Dark Fiction Factory welcomes back guest poet, John Grey. Enjoy his following poems...
THE HIKER AT CLIFF TOP
With night fallen, the trail I walk
draws dangerously close to the cliff.
Down below, I can see waves crash onto rocks,
split like foaming watery skulls.
In the distance, an unmanned lighthouse
scans the eerie, dark sea
as if searching for floating bodies.
But I am as safe, as carefree, as any man
who's long since taken that deadly plunge.
And certainly not fearful.
No, I leave that to the ones
who cannot sleep because they've seen me.
THE PERILS OF PROM DATES
On a bitter cold spring night,
a dead boy rises from his grave,
hauls his rotting body up the pathway
to the door of his date,
dressed in a tattered prom date tuxedo
and pants torn at the knee,
a dead rose dropping from a frayed lapel,
not here to terrify
but rectify that night a year before
when, in a hurry not to be late,
the combination of slick rainy streets
and the shoddy brakes in his old man's car
plus a corner taken at too great a speed
resulted in a collision with a light pole,
a deadly one-vehicle crash.
That night Yvette waited
long into the evening
for the boy to show.
She cursed his name
collapsed on the bed,
face down,
soaked the sheets in sobs.
And then when she heard the dreadful news,
her weeping was constrained somewhat
by the thought that
at least she wasn't stood up.
And here he is, ringing the bell
with a finger that's all bone
while, inside the house,
Yvette anxiously awaits
her first time out on the town
with a new guy, Chet.
"I'll get it!" she yells
as she descends the stairs,
two at a time.
WAKING UP IN THE LAB
Instant awareness.
I'm patched together body parts.
My legs don’t match.
My mouth is stitched together
like a scarecrow’s.
And look at my stomach.
It’s a tattooed gallery.
And my head is a glob of confusion
fed by a stranger’s blood.
But then a shiver in my hand
claws at my throat.
It takes all my master’s strength
to prevent me choking myself.
I look at him through
a glint of glass,
an eye unwilling to be twenty-twenty.
My nerves whisper to my heartbeat...
this is God.
I let out a vibrating howl of pain.
He rams a needle into my upper arm.
I suddenly feel like I’m dying.
My whole life flashes before me.
Then another whole life.
Then another.
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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Red Weather. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Washington Square Review and Open Ceilings.
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