by John Grey
Hopper
My journey took me to
a place called Hopper
and the last gas station in America
that was owned by an actual human being.
A windblown flag read “Ernie’s”,
though that owner’s actual name
was John, just like mine.
Oh well…there’s actual and there’s actual.
In the window of his tiny office
was an old rusty sign
for a brand of gas and oil called “White Eagle.”
I took a photograph to save its future.
I must admit the drive-in restaurant
was a disappointment.
Sure I could park my car
and revel in a waitress on roller skates
taking my order.
But the building itself was a pink and blue replica.
And the vehicles, like mine,
weren’t born when America was in the 1950’s.
Good thick shake though.
I was too late for the Main Street Cinema.
I could only stand outside, peer in, and imagine.
The poster on its wall
was for the first Spiderman movie.
And the concessionaire stand
was as barren as the landscape
that framed the forgotten town.
The diner was still in business.
And so was the hardware store.
I saw nobody in the streets under fifty.
And every bench was filled with those
who knew this place in better times.
I stopped in the park, rested on the brown grass,
in company with a statue
that was dedicated to the Hopper war dead.
Most of them were buried in a graveyard
halfway up a nearby hillside.
They too knew this place in better times.
I Cannot Visit Auschwitz
Women, children,
led down a long dark passage
by guard whose brow is a bulb
glowing black thoughts.
A fish leaps through a forest of trees.
A kid cavorts - parades on the black plain.
A small girl arrives at what she believes is a wedding,
absorbed in herself- and burns.
Solitary palace,
as tall as the dead,
birds pecking at its bones,
waters cool and tinkling,
like rain on the eyelids,
memories eat from the same plate
as flies and blood.
Goddess dances
Gods, men and beasts.
Red, black, then red again.
Hallucinations.
Heat. An enormous humming.
Howling. Hundreds of gulls.
An old man is a lamp
in a rented suit
crossing a courtyard
beneath a tallow sun.
Living scales on a broken piano:
look at me and shut up.
Monkeys with red buttocks
cling to arms and ankles
of the pallid god
who haunts these roadways.
On the water,
a shadowed mouth
opens eyes over the emptiness.
Rags of lightning bolts, ripples.
Discarded fruit.
Silver bracelets,
smooth and without shine,
dangle from brown bones.
Spread out among the stones,
headless black glowing marble statues,
sky crushing from above,
water from below.
Twilight. Two bodies united
Darkness is born tonight.
What visitors see and say
is merely whiteness drifting,
reminiscing with a history
they don't share,
the sanctified tomb,
the bodies missing
but the ghosts keep looking.
A Death in the Garden
I don’t care that
the roses shrivel
on their stems
they are one
great vision too many
it is not always
game day
or the time for revolution
sometimes
what’s good for me
is bad for the flowers
like when
I’m too consumed
by good fortune
to water the flowers
or bad for me also –
like when I sit in my room
and sulk
and the hose
coils idle in the backyard
like a sleeping snake –
the roses
are beautiful
when in full bloom
but I’m at an age
when beauty
is the least of my problems -
besides,
sometimes
a flower’s corpse
makes a living weed
look good
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