JOHN GREY

THE TRAVAILS OF THE HEART

He stole her heart,
dropped it, without a parachute,
from a high-flying plane.

Wait a minute.
That can’t be right.
Didn’t he toss it over the side
of a cruise-ship,
somewhere in
the mid-Atlantic.

Wait a minute,
he left it behind
in the basement
of an old tenement
where the rats
could get at it.

Then there
was the bonfire
with that heart
front and center
in the flames.

And didn’t he
throw it in the wood-chipper
as a feast
for those hungry blades.

Yet here she is
with her new man,
heart seemingly functioning.

Maybe it was just
the part of her big heart
where there’d always be
a place for him.
That she could afford to lose.

I COME UPON A FLEA CIRCUS

Was there really such a thing as a flea circus?
Did those tiny biting things
jump through hoops,
form pyramids on each other’s shoulders,
eat fire, swallow swords, tame lions?

There’s vague things in my head.
They keep their distance
by never coalescing into meaning.
I know Timbuktu exists.
Or, at least, I think I do.
And the Zeitgeist.
I could look it up in the dictionary,
be doubly certain what it’s referring to.
But why bother.
Why not let a fuzzy attitude
toward the Zeitgeist
be the Zeitgeist.

And what about that silver lining.
And Sugur Rios.
And Coen brothers movies.
Not forgetting Ignus Fatuus
and Agnes Dei.
Is my brain spelling them correctly?

Sometimes, I get so worked up
about what I don’t know,
my skin begins to itch.
Feels like the circus is in town.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.