Poetry Service/Onshore Business…

I’m gonna start a Poetry Service

for all those that are nervous

and don’t want a last-minute

Hallmark or dimestore card of any kind.

Say their Grandma is having 

a wisdom tooth or younger one extracted,

and their favorite family pooch

has something seriously impacted –

For a very small fee,

like half of their life savings,

I’ll start waving inspiration 

to the ground and give them a verse 

and a graphic that will both stop traffic 

and do them both justice –

Hand printed with Artsy letters

so that no one will have to say 

they squinted just to see it.

It may be such a rousing business success,

that the Chamber of Commerce will 

applaud it with Awards several years straight, 

and Poetry and Graphic Design competitors 

from miles around will follow the sounds, 

and follow us home to the Spare Lair & Office

just to see how we do it and where we bury

the gold bullion payments.

Banks? What for? We’re not 

manipulating the economy, this is serious 

Onshore Business.

© Peter Bray, 3/21/2014

All rights reserved

Grief Came In…

Grief came in like 

a hacksaw, chainsaw,

SawZall and jackhammer to my soul –

Disrupted my bed, my head,

tossed around my furniture;

muddied up my days,

and created a haze 

that left me mute and cold.

I wept at Starbucks,

when there was nothing left to do.

I invented a way 

of talking to my daughter

like she was still 

riding on my shoulders daily.

I hugged her as I fell asleep at Stony Creek.

Heaven is just another door and window 

in my head. I am now a breeze 

and she is every feather and tree 

I ever knew.

I hang on to my wife, 

friends and family, 

and my son Chris like he is

a rock in my River Earth 

and I am a loose pebble tumbling.

©Peter Bray, 3/10/2014 All rights reserved

Door and Window…

I talk with Cathy 

like she’s here with me 

and never left. 

Heaven is just another 

door and window in my head.

©Peter Bray, 3/10/2014 All rights reserved

Download from God…

She said she was young when 

she received her download from God.

I knew exactly what she meant.

When it happened to me in the early 1970’s,

it was better than KFC, my favorite hotrod car,

counting my money, even sex.

So I wrote:

 

 

New Found Grace

 

And in my greatest elation,

ascension came by leaps and bounds,

and I was found in that holy place,

in a new found grace

and I started to wonder

just where I’d ever

been before.

©Peter Bray, 2/27/2014 All rights reserved

A Wound That Opens

Grief is a wound

that opens

and I wish I could

close it

but I can’t.

(c)Peter Bray 2/23/14

All rights reserved

Bus Ride…

Poetry is sometimes like
riding on a bus going nowhere,
until you find some sleeping,
homeless type in the back
smelling of urine and really
shabby clothes and as you
offer him your last apple
from a tired brown sack,
he quotes something brilliant
he wrote 40 years before
and suddenly you’re his best fan
and vice-versa.
©Peter Bray, 11/21/2013 All rights reserved

Poems From the Edge of the Bed.

I have no clue, they just arrive.
So I lay here and like a freight train
pulling into the station,
I hear the whistle from a distance,
hear the labor of the engines,
the bristling of the warm wind as it approaches,
the side to side rattle of the heavy-laden cars,
and I can’t remember all their lines
or their destination, east, west, south, or north,
so it’s all I can do to get up,
go downstairs, put on the tea water,
fire up the computer
and write them down…

Or it’s like working at a grocery store
and the goods arrive on the loading dock.
It’s somebody’s job to put them away.
Some are dry goods, some are cans and bottles,
some are fresh produce, and you can’t
just leave them here in the dark in a box,
some have to go into storage,
some get trimmed of their transient debris,
and some get immediately stacked
on the shelves by either the day or the night crew.
Tomorrow’s gonna be another day
and people come to buy this stuff
or stay away and go hungry
and there’s plenty of both these days…

Or it’s like being Zorro working at some
isolated Intergalactic Way Station up in the frozen tundra –
I’m watching the weather station dials and gauges,
manometers, and thermocouple wires,
and then suddenly the keyboard begins to tick.
Some kind of message is coming in,
what the F’ language I don’t know,
it’s just arriving, but it’s my job to throw the switch,
listen to the numbers, try to identify the code,
and record it as fast as I can.
Somebody somewhere is sending this stuff
and one day we’re gonna find out who that is
and maybe make them CEO, President,
or just another guy or gal sleeping under a bridge
with just enough clues and sense
to get out of local traffic and also harm’s way.
©Peter Bray 11/18/2013 All rights reserved

Constellations Way Too Slow to Answer…

The mainstream is mediocre,
the religious right is far too whacked
and I’m just an old suburban mutt
who got screwed repeatedly
by the corporate system, so I upload
my poems and songs and graphics
to the Internet winds hoping to find
something I haven’t yet found…
So far the winds and constellations
are way too slow to answer…
©Peter Bray, 10/29/2013 All rights reserved

I am a Weed…

I am a weed
in your corporate concrete.
I’m the stain
that won’t go away.
I‘m the light to and from
that crack in the wall.
That writing on the wall
that you may not be able to read.
I’m the light in the tunnel
to somewhere.
Get used to me,
I’m gonna be around
for a long, long time.
©Peter Bray, 9/20/2013 All rights reserved

Grief’s a Hard River…

Grief’s a hard river,
it’ll maybe take you down,
bouncing along the bottom
and hoping that you don’t drown.
Remembering their last moments
and all the memories before,
gotta go to work
and so it’s hard to close that door.

I used to think that Harry
being a special cat,
knew something about being feral
and could link me somehow to Cat’.
But it’s all too absurd,
knocking on Heaven’s door,
all their artifacts are around,
but still I’m wanting more.
Grief’s a hard, hard river.
©Peter Bray, 9/18/2013 All rights reserved