John Grey – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 06/14/24

June 14, 2024 James D. Casey IV

NOTES FROM THE DEAD

Once flesh,
in the visible world,
I am this stone.
It bears my name
and figures that’s enough.
You can touch it
but any response
is all up to you.
My stone will, forever,
have a stone’s life.

Maybe my image
floats up in your head.
But, without the being
to back it up,
I am increasingly
decreasing.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 03/10/23

March 10, 2023 James D. Casey IV

MY COLOR IN HIGH SCHOOL

The bright girls sported blue,
the dull ones, brown.
The bully boys
claimed red for their color.
The nerds went for yellow.
Goths of either sex
had nowhere else to go
but black.
The nascent eco-warriors
always thought green
looked good on them.
A couple of guys,
already questioning
their sexuality,
draped themselves
in purple.
Actually,
school unform was mandatory
and it was mostly gray.
No,
we weren’t all poets.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside The Head, and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline, and International Poetry Review.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 10/24/22

October 24, 2022 James D. Casey IV

LOST SOMEWHERE IN WEST TEXAS

On all sides,
dark as a dead man’s vision.
Car’s on lower than low
and the gas station’s shuttered.
In the passenger seat,
you wrap your jacket tighter around you.
I contemplate the road ahead,
wonder how many more miles of Texas
this clunker will cover tonight.

At least, I’m not being bugged
by that May beetle of a retort,
“I told you so.”
You’re the kind who deals with
whatever life gives you.
If that means sleeping in the car overnight,
you’ll curl up in the back seat
and snore your way through
to the coming of rescue.

But I’m angry with myself,
so it’s not as if I’m free of rancor.
And I’m not even sure what highway we’re on
or if we’re headed in the right direction.
I turn off the engine and settle down too.
If I’m to be lost,
here is as good a place as any.
Did I tell you that, on all sides,
it’s as dark as a dead man’s vision.
It’s also as dark as a live man’s miscalculation.
It’s almost midnight in the middle of nowhere.
Light doesn’t stand a chance.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 04/06/22

April 6, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Woman Next Door Plus Guitar

Why does the woman,
in the apartment next door,
constantly pluck on her guitar strings.

I’ve seen her loneliness
briefly in the corridor.
But I hear it,
night after night.

Oh I see lonely faces everywhere
in the city
but I am not
in earshot of their song,
not when I also am in for the night,
in company of my own darkness.

I get it.
Life is hard,
especially alone.
We all cling to our instrument.
Mine is silence.
Hers will not let silence be.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/08/21

September 8, 2021April 6, 2022 James D. Casey IV

A SMALL WORLD

I adore the fireflies,
tiny smidgens of light
on a hot summer dusk,
flames out of nowhere,
suspended in mid-air.

A spider crawls up my wall.
A magazine is handy
but I don’t swat that arachnid.
It has its reasons
for being where it is.
Why should I interfere?

I get up close with bugs
in my garden,
the ladybird, the aphid,
the praying mantis,
so thin, so near-invisible,
it’s a wonder it’s prayer
is ever heard.

I’m done with giants.
They’ve only ever let me down.
But the world of the miniscule
is businesslike, productive,
instinctive and harmless,
a welcome antidote
to what the rest of life is like.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and the Round Table. Latest books, Leaves On Pages and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and Hollins Critic.