One Against Three, etc.
By
John Grey
ONE AGAINST THREE
It’s late night down city.
It’s my time, my territory.
As often is the case,
I’m not alone.
A punk occupies the meager light
of a streetlamp.
A cigarette pulses between his lips
like a tiny, watching eye.
Smoke coils around him.
The shapes don’t disperse.
Behind me, another presses
his spine to the wall,
flexes his fingers one by one.
It’s like he’s testing which
will snap my throat cleanest.
His shadow stretches longer than his body,
reaching for me before he does.
A third crouches on a tenement stoop.
His face - creased, swollen, and just wrong -
looks like the sketch on a wanted poster
in the afterlife.
And then there’s me,
keeping still, remaining calm,
my heart beating just a little faster,
not from wariness but as summons to
what slowly rises up inside me.
The three of them creep slowly in my direction.
They can smell fear.
They just don’t realize
that it’s theirs, not mine.
DARK NOON
This beach will never go dark,
At least, that’s what the sun would have me believe.
So why does its light tremble in the haze?
Why are its rays so anemic, so exhausted?
A fisherman casts his line.
It tautens suddenly.
Something is pulling from the other end.
It’s slow but determined.
He stiffens. He cannot let go.
Foam creeps over my feet.
It grabs a shell, pulls it back into the ocean.
It wipes clean the prints of birds.
Speaking of birds- where are they?
And weren’t there children splashing
in the shallows earlier?
They too have disappeared.
Along with castle they built with their hands.
And what about the fisherman?
I look left, right, at long stretch of sand.
I am the only one here.
It is noon.
My watch says so.
So why do these shadows gather?
They’re not natural.
I swear they’re hatched
from spores in the breathing sands.
And the sun is less and less a comfort.
What use is a fraying filament
that’s dimming by the moment.
Night will come. It always does.
But today, this very minute,
surely it is already here.
And waiting…waiting…
just beneath the water.
ALPHA
Each warm body in the street
is a meal
wandering in search
of its own food,
its own sustenance.
But in a battle of hungers,
only the greater will emerge.
Like mice
too involved in scrounging
for nibbles,
they fail to notice
the stalking raptor.
There are people
picking and groping,
eyeing and salivating.
There are creatures,
ragged and bony,
licking in the dirt,
scouring through
overturned trash barrels.
But sorry township,
when the feasting is done,
only one will be sustained.
I don’t peek in restaurant windows,
eye the menu.
I merely look all around me.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos
By
John Grey
ONE AGAINST THREE
It’s late night down city.
It’s my time, my territory.
As often is the case,
I’m not alone.
A punk occupies the meager light
of a streetlamp.
A cigarette pulses between his lips
like a tiny, watching eye.
Smoke coils around him.
The shapes don’t disperse.
Behind me, another presses
his spine to the wall,
flexes his fingers one by one.
It’s like he’s testing which
will snap my throat cleanest.
His shadow stretches longer than his body,
reaching for me before he does.
A third crouches on a tenement stoop.
His face - creased, swollen, and just wrong -
looks like the sketch on a wanted poster
in the afterlife.
And then there’s me,
keeping still, remaining calm,
my heart beating just a little faster,
not from wariness but as summons to
what slowly rises up inside me.
The three of them creep slowly in my direction.
They can smell fear.
They just don’t realize
that it’s theirs, not mine.
DARK NOON
This beach will never go dark,
At least, that’s what the sun would have me believe.
So why does its light tremble in the haze?
Why are its rays so anemic, so exhausted?
A fisherman casts his line.
It tautens suddenly.
Something is pulling from the other end.
It’s slow but determined.
He stiffens. He cannot let go.
Foam creeps over my feet.
It grabs a shell, pulls it back into the ocean.
It wipes clean the prints of birds.
Speaking of birds- where are they?
And weren’t there children splashing
in the shallows earlier?
They too have disappeared.
Along with castle they built with their hands.
And what about the fisherman?
I look left, right, at long stretch of sand.
I am the only one here.
It is noon.
My watch says so.
So why do these shadows gather?
They’re not natural.
I swear they’re hatched
from spores in the breathing sands.
And the sun is less and less a comfort.
What use is a fraying filament
that’s dimming by the moment.
Night will come. It always does.
But today, this very minute,
surely it is already here.
And waiting…waiting…
just beneath the water.
ALPHA
Each warm body in the street
is a meal
wandering in search
of its own food,
its own sustenance.
But in a battle of hungers,
only the greater will emerge.
Like mice
too involved in scrounging
for nibbles,
they fail to notice
the stalking raptor.
There are people
picking and groping,
eyeing and salivating.
There are creatures,
ragged and bony,
licking in the dirt,
scouring through
overturned trash barrels.
But sorry township,
when the feasting is done,
only one will be sustained.
I don’t peek in restaurant windows,
eye the menu.
I merely look all around me.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos
