GAS Featured Poet: Bruce McCrae

 Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of 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).

                                              Forewarning

He who fears he will suffer already suffers what he fears.  ~Montaigne

                                                          

                              

                                There isn't enough time.

Feast, fast and famine,

there aren't enough bullets or ballots,

minutes in an hour,

bread and circuses, wine, jellybeans,

shoelaces, pencils, kerosene . . .

Grab whatever you can hold, a storm

is coming, night is coming,

the Mongol hordes, a flood, a hurricane,

an edict of outlandish resolutions.

Count your fingers. Mind your head.

Are you prepared? We're not

prepared for the worst at best of times.

Because here comes the fire

mother warned us would burn

through us and all, across bourn

and county. A cleansing fire,

an insatiable yearning, a furious curiosity,

a blessed inferno, its millions mouths

a locust swarm, demon spawn, a plague of weevils.

Save the children and the gold. The cat.

The family bible, handed down

from son to son, from sun to sun,

the Earth shaking its molten pudding.

This is your captain speaking.

We're in for a rocky ride, downdrafts

and turbulence, wild-eyed kinetics,

a sub-molecular chain reaction.

Buttercup, it's best you buckle up,

we're in the arms of Jesus now, fate

is destiny, destiny fate, our blighted future

not so fortuitous as planned and Venn diagrammed.

Gather up your cargo, war is coming.

Sound the warning bells of wide renown.

Run, rabbit, run, the vulcanologists' decree

states quite openly and obviously

the end is nigh, the bulls are running, tides are high.

Swallow hard your raggedy-assed medicines,

we stridently disagree to disagree —

it's an asteroid the mass and gravity of Amsterdam.

The sun's gone out. The moon

has fallen down. We're doomed, I tell you, doomed.

As sure as shooting, darlings, as sure as sugar.

The psychic foretold all this to me, but would I listen?

I would not listen.

           

                                           Girlfriend

To hell with charms and spells

and the trappings of enchantment.

I'm in love with love

and beg for hearts and hollers.

Sweetmeat, you're a neon sign

and I'm the son of darkness.

We make music and strained musculatures.

I'll take you to the roller derby.

I'll bring you string tiaras and flowers,

the ones you purred over,

I forget their name, but remember

their smells and colours.

On our first date

we'll make a snowman named December.

I love you like mud and mush and muck.

I love you like an old car

up to its axles in farmyard slurry,

wolves howling your name,

every breath a symphonic crescendo.

Darling (may I call you 'darling'?),

your heartbeats are little bombs

in the hands of innocents.

Together we shall learn the art

of five pin bowling.

We'll cut out paper dolls

while the sky comes crashing down.

We'll walk in the rain

while practicing our algebra,

reciting limericks and riddles as we go

into the earth, like smoke,

like a golden spike

on the coldest day in memory.

We'll burn like sugar

and you will love me in our burning.