{"id":15311,"date":"2024-06-12T14:35:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T12:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15311"},"modified":"2024-06-15T14:37:06","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T12:37:06","slug":"poems-by-john-grey-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15311","title":{"rendered":"poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dealing With The Government<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bureaucrats<\/p>\n

with their offending eyes,<\/p>\n

sinister thick and meaty blackbirds<\/p>\n

in gray suits,<\/p>\n

executioners of what I want at this very moment,<\/p>\n

hearing nothing, saying everything,<\/p>\n

their noises as predicable as the farts of a fat man,<\/p>\n

and with forms to fill in<\/p>\n

for every one of my fears \u2013<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been standing in line<\/p>\n

pecking at the floor with my shoes,<\/p>\n

in the shadow of an austere guard<\/p>\n

who gives fresh meaning to the word \u201chumorless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guy in front of me is quiet, introspective.<\/p>\n

The one behind isn\u2019t sure what he\u2019s doing here.<\/p>\n

Renew a driver\u2019s license, complain about his taxes,<\/p>\n

obtain a building permit \u2013 all meat to the grinding teeth<\/p>\n

of authority.<\/p>\n

Most likely, when I finally get to see somebody,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be told I\u2019m in the wrong line.<\/p>\n

Bureaucrats \u2013 no dead end is ever wasted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Return From a Brazilian Excursion<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I should have known the contrast would be too fierce.<\/p>\n

Instead of the winter of my youth,<\/p>\n

my window looks out on an alien landscape,<\/p>\n

dark in the ascendancy.<\/p>\n

a frosted frame to my reflection,<\/p>\n

snowdrifts that pull their own blanketing over themselves,<\/p>\n

and temperatures that whip the winds<\/p>\n

into mocking my hard-earned tan<\/p>\n

with a threat to fade it all the way to transparency.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On a biting January night,<\/p>\n

only the stereo has my back,<\/p>\n

its speakers broadcasting a persuasive samba,<\/p>\n

daring my feet to move to that batucada rhythm.<\/p>\n

Despite the cold evidence of my eyes,<\/p>\n

I hear remnants of my tropical Eden,<\/p>\n

feel that linen shirt floating on my chest<\/p>\n

and the breath of a brown-skinned woman<\/p>\n

tracing a butterfly arc from my ear to the back of my neck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I must acquire a taste for this weather again<\/p>\n

It must figure in my dreams.<\/p>\n

I need to see beyond the unfriendliness<\/p>\n

of my surrounds,<\/p>\n

otherwise my usual affairs will feel like exile.<\/p>\n

I must be stubborn and resist my recent memories,<\/p>\n

feed the fireplace, smother the bed with heavy artillery blankets.<\/p>\n

But Brazil \u2014someone slaps the pandeiro,<\/p>\n

strums a cavaco, rainbow birds scatter –<\/p>\n

there’s no giving orders to yourself \u2013<\/p>\n

you dance, inside and out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And there’s no window to that world.<\/p>\n

No separation between man and what is out there.<\/p>\n

You’re either in it or you’re not.<\/p>\n

Right now, I am not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dealing With The Government   Bureaucrats with their offending eyes, sinister thick and meaty blackbirds<\/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":[1705,77],"tags":[1706,1123,1393],"class_list":["post-15311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-81","category-english","tag-egophobia-81","tag-english","tag-john-grey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3YX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15311","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=15311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15312,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15311\/revisions\/15312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}