GAS Featured Poet: Bruce McRae

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. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been broadcast and performed globally.

Looking Back

Objects in the mirror

are closer than they appear.

Objects may appear to be subjective.

Objects in the mirror

travel at the speed of light.

Objects in the mirror

may appear or not appear.

Prone to mood swings,

they appear to be dispassionate

but only want what's best for you.

They've suffered greatly in your stead.

Objects in the mirror

may appear to be drunk

or on heavy medication.

They make foulmouthed and fiery execrations.

Objects in the mirror

reject their status and protest

the viewers's overarching reflections.

Objects in the mirror

stand for the human drive towards acquisition.

The mirror represents introspection.

The mirror manufactures distances.

That which is conceived creates conception.

Objects in the mirror

appear more handsome than they are.

They may appear sullen and jaded as well,

depending on your latitude and inclination.

Objects in the mirror don't exist.

There is no mirror.

Abandon your ego.

Keep looking ahead.

Drive faster.

        

 Sentence

This sentence will be short

and straight to the point.

This sentence will wander about,

a lamb loosed from its pasture,

curious, but shy, hungry, yet cautious.

This sentence doesn't know what

it's talking about and will throw in

a mention of the honeyguide bird

because no one is expecting it.

And this sentence is part of the whole.

Another sentence will follow it blindly,

hoping to make sense of itself,

attempting to fathom its purposes,

inevitably failing the collective.

And why is this sentence

in the form of a question?

The penultimate sentence feigns a reply.

The last sentence, always enigmatic,

turns toward the bottom of the page

and refuses to tell you the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing like the truth.

                                   The Last Christmas

                                    It's Christmas morning

and the wind has stopped

its constant jabbering,

the sea lying in late

after a year of god-looking

and revving the planet.

Children have freed themselves

from the webbing of their beds

and are quietly screaming

(you mustn't wake the dead).

Outside, the back end of darkness

shudders in its long coat.

You can smell the blizzards in its hair.

A mouthful tastes of old Decembers.

Christmas morning and a single star

is all that remains

of the ruckus in heaven.

The angel at the top of the tree

is unaware that she's been raptured

and continues sleeping.

Somewhere they're ringing bells

and lighting scented candles,

but here, in the forest of the heart,

the trees are huddled with snowfall.

Aching for summer they number the winds

on their various journeys.

A cathedral, a colosseum,

the forest is waiting for a second god

to shake the world out of its slumber.

Christmas morning and its quiet

as a Jesuit graveyard in a snowstorm.

I have given you the gifts

of salt and cellars, meadows of seagrass,

a sullen winter.

And I have given you the gifts

of kismet, librettos, animals.

I have carefully wrapped and bowed

a box containing other boxes

You asked for a labyrinth and mazes.

You wanted a world that's peace-riven

and a balm for your spectral longing.

A dime store Santa, all I've given you

is your mother's voice

and the glow of celestial kitchens.

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.

GAS Featured Poet: Bruce McRae

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).

 A Little Chat With Ourself


I’m talking to you through a rip in the seaside,
out of a warmed dent in the passing nothingness,
from behind a loop of tightly woven angel-hair.

I’m talking to you, and the wind is rubbing a cornfield.
I’m telling you the sun is sawing its right hand.
That the moon is a knothole in God’s coffin,
the stars His marred and excitable match-heads.

I’m going along, caught between a feather and a flower.
I’m shouting from the top of my voice,
from the foot of the stairs.
I’m talking to you from a squeak at the circus.
Pointing out opossum’s breath.
Explaining, carefully, gunpowder.

I’m telling you the world is a fog of consciousness.
I’m telling you about the mountain chain
that’s fallen in love with a river.
About a river pouring itself into your tea.
About a cup of tea embarrassed by the cosmos’s antics.

You’re listening to me spouting forth
from the swirling vortex in mommy’s sewing machine.
You’ve been asleep under a stone for a thousand years.
You’re hearing my voice, but believe it’s the rain falling,
and that each cold drop is a planet or miniature Himalayas.

I’m talking to you from the ragged hum of my hands.
I want you to realize that I’m snow
drifting in a far-off land.
I want you to see how the world still loves you.
To know the stars understand.





Chickadee Thinking

In the mind of the chickadee
is a ball of sparks,
a knot of entrails,
the planet’s littlest vacuum.

The chickadee’s mind whistles,
colour fusing to colour.
It smells of beetles’ fears.
It tastes like summer.

Actually, phantoms there
stroll between atoms of moonlight
and lordly Titans gambol
over the seemingly endless vistas.

There are great thoughts,
and these crackle like spruce tinder.
Like soda bubbles, but they weigh tons
and feel barbed to the touch.

Like wind over a hilltop.
Like lines intersecting wires.
Like smoking campfires of the Mongols,
as seen from a blood-red sky.

•