FOR DKW

What is the heart,
if not a vessel of gift
for wind and rain
to pass like low hanging clouds
above the rocky terrain
of grins and tears
and broken longing?
What will you make of it
in this only life alone?
In the quiet of your bed,
civilization drives you mad
with overtones of war
and sickness of mind and body,
but go on we must:
your heart is pure;
this, you carry
both as staff and spear,
not to trample the dusty earth beneath you,
but to lift the watching child upon your shoulders
so that he may see
what he could never see alone.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ÉLÉGIE POUR PARIS

It must begin with the children:
a slow and steady lesson,
delicately delivered,
that the page of a book
is lighter than dogma,
more faithful than the trigger of a gun.
Alright.
Done.

It must begin with a degree of reverence,
understanding
instead of demanding
what we want —
no, what we NEED —
okay, fine:
even Chekhov said,
“I have no interest in what’s yours,
only securing what is mine.”

But still we wait,
from season to season,
where, in the parking lot of a cheap motel, 
an assassin peers through a scope
while snow gently falls
and, should you listen oh-so-carefully, 
an army of tides march through timeworn walls
made of sheetrock and autumns of circumstance:
still, we ponder the reason?
Moving from morning to mourning the darkness,
the night —
where is the light?
what is the season?
what is the sin?
where does it begin?

Again and again,
we must begin
after tragedy and horror
and painful attack;
starting over,
well-worn and nothing more…
(if only we were able to learn
from that which came before)
This is a war:
not of guns,
not of people,
but of “this-is-the-church-and-this-is-the-steeple”
and ideology and a notion
of someone’s sublime set in motion,
a religion of violence,
a terrible plot,
a terrible misgiving.

And we find ourselves again —
beginning another chapter
in the terror of living.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ODE

You:
you who carried
wonder in your hands
down the long, lonely walk
to that plaintive beach
and, tossing it to the sea,
used your fingernail
as a small scalpel
to lance the skin of the earth
only to bury a bit of yourself
beneath the sun-soaked sand of discovery --

you are the fringe of land
that meets the sea,
unshakable in the fleeting pledge of morning,
immovable in your magnitude
like a weighty rock
dropped from the height of a curious child.

Yet we -- we! -- do not sink, sadly.
Instead, we rise slowly, slowly, slowly --
now that the newness has drifted downward --
out of the tides of twilight,
out of the sea and into the air,
into the atmosphere
where the moon (if her appetite is adequate)
shall gobble us up
and swallow us whole.

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ALWAYS AT THE WINDOW

It passes quickly.

With every autumn deceased
since you last smelled youth,
you sit by your windowsill
counting Novembers
in hopes that they may slow
to some pedestrian speed.
On the sigh of a listless leaf,
you count the blended Tuesdays
and speculate how many
you've witnessed in your brief fantastic.

You compare this to lists incomplete,
replete with dream vacations
and renovations of the mind;
an adultery of spirit has occurred,
for in a whirlwind romance
with the real,
you lost the sense of touch,
that crooked index finger
grazing the cheek of what might have been.

Always at the window,
you notice a small bit of snow,
rock and stardust
kiss the forehead of the glass.
In the reflection,
you wipe away a wrinkle,
a tear,
a dashed intention:

time pours out your eyelids,
and you catch yourself
gathering it on the floor
like a kitten in a litter box
before taking a quick glance
through that patient window
to see if anyone from the outside
was looking in.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ART

There comes an awkward twilight of your life
when speech becomes unnecessary:
when looking at one another is enough
or when there seems to be a stillness
loud enough to keep you awake
past the post-4pm coffee crave.

But that isn't what I am talking about.

I mean the diminutions,
further reductions:
voicemail greetings, commands to Siri.
Substitutions of Snapchats for snapdragons,
complications in 140 characters or less.

What survives,
if only the overture to that Dickensian godsend?
"It was the best of times;
it was the worst of times..."
And will a selfie of you
in front of that Ansel Adams piece
be enough to crack the world in half?

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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NATURAL SELECTION

Unexpectedly,
you find yourself sitting across from each other,
calculating what you've made:
is it too much to inventory
the lightbulbs you've changed
or the floors you've swept
or the linens you've turned?

There have been a fair share of silences,
a decent amount of injuries, neglects,
but what of the pursuit? --
a few rides in the car in the summer dusk,
or movie night with the favorite blanket
because it's too cold to exist anywhere else?
When were we aware?

In its place,
the motel signs dimly light the vacancies of remembrance,
a hard, yellowish light cast upon dirty porcelain --
or maybe the fluorescent lighting on a rainy night
is comforting on the greenish-blue countertops of yesteryear.
This was a place we never knew together
but a place that I wish to come back.

To tap my feet like shale rock
against the worn wooden floor of my adolescence --
To see it cascade down the mountainside
and amount to rubble?
How shall we be made new again?

You look at me, now,
with stony grey eyes
from across the drop leaf table
that once belonged to my grandmother
as if there has been some sort of tragedy:
simply,
like all animals,
we have evolved,
but you will not realize it, love,
until it is very late
with only the sound of your box fan
to keep your solemn company
in the hot, stagnant wordlessness of evening.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ENOUGH

You can't have it all:
especially on nights like these,
with the wind on your back
and the world lit before you
like a string of lamplights,
with everyone gathered around the table,
the radio on in the next room over,
with you and your siblings
drinking wine and listening to your father speak
of better times gone by,
with your mother shushing him when needed,
with only the promise of another sunrise before you
as sleep stomps impatiently on your eyelids;
the memory of your grandfather,
whose absent seat at the dinner table
is one-part liberty and two-parts yearning,
delivers a mischievous aria, 
one you know so well that your entire body
ripples in the river of recollection --

you remember now, 
quietly, smiling softly,
dancing closer and closer
to the warm pale light,
the words you've always known:

you cannot have it all,
but if all turns out to be nothing
in the final verse of our swan song,
that may just be enough
as it always has been.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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CHICKEN AND RICE

Who knows what love really looks like
until it is staring you in the face
and you have nowhere to escape to
but that's okay
because there isn't anywhere else
you'd rather be looking anyway.

Your finger circles the rim of the coffee cup you've been drinking.

Paris next?
Then to some Tuscan beach?

The world awaits you.

Forget the fights impending.
Gloss over the difficulties.
Forgive, if you're able, the inequities
that disallow you to become one
but keep you parallel,
moving slowly north to an undetermined destination.

Where are we headed? you ask,
in the midnight of your green tea
or the doubt of your cocktail.

Yet there will be, occasionally, 
a moment when the world will sparkle,
and that's all it will take
for you to descend from the atmosphere
of nitrogen and desire,
and it will not be some picturesque view of Cinquaterre
or Vermont in the autumn
but, instead,
a Wednesday around 9:30 pm
when you are finally able to cook dinner
and come to the conclusion
that chicken and rice will have to do,
and, in fact,
it is the only thing you crave.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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MARRIAGE

Ten minutes ago,
the Sun lifted up her skirt
and stepped over Mt. Tamalpais
as she placed a heel on the throat of Day
while I watched from my front porch.

And while I was trying not to peek to see what’s up there,
she was making him sorry for leaving
(as she always does)
just as he was falling asleep,
(as he always does)
drunk, maybe, from that warm heaven
that only a martini or being unaware can make.

Truth is: Day never sleeps
(the trick’s on the old lady)
because he is always one-eye-open, one-eye-closed,
‘round the corner and back again
in some new city with new people every hour
while she waits for him,
sighing quietly, softly falling behind,
drifting between clouds and
an atmosphere of want.

This bothers her —
one day, he’ll be sorry, she knows —
she’ll finally move ahead,
(‘round the corner and back again herself!)
and THEN who will take care of him: the Moon?
That’s a laugh.

Sometimes, the rain speaks her sorrow,
but still she follows him.
Can’t help it.
And they go, go, go together.
And when they do,
ain’t it a beeyootiful thing?

And gosh:
tomorrow, they will return,
her heel relaxed,
his eyes wider,
all other days forgotten,
but
(here it comes!
the cadence,
the unraveling)
the distance between them remains ever persistent.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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RESERVED

Glasses clink,
small talk made.

As a child,
I would retreat underneath
the white linen tablecloth
(gently pressed
and oppressed more so gently)
and pretend I was in a castle
or a pirate ship,
the enemy outside the gates,
his weapon both red wine
and tales of vacation
on the southern beaches of France
near Nice,
a place so nice
the French named it so
for the poor, dim-witted les Americains
who make child's play of wordplay.

Imagination fueled a journey to far-off lands
of anywhere-but-here,
and the intolerable became tolerable
through "pardon me"s
and "how do you do"s
and "we'll be in touch"(es?).
Butter knife in hand,
I was a warrior to words,
and no brittle conversation
served as a bridge
one with conscience could cross.

I need glasses now
to see only shoes underneath the table,
occupied by feet
belonging to men of habit,
and the ivory drapes of linen,
no longer a sanctuary,
are not simply covers for the hard cedar truth
but veils,
marrying brides to fools.

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IN TECHNICOLOR

The rise and fall:
the sound of your breath
as you go between awake and asleep --

how easily you go
whereas I am left behind,
counting the lights on the ceiling,
the passing cars on our street,
the arguing neighbors,
the imaginary sheep,
the number of times
my hands glide across
my grandmother's threadbare quilt.

Your quiet ins and outs
soon become deeper,
layered --
I imagine tiny men
with little bellows
filling your lungs with color.

I do not notice
my descent into dreaming,
that great transfer
when the black-and-white
becomes technicolor,
when Dorothy lands in Oz
on the ruby slippers of the irrational.

And no yellow brick road
can take me to you now:
we are in different universes
laying parallel to one another
but can't I wish that
wherever you are,
I hope to meet you
at the mise-en-scène

where you wait for me
at the top of the train platform
as I finish the last few words
of the chapter
from the book I've been reading

before walking home together,
leading me out,
quietly,
into the bright, bracing day?

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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THE D TRAIN UPTOWN, 4/18/2015

A pain in my neck,
a strain -- a sprain?
A pain what pain may be,

but how it reminds me
of how I am not the East Village
(too fat; hair too combed;
getting too old?
looking too much
like I come from uptown)
and I am uptown,

but truth be told
(as truth is often not)
I am not of the city
but rather from a place where yellow light
and the smell of humid, heavy rain
are parts of speech for love undiscovered,
forcing a square illusion
into a round truth.

These days, I say,
return me to the beach:
where we used to drink beer
and take off our shirts,
a pale virginity burned
while we lost our sunglasses
in a gulf of want.

Return me, I demand,
to the fields of salt grass,
to the mornings when finding an egret
was winning the lottery,
to the sound of a river
gently passing away.

Return me to what I was:
a child?
a pain?
The strain.
Return me to simpler me,
I beg,
over the roar of honking cabs.

Yet I write this now --
on the D train uptown --
pain in my neck --
a strain -- a sprain?
And the woman next to me,
cautioning her granddaughter says,
"Be careful, sweetie"
as they step over the gap

and I marvel.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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USING A PRISMACOLOR #1 FINE LINE MARKER, BLACK

My daily exorcism
is writing the forget-me-nots
in the margins of the New York Times.

A pliant testimony
built on crying children
and their screaming mothers
("this is how you act / stop crying!"),
these are the words deep within a life
absent of words meaning anything,
the drone of a tenor saxophone
with a broken reed
or a plea for help
or a blaring boom box
replacing any thought,
any action,
any move,
any forward tactic,
any resolve
that predicates substance.

I would drag my knuckles
three fingers deep into the earth now
if only to know that I am alive
and created something,
if only a trench,
if only a sly, modest burial ground
for hamsters and abandoned childhoods.

I saw a picture of a young boy today -- 
maybe three or four years old --
on his way to the first day of school,
his education formally begun
as the starch of his shirtsleeves
cut through the crisp campaign
for a cool autumn.

Life goes on.

And here I sit,
scrawling little symbols into sidelines of permanence,
my only way of coping
with the bleak headlines of today,
full of the same child-like curiosity,
an ear pressed to the door of tomorrow,
an eye looking back
to where I can no longer go.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ON POSSESSING

You win some, you lose some,
and when you continue to lose some,
you win a few of the things
thought lost or failed.
You watch as the what-you-thought-you-losts
float past the lilies (a symbol!)
in the garden you've tended,
(whether it be a window box or pasture wide).
The thought of lilies pretending to be dandelions
is humorous, you surmise,
their truth-telling petals waving to you
like an old pal long forgotten,
scent strong with an immutable candor
of what you've learned
and what you've learned to let go.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ON POETRY

It's not so easy to rattle off a poem,
but, IMHO,
(that's in-my-humble-opinion,
not I-might-hate-otters
or, the ever popular,
is-Madge's-hands-orange?)
it is easier than pulling a rabbit out of a hat
or cutting a straight line on paper
with only one pair of scissors
or creating non-sequitur, grammatically incorrect acronyms.
I would consider those marginally difficult tasks.

Still, a poem is not unlike pulling the trigger of a gun,
which can lead to death or (worse) serious injury
or a creed for which men die
in the name of God and country,
a fragile, dangerous weapon.

Sometimes, I wonder
if, by swallowing a sword,
we fall on it, too.
(That is a poem itself;
Haiku, actually.)

But what makes a good poem
is not rhyme nor reason
but our universe exploded,
its broken bits of rock and dust
put back together the same way
we placed Humpty Dumpty
back in the china closet
with grandma's Gorilla Glue:
there is something within you --
edible, delicious words --
that made it stick,
whatever they were
back when you believed it,
back when you could be saved.
Take us back there
(I beg you, sage)
to the rabbit in your hat,
the sword in your sheath,
to your little finger on the trigger.

Poetry is only as loud as your unspoken grief,
only as tantalizing as the paint
on the walls you've built around yourself.
It is the torch you carry to not only light the path
but to set the world on fire.

Copyright © 2015 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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A STEP TOWARDS THEM (for my favorite poet)

Basquiat said, "Forget it,"
and created an art in himself,
glowing in profundity
long after the coroner used a human-sized spatula
to place him in the earth.
Poor Mozart continues to rot
(somewhere)
as Marina Abramovic bares her breasts
in the same way
the low brass interpret Mahler:
recklessly, loyally,
marking time in their own way.
The rest of this world marks time, too,
differently, though,
baring silk ties instead of boobs
from 8-5 or 9-6,
major holidays off,
increasing benefits with years of experience.

On the train home,
a man asks me for a nickel,
and lies burn holes in my pockets,
for I am surviving too
and surviving two
lives: one of want,
one of necessity
(you guess which is which)
Do not compromise.
Do not compromise.
Do not compromise, I bleed.

A single burning bulb in the twilight, perhaps, 
is the only pleasure
we have.
Is the earth as full of them as it is of us?
(You guess who is who)
I want.
I necessitate.
I bleed.

A glass of whiskey when a glass of water would do and back to work. My heart is in my pocket, it is Lunch Poems by Frank O' Hara, and the world, refusing to stop, spins on and on and on and on

and on.

Copyright © 2014 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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UNDERNEATH THE BED

That's the scary part:
the lump in the throat,
the feeling of weightlessness
before plunging off the edge
of a roller coaster,
the ground fading away
as the plane takes flight,
the moment before the needle
pierces the skin --

or the less dramatic:
the first step,
the sudden glance,
sweaty palms against each other,
the not knowing,
the cold of the sheets,
the sex of a glowing clock --

and after:
the ice in your glass,
the empty in mine,
the last sip,
the draw of a cigarette,
the darkness,
the silence,
our eyes still on fire,
the music heard,
the morning yet to come.

Copyright © 2014 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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WHEN BREADCRUMBS FAIL

The smell of summer rain
means we will never pass
by this place again, friend.

Lightning strikes in the distance.
The pitter-patter
rhythmically beats against
the aluminum window frame
as I press my face against the cool glass,
trying both to stay awake
and to wake up:

the rain will turn, shortly, into snow,
the snow into wind,
and the wind into time escaped,
masked in gentle thunder
amidst a downpour of torrential loss.

Copyright © 2014 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ILIAD

Rage -- my dearest Achilles --
is no emotion
but a benchmark,
a checkpoint,
a return
that swells out of nothing
into nothing,
(from something small, perhaps,
into something large)
triggered by no false hope
or dashed dream
but, instead dinner parties
and well-provided-fors
and, before you know it,
over the roar of the television
(because, Thank G-d,
you can now afford cable,
am I right?)
you are neck deep
in darkness,
alone and pulling the silken sheets
up to your chin.

Oh, how the injustice stings your eyes--
once you are able to see that light, friend--
because reality has been generous
with the all-too-morose display
of you and your feet parallel beneath you:
not even one pinky toe out of the two you possess (!!)
dares to caress the doorframe,
as the world, rolling over and over,
passes you by and takes your seat center orch
because this is general admission, dummy.

Getting mad?
Getting hot, now, hunh baby?!
The anger building,
churning underneath your tectonic skin,
(and who spells huh with an N in the middle of it anyway?)
until, one day,
you see a young boy standing
hand-in-hand
at the bus stop
with Nanny dearest,
bright-eyed, wary,
collar gently pressed,
clean and hair combed;
he is a remembrance of you,
some Anglo-Saxon specter of a past Presbyterian self,
tempered, though, by the reflection
of a tired, old face
attached to a head
on a body
unfamiliar to you, 
wearing the Emperor's clothes,
standing stationary
as the cars swoosh by:
How did you get here?
you ask,
but only if you've been paying attention.

You deserve it,
every moment,
don't you get it?
Point to point,
every fraction of an inch
soon becomes a mile;
every strike eludes .500

The churning goes on,
and you may have escaped the volcanic future this time, lad,
but boy oh boy
man oh man
it is there and there
and everywhere
so cling to those unconventional spellings
and the silken sheets, stud,
because even the tide
comes in twice a day,
nature's Da Capo
where you'll swim
or you'll drown
simply by where you've decided
to nap on the beach.

Copyright © 2014 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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A VERSE FOR NIKKO

Some boys learn it late in life,
some at age fourteen:
there is no "happy" or no "sad,"
just states of "in-between."

Copyright © 2014 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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