred asphalt crust
Covered the space where the rubber
Finally met the road.
I steered around the "road closed" signs
And sped down the shoulder,
Holding my breath against vulcanized smoke.
Hell, I was late for work.

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Written in August 2003.

TRIBES, FRIENDS AND DREAMS

2007-04-12T00:38:00.000-07:00

A tribe is a way of conning yourself
Into thinking you're not alone --
A ritual dance the natives perform
In ceremonial lodges,
Hand-in-hand, tongue-in-cheek, thumb-up-your-ass
Consecration of membership,
Robes of an unbroken chain of order
That clothe the hairless ape within.

A friend is a way of conning yourself
Into thinking you're not a freak --
A listener to your many laments,
Like a human sanctuary.
Give and take, take and give, one last mistake,
The nature of a long kinship,
From rags to riches, and then back to rags,
Tatters of remembered neglect.

A dream is a way of helping yourself
Believe you'll never really die --
A ritual dance your brain must perform
To keep you moving with the tribe,
Arm-in-arm, locked in step, one of the clan,
Until you sleep, and freedom pulls
You out of line, and then you know,
One day we all must dream alone.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory

FREDRICH NIETZSCHE'S OF HOLLYWOOD

2007-04-12T00:25:00.000-07:00

He slipped into Dionysian coma
Amid the black lace brassieres
And was rushed to Betty Ford Clinic
Where he was dead on arrival.
To die for art
Is a beautiful thing.
The question is:
Will it make good box office?

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Previously published in The American Dissident, Fall 2001/Winter 2002, and in Map of Austin Poetry e-zine.

MEMORY IS A LONELY MATINEE

2007-04-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Memory is a lonely matinee for the cursed.
A cast of unpleasant characters
Parades across the mind's stage,
Taking bows every day,
Twice on Sundays --
Well-supported by embarrassment,
Under the painstaking direction
Of bitter regret.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Published in the Austin International Poetry Festival's 2002 anthology. Written in 1993.

PROSE POEM I

2007-04-11T23:52:00.000-07:00

The somnabolist walks among us. Without Doctor Caligari's aid he murders the ancient dreamers of our city and spares others like him, spiritless and seeking surer means of anesthesia. The living shall know dreamless slumber, even as they build the pyramids, till another man's godless acre, and begat many more recruits to march in lockstep to the great hypnosis.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1992.

A SHAREHOLDER FOR ALL SEASONS

2007-04-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

There was a drop in the stock market tomorrow.
Rain is forecast for yesterday.
And as the Dow flooded the streets,
His broker advised him to sell
The thunderheads in his portfolio.

He was ever the clever investor,
Mindful of seasons and cycles,
But in reverse.

And in time, he got rich
Off hot stocks in winter and
Cool bonds in summer.

But then, the day arrived
When lightning reduced him
To charred junk bonds.

His memory fades into mercury
Like midnight sun.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Originally written in May 2002.

LOVE AND DOUBT ON THE GREAT PLAINS

2007-04-06T00:28:00.000-07:00

It's doubtful whether flat-earth life is real
And high-peak dreams are not;
Whether we steer smoothly across our times,
Or the times are leveling us;
Whether our love is eternal,
Or prairie sex with a ring and a prayer;
Whether DNA flatly determines
Everything about us,
As if it stands for Dumb Naked Ape --
Or did we choose our horizontal truth?
It's doubtful which of us will live longer,
Whether I was a blessing or
A flat-out curse on you, or you on me.
Whether our lives and times out here
Meant anything at all,
There is one thing that I will never doubt:
You made some days on this bare plain
The best I ever knew.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Actually written in November 2000.

NEUROPATHOLOGY

2007-04-01T23:25:00.000-07:00

Would you rather have your dreams die
Before your brain cells do,
Or prefer it the other way around?
Maybe it depends on which dreams
Or which brain cells we're talking about.
And since we only use about
6 percent of our brain cells
In an average lifetime (or so I've heard),
That means about 94 percent
Of one's brain is expendable.
But some of us use 100 percent
Of our dreams, and then
In an average lifetime we make
About 6 percent of them come true.
That must mean about 94 percent
Of one's dreams are expendable,
And that's a lot of death
To witness in an average lifetime.
And so, some decide they'd rather
Have the brain cells go first,
And they spend a lot of time and money
Racing to kill them off.
But in an average lifetime,
The best that they can hope for is a tie.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Actually written in January 2000.

INDIGO PROMISES

2007-03-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

There were amber trees swaying
In insistent wind that autumn,
Against the kind of indigo sky
That makes your eyes behold
All that isn't real --
Ghosts stirring in oleanders,
Scenes of primal ages,
Flesh roasting over campfires,
And ancient storytellers rising,
Painting mythic battles in thin air.
You'd swear it was all real --
The smoke and the night chill
Of indigo promises that had to be broken.
I saw you walking in a blue trenchcoat,
Hallucinating about your faithless man
On your way to an immaculate room.
And it struck me that once, I rode up
On a horse and bid you ride with me
To where the camp coals smoldered
After I told others the stories
That really happened long ago.
There were indigo promises then --
All broken now, just like
Your man's promises to you.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Actually written in December 1997.

IN MY POSTHUMOUS LIFE

2007-03-30T02:15:00.000-07:00

In my posthumous life
I gaze on yellow skies
I walk among the shaven apes
And hear their primal lies
The streets of my exile
Are stained with blood and paint
No shotglass spiked with turpentine
Can strip the inner taint
In my posthumous neighborhood
The houses look the same
The all-electric monuments
To those who play the game
In my posthumous living room
My soul finds brief retreat
From innocent and fruitless quests
And a heart's relentless beat.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1992.

FIVE POEMS IN FORM

2007-03-26T00:46:00.001-07:00

VOYAGES

At night, as the city gained sleep,
I turned the key,
And began my missions of discovery.
On winding winter roads
I'd take my chances,
Gauged with care,
Between swigs of beer,
And thanks to a silent God
Who might be there.
Quinching his thirst for dark
A man can get lost, or die.
But night can serve us liquid dreams
That keep the roots
Of rootless souls
Alive.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 1993.
Previously published -- somewhere.

BRAIN SNATCHERS AND MARAUDING BABOONS

This peculiar day I had not planned.
I rose from my bed and went to the can.
Following close was the family cat.
Groggy, I stared at her and my bath mat.
The face of the Holy Virgin was there,
Between the soap stains and a few cat hairs.
Later, I showered; my mind in a daze.
God gives us hints in mysterious ways.
But without a thought, I stepped on the mat.
My weight mashed the face of the Virgin flat.
I told my wife I'd spoiled this vision.
"Fool! We could have been on television!"
"I think we're better off," I had to say.
"You don't want strangers camping here all day."
"And not in that bathroom," was her reply.
She seemed to think this a joke or a lie.
So I simply went about my business.
But minutes later -- God is my witness,
While bringing the paper in from the yard,
I dropped my supermarket discount card.
And it vanished into infinity.
Swiped by some otherworldly entity.
Later, at work, while sifting through the news,
It seemed I was getting another clue.
Brain snatchers working in the state of Maine,
Marauding baboons on African plains;
And then, yet another Mary sighting
(At least when viewed under certain lighting),
The Virgin Mary's likeness on rye toast --
An unlikely sign from the Holy Ghost.
My mind drifted into a Web site haze.
God gives us hints in mysterious ways.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 2005.
Previously published in The DFW Poetry Review.

DEATH OF THE ROAD: AN EX-JOGGER'S LAMENT

In my youth I ran down a road
Surely bound for sublime success.
With fewer years, a lighter load --
I felt I jogged among the blessed.
The race was still a pleasure then,
On cool, green paths of life's high quest.
Forgetting how much pain had been,
I thought I could outlast the rest.
But then, one day, the pain returned.
It racked my ankles, feet and knees.
Forgotten lessons were relearned,
Then I saw as the hobbled see.
I realized I'd heard many lies --
How destiny is simply will.
And so, for me, the road has died,
And in its place, a slow treadmill.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 2005.

LOVE IS A DISMAL SCIENCE

As she ran her fingers through his
Negative externalities,
They found out what stagflation is.
And both soon felt quite ill at ease.
The invisible hand of doubt
Slowly set forth to measure out
The object of self-interest,
Whose outcome is considered best.
A clear case of market failure --
Too few dollars for public goods.
Where Smith had failed, perhaps Keynes could
Win over her better nature.
And laissez faire, a theory, died.
So high demand -- how short supply.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory. Written in 2002.

BRIDGE

They walked across suspended time,
The water's languid dance below.
A river floated future rhymes --
Their past, a painful undertow.
He walked back for another look.
Her life stood still, as in a book
With pages pressed in brittle stone.
She knew too well he walked alone.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory.

THE FACE OF THE CLOCK

2007-03-25T22:54:00.000-07:00

The face of the clock
Was torn in two.
Gore and puss oozed
From the raw, red half.
I woke sweating,
Heart pounding, then realized
It was a dream,
And turned off the alarm.

The clock at the office
Is digital, pitch-black
With crimson numbers that glow
With ominous liquidity.
As I turned to hack
On the terminal, neck stiff
And aching, I understood.
Time is not money. It is blood.

Copyright 2007, by Jon Gregory
Previously published in The American Dissident