LOOSE CHANGE

How would you like to be remembered?
For the longest time,
it was kindness for me,
but now I know
I would like to be thought of with truth
which is not always easy:
it is always complicated
because it is certain,
but only if we choose to see it
in our daily walk in the woods
or on sidewalks to nowhere.

I would like to think I am honest,
a fish swimming in a sea of sharks,
but I tire of certainty,
of why we shy from what is the bullseye —
especially in days when the leaves seem to drift —
two seconds,
three seconds —
landing slowly on the nose of my dog
(a perfect animal)
who sniffs and sniffs
and keeps sniffing the air
for more.

That’s what truth is:
a search;
a bright, bracing remembrance
of air and light.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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FLOWERS ON A PLUM TREE

The days of my childhood
are a winding staircase
into a tower of light:
they blossom in my memory
like flowers on a plum tree
and wilt
like a tired eyebrow.

To go back
is to remember,
for that’s all we have
in days of rock and dust
and ashes spread in honor.

Times could be simple again.
Closing my eyes, I say a prayer to myself,
for I am not sure that anyone can hear me,
and I am grateful for the moment.

The skies part, the next.
And time?
I realize
that’s all we have anyway.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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EXPERIMENT

I heard on the radio
that baboons in Germany
were given pig hearts
to see if they could sustain,
blocking certain enzymes
(the usual and the sort)
and I really stopped listening until I heard
the baboons lived ninety whole days
before passing into nothingness

and the rear view became blurry
because I remembered a woman with an eggy voice
and a man with a long face
staring at each other in the middle of a mall once
and clearly having some sort of impact
while I walked by under a certain fluorescence;

the enormity of how small we are,
even now,
drowned me like a high tide
slowly consuming me from toe to eyebrow.

A whole ninety days:
how lucky —
how devastating.

“Perhaps,” the reporter said —
and the woman with the eggy voice
and her eyes of note
flashed across my mind —
“the heart
will now be ready
for human trial,”
which is a line that tore me in two so deeply
for the reason only
that I had not uttered it first.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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ROSE'S TURN

My country, ‘tis of thee,
broken democracy:
Of thee, I sing.
Land where our guns are more
than all that we abhor.
Watch our neighbors turn friends at war.
Let the fraction sting.

My native country, thee!
Oh, land of not-so-free!
Ain’t that the truth?
Jews killed while worshipping.
Skin judged by coloring.
Wasn’t this the same old thing
as was in your youth?

Let music swell the breeze,
but let’s drop the niceties:
one can see a theme.
Maybe it’s late for now
(and not so much “why” but “how”).
Still, it’s startling what we will allow
when nothing’s left to dream.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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FOREVER STAMP

Grief
is an unsealed envelope:

the letter inside,
intended for those we love;

the address remains
unknown.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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OPTIMISM

The great irony
in this life
is that conditional love is infinite,
and those saints
who walk the hallways in hospitals,
in classrooms,
in orphanages
and in quiet gardens
are limited
in number
for good reason.

I was meant to lose to understand,
like a rock tossed into an ocean,
what it means to sink
between the autumnal light of my childhood,
of my Mickey Mouse wallpaper
and Donald Duck bedsheets,
to the slowly passing seasons
of locked rooms
and burned bridges
and a chattering stranger
who, over a drink,
asks you “Knock, knock”
and you say “Who’s there?”
knowing already
before his beer-stained breath
hits your ear
that the answer is
no one.

The lesson,
my indomitable heart,
is that all loving
is not benevolent —
that you must learn
to handle the hurt —
that you must hurl yourself
like a rock into an ocean
never to be seen again —
and that the rest of it,
foolish boy,
is solely a gift.

It must be.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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VESPERS

There was a time I imagined you,
and I planted a seed
within the dark, deep country
in the middle of winter
just to see if you would survive the snow.

Nothing grew.
You cannot exist,
but I still see your face,
a fragile grape
made into sour wine.

Should justice walk
hand in hand
with figs
(and I am a fig),
no one will bear fruit more than us,
no one will feed more crowds of thousands
than you and me.

Yet, I will drink you in,
sour immortality,
and I shall not abstain from
some perishable belief
that perception is everything,
that the truth borrows a favorite shirt from mendacity
and spills black ink all over the front
and only after scrubbing it
and scrubbing it for hours on end
does the fool realize
it isn’t ink

but blood.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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HOU > MSY

When I was seven years old,
my grandfather loaded me up on a plane
and took me for a weekend in New Orleans.

It was my first time on a plane,
my first trip out of state —
at one time,
I could still taste the air
and smell his complimentary coffee —
and I admired, even then,
as I watched him read a newspaper,
how he was not afraid
of being so close to God
and so far from the ground.

Later, we had beignets in Jackson Square.
I would spend the next 23 years
trying to get back there.

Much later,
I would stand on Tennessee Williams’ porch
smiling for a camera,
and much, much later,
I would look at the same picture —
my grandfather now much closer to God
and farther from the ground —
trying to taste the air
and hoping,
at the very least,
for the scent of stale, watered down coffee
to move my troubled, heavy heart
as it did when it first took off
from a tarmac of innocence.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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THE SKY IS BLACK AND BLUE

1.
the air is heavy
with the inside smell
of an old suitcase,
packing itself
to places
you dare to only dream

2.
repeat and multiply:
tell me time and time again
and, though I try,
I shall not learn
unless
there is an end
an end to trying
an end to understanding
an end to an end
that if you do not love me
it is your choice and not mine
that if I do not love you
I choose it alone
terrified of the brewing
incurable milk of madness
(not insanity
but mad-ness)
and the plunge
of not loving you
of forgiving you
of loving but not you
of forgiving and not you
of the fantasia of being loved
but not by you
while feigning forgiveness
if I forgive

3.
until I forgive

4.
years pass:
like ice into water,
all that remains
is a taste
of mixing moments
and I forget
the cracks
and what came first:
the water, the ice?
The water?
The ice.
The ice.
The ice.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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GASLIGHT

Some people
will take a spark
from the fire inside of you
in their small, trembling hands

and they will say
you did not do enough
to kindle the brush,
that the glow is not light
or that they cannot smell smoke
or hear in yesterdays
your grandmother’s soft “mmph”
as you warmed her atop her lap.

What do they know
about heat,
the refusal,
the wine-dark way
from path to journey?

Listen closely:
fire is meant to burn.
Scald their palms,
let their scars remind them
of who you are,
but do not
ever
believe them.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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THE DELUSIONS OF A NAIVE SOUL

Most early mornings,
I sit alone with a cup of coffee
and wear my privacy
like a second skin.

I think of Wordsworth —
“Lance, shield, and sword relinquished” —
I think of those I love.
I think of the great work before me.

Sometimes, I play music.
Today, it was Tatiana’s letter to Onegin
that I puttered around the kitchen:
“...with one word, revive the hope in my heart”
or something like that.

Perhaps this is all meaningless,
like Tatiana says.
This is not my best poem —
certainly not this early —
not because I don’t know what to say
but because how can you capture
the world exploding inside of you
while the rest of the world sleeps?

I stare out the window.
I will wait, then.
I will wait to begin.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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TODAY AND TOMORROW

I hope I can continue
writing songs,
making pictures,
laughing over food,
talking loudly,
breathing,
remembering friends passed on,
celebrating silence,
forgetting,
forgiving,
loving to be hurt,
aching to be admired,
becoming angry,
pushing a pencil against the paper
until the breaking point,
placing my foot on the sustain pedal,
minding my own business,
pleading without words,
admonishing myself and others,
diminishing my importance
against the unwieldy immensity
of this universe,
pressing my thoughts into the wayside
of all of my days

until the end
(which must come)
arrives to take me by the hand,
to lead me in a sleepy waltz
out into some decorated balcony
shortly after the sun has set,
to gently lead me into darkness
where I can no longer be seen
nor heard
nor felt,

my existence unknown
but not forgotten —
a small distinction
among the chirping crickets
and the vast operation
of all things before me
and after.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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A POEM WITH EVERY POINT

Ask yourself
in the midst of your obscurity:
are you longing for justice
or lusting for revenge?

A puppy licks his paw.
A mother bird buries her head
under her wing.
But the human animal
has yet to sequester its hatred,
to learn to forgive,
to acquit,
to weigh the world in its hands
without the heaviness
upon which it needs to sustain.

To love is difficult work,
and men have climbed mountains
kissing the sky
before they have
learned to love
or be loved,
which makes one consider
both tragedy and circumstance
in the glow of a sleepless night.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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EXPERIENCE

Sometimes,
I wonder
what kind of man
I’ll be today
from the boy
who was yesterday,

and simplicity says
that tomorrow
may have the answer
(since it’s what
I’d like to become)

but I still don’t get it most days,
after years and years of
listening to the wind
who sings the same
of stupidity and chance:

“Maybe open your eyes a little wider,”
she says,
“and the heart will hurt less.”

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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A VERSE FOR EDGAR

What is the stuff you see in me?
Veritas? Facsimile?
A busy room? An empty chair,
placed gently here or over there?
A fork? A glass? A book? A pen?
A first? A last? A “not again?”
A lilting song in distant keys?
A lonesome ship on stormy seas?
The reds? The yellows? Mostly blues?
Or peace and quiet? Mountain views?
Or puzzling moments dressed in doubt?
The complicated acting out?
The years, the days, the moments gone?
The sheets pulled back? The curtains drawn?
The listless waltz on endless nights?
The lowest lows? The highest heights?

My point, alas, is strange but not:
what we have is Camelot,
and while you pack for Timbuktu,
where is the love I see in you?

It is here, my beating heart:
in small, irregular moments,
and if this were a stage direction,
I can only breathe
while you — the wind —
travel from coast to coast,
off to greater adventures
without any
pompous change of tone.
Alone,
you are a soft footstep in the dark,
and sleepily,
I roll over to one side,
hoping (deep down)
you’ll be the first thing I see
when the sun should rise
and should you return.

The coffee brews.
The blinds part.
And, perhaps, that’s enough.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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THE POTTER'S FIELD (OR, A PLAY ON WORDS)

One day,
all shall vanish
and fade
and recede into some
potter’s field for memory,

but I will not stand unknowing:
I myself have placed
my hands in the earth
and into the air.
I myself heard
the soft purr of the wind
radiating at night
and fear intermittent.

I myself know the fear:
it is not for what has been
or what will be,
for what has been
is already in the earth,
already buried in a
nameless, unspeakable way.

The fear is for what is still left,
of which you may see nothing,
and good,
good for you, friend —
but I hear it
on nights like these,
when, still,
there is only time to lose
before what ends up for naught
becomes unreachable
and goes as the brightness flashes
from touch to frightened,
impenetrable touch.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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LOVING, AS AN ACT

Mary Magdalene
did not need to utter one word,
for her eyes wept volumes.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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COMMERCIALISM

Sorting through
a sea of blue
button-down
poplin sport shirts,
I wonder
(in the following order)
how many hands
sewed on these buttons,
how many war torn countries
have shopping malls,
and if I left on the coffeepot,
when struck by
a fantastically likely
thought in polyester:
that there is no real way
to handle
everything we can lose,
and our only choice,
really,
is to sit on a bench outside
and watch the masses
quietly leading their lives,
earbuds in
and drifting about
in a sea
of a false fluorescence.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

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TEN OUT FROM FORTY

Alas, poor Noah:
two of every animal,
yet silence — 
on those nights
when the rains
would hit
the poorly constructed
tin roof of the ark —
his only friend.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted by the author. All rights reserved. No part of these pages, either text or image may be used for any purpose other than personal use. Therefore, reproduction, modification, storage in a retrieval system or retransmission, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, for reasons other than personal use, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.

A STRANGER AMONG OTHER STRANGERS

Where is the map
that connects me to you?
The stops for water
and shelter
and years?
Is there a ground plan for grief,
for the loss of “might?”

Where are the moments,
the days
spun in “should”s and “shouldn’t”s?
Will you ever know
what you need to know before
or will it always come later?
If it stared you in the face,
would you know it now?

Yet, here I am,
now:
I have spent my short little life
searching for love —
I am a stranger
among other strangers —
but all I seem to have found
are fists rising
from a few yellowing pages
full of ink that never dries.

Copyright © 2018 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted by the author. All rights reserved. No part of these pages, either text or image may be used for any purpose other than personal use. Therefore, reproduction, modification, storage in a retrieval system or retransmission, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, for reasons other than personal use, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.