by John Grey

You’ll never grow up loving
all the songs on the radio.
There’ll be no box
on the dresser beside the bed,
with a flashing Zorro Z
for a logo.
No round knob for
cruising the AM stations.
No Sinatra, no Beatles,
no Stones, no Beachboys,
no Monkees, no Dino –
no scratchy, staticky,
anything goes,
no songs you know
the lyrics to,
no sounds like nothing
you’ve ever heard before.
Your world won’t come to you
from a solitary speaker,
pressed to your ear.
You won’t know Top 40,
what it means to be number one.

You’ll be born
into a world
where you make the choices –
music at the push of a button,
not the whim of some cool DJ
in a city far away.
You’ll hear only
what you want to hear
but I doubt if you’ll really hear it.
Not without the Z.
Not without the knob.
Not without that one
crackly companion of a speaker.
Besides, you won’t be laid up in bed
through your teenage years.
You’ll have your peers for company.
Your song won’t stick with you
deep into the painful night.

SETTLING FOR

by John Grey

The horse is wild,
untamable,
steamy of flank and nostril,
bucking
and kicking at
anyone who approaches.
But, she thinks,
“That boy is beautiful.”

The donkey is more suited
to her size and capability.
It is stubborn at times.
but never a threat to her well-being.
She rides it slowly around a dirt track
while dreaming she is
atop that fine steed,
galloping across the distant highlands.

Her father figures
this is a perfect lesson
in taking things
one step at a time.

Her mother once went with
this uninhibited, savage,
dashing, incorrigible guy.
But she settled on someone
calmer, plainer, much more reliable.
Her memory’s at the mercy
of a daughter on a donkey.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa, and California Quarterly.