{"id":13143,"date":"2020-09-15T08:51:01","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T06:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=13143"},"modified":"2020-09-15T08:51:01","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T06:51:01","slug":"poems-by-john-grey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=13143","title":{"rendered":"poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Wife and I at the Symphony<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Five women in the orchestra,
\nshe counts them
\nlike the conductor counts time.<\/p>\n

Two violin, one cello,
\none oboe, one bass clarinet.<\/p>\n

She hears them together,
\na generous polyphony
\nof all things true
\nto their own ambiguity.<\/p>\n

Or as part of the whole,
\nmore amazed than she should be
\nat the seamlessness.<\/p>\n

But she hears each singly
\nlike nagging thoughts late at night.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s wonderful music
\nbut never quite free
\nof who\u2019s playing it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Notes from a Relationship<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She jerked her lips back
\nand birds soared out of her teeth.
\nShe took a quick step toward me,
\nshaking free bits of past ship-wrecks.
\nShe stood there in the debris of her being.
\nAnything to get civilization off her back.<\/p>\n

Her eyes were wide, caked in slender gold dust.
\nHer black hair nudged up to me.
\nHer black satin trousers followed.
\nBut then she stopped, laughed loud,
\ntongue flapping
\nlike a blade of bladderwort
\nin a wind off the Canadian prairie.<\/p>\n

Her old defiance took the easy route
\ninto a cacophony of owls and parrots,
\nhens and trumpeting swans.
\nShe slapped hands against hips,
\nsmiled the birds back into their nest,
\nvacuumed up the pieces of her…
\nthey settled neatly into her old self.<\/p>\n

Her hatred was just being playful,
\nthat was all.
\nThis happens all the time to me…
\nnever to her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An Apology that is not an Apology<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a gardener.
\nPruning rose bushes is no way into my feelings.
\nNor am I an archer.
\nI appreciate a bow\u2019s feminine shape
\nbut I\u2019ve never been compelled to grab one.
\nPoetry is what I do.
\nThere\u2019s no way I can start over.
\nSo you\u2019re offended.
\nYou read what I have written.
\nYou took it the right way
\nwhich, in your case, was the wrong way.
\nI have no excuse.
\nThis is how poetry works.
\nThe black and white, even the gray,
\nget free associated until they drop.
\nYes, there\u2019s nothing else I can do at this point
\nother than explain the process.
\nAnd, once again, my clever honesty has failed me.
\nI overshot civilized parameters.
\nMy unconscious mind got the better of my tact.
\nMemory was reenacted raw,
\nnot coated in fine sugar.
\nAnd now you\u2019re not speaking to me.
\nSome lines of poetry have put me in the wrong.
\nI can\u2019t even claim them as a therapeutic vehicle
\nthat has nothing to do with you
\nbut everything to do with me.
\nI\u2019m sorry but not every recollection
\nis like a string of sparkling jewels.
\nThere\u2019s rage. There\u2019s hurt. There\u2019s ugliness.
\nSometimes words are like that.
\nThey embrace the truth
\nbut turn their back on people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Wife and I at the Symphony   Five women in the orchestra, she counts them like the conductor counts time. Two violin, one cello, one oboe, one bass clarinet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1435,77],"tags":[1436,1123,1393],"class_list":["post-13143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-64","category-english","tag-egophobia-64","tag-english","tag-john-grey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3pZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13144,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13143\/revisions\/13144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}