Bruce McRae - Three poems

1. To The Powers Of Twelve

Two-faced January,
frigid February,
a baneful March.
Falling through the numbers,
April vindictive,
May the animal
we’ve long suspected.

A sudden June has befallen us,
planets in regression.
A heated July.
An argumentative August,
its fugs and thunders.
September made of wax.
Luscious October,
posed provocatively,
like a cold shower.

November undressed.
The bastard-child
they coined December.
A blow to the sternum.
A lowly servant
to reason’s master.

***
2. The Palm Of My Hand

Render unto Caesar, sayeth the taxman,
his face like a final demand,
his face like a stormy Monday morning.
Like a door kicked in.

Your name is underscored in red,
thus spaketh the taxman, his jaw clenched
like a fist, like a knotted rope of hair.
His words were spit and bitten.

Discomfited, for want of another term,
I examined closely the holes in my hands.
My mind wandered childhood’s summers.
I lay in the tall grass and surrendered sweetly.

***
3. Wrong-Headed Prophet

I’ve a face like a torn curtain.
A face like a punched wall or rat’s dinner.
Like a smoking battlefield.
What Shakespeare would tag rudely stamped
and curtailed of fair proportion.

A stranger in stranger times,
a frightener of small children,
I’m not the prettiest angel in the choir,
my face like a crumpled map
jammed in haste to the back of drawer.
Like a dog chewing a hornet
or car crash on a desert road.
Where few are known to travel.
Where the unloved walk alone.

Bruce McRae - Four Poems

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,400 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’ (Cawing Crow Press) and ‘Like As If” (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

***

1. Long Distance Love

Stars like question marks

after earnest enquiry.

Stars like asterisks

signifying lack.

Campfires of the Gauls.

The undead’s lanterns.

Goodbye Sol and Ganymede.

Goodbye Luna, the stars

winking provocatively.

Stars like kisses.

The Xs a lost love

sent to me at the end

of her last long letter.

***

2. Going Down To The Sea

A very angry water,

miffed over some perceived slight.

A change in character,

the water made mad and out of its senses.

So I’m going down to the beach

to shout at the waves,

shouting songs and sermons and psalms.

I’m reciting a poem to calm the sea,

assuring the drowned

of safe passage and eternal rest.

I’m telling the tide to turn,

to return to the storm’s source

and take with it the souls of those damned.

The souls of swimmers gone under.

Their feint cries like tender kisses.

***
3. Off The Record

Not now, I’m listening

to the rain’s confession.

Told in confidence

one November morning.

Spoken in whispers and gasps,

the rain’s secret life,

its untold story.

Sweeping leaves after the storm,

the rain took me aside,

wringing its blue hands,

eyes sparkling with tears.

The rain confided in me.

But what can you say?

How does one reply?

Clouds hushed and gathering,

as if something were on their minds.

As if they too

had secrets to spill

over the blackened horizon.

***

4. Permanent Solution

I was half way to the pavement

when I changed my mind.

After leaping from the bridge

I took a moment to mull it over,

my decision perhaps too hasty,

gravity a son of a gun.

Speaking of which, my itchy trigger-finger,

the difference between brain and mind.

And how I wished my doubt had lingered.