You wonder why I’m this way.
It’s not just because of the way you are.
It’s bad programming, flat tires,
my family, my job,
body hair, and boring sex,
cracked mirrors, plastic straws, Trump –
and there’s more –
lids that refuse to unscrew,
songs on the radio,
loud neon scenery,
the unsuspected sharpness of some blades,
spam and junk-mail,
the bus system, the crappy WiFi,
the pain I have to overcome,
Kardashians, heavy traffic,
tasteless fast food, aggressive panhandlers,
food coloring, superhero movies,
the siren eyes of alcohol,
busted guitar strings, empty ink cartridges,
lines of reasoning, rusty pipes.
humidity, bills, neighbors,
the borrowed book that’s never returned,
the never again good times,
Fox news, a friend’s divorce,
religions that kill,
that render their believers brain dead,
the cost of replenishing those ink cartridges,
dentists, big game hunters, Brad Pitt,
the worn-out soles of my shoes,
cigarette butts strewn across the lawn,
dog shit on the sidewalk,
some long ago incident that
occupies the space between us.
It won’t leave,
would rather stay,
be more annoying than the competition.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)