Bruce McRae

Poetry

        B  r  u  c  e       M   c   R  a   e
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 Poets Haven).

      Pratfalls And Slapstick

Nightfall at the Clown Academy,

mice arriving for their evening classes,

the instructors washing the chalk dust out

of their unreasonably unruly hair,

the dorms unsettling in their quiet.

Its so still you can hear the warm breezes

stalking the bushes on the quad,

the last junebug making its bed to lie in it.

You can listen to the grass thinking.

And the sad-eyed janitor in baggy pants,

the squeak in his shoe echoing

along the darkening corridors;

whos sweeping up the greasepaint tears,

the glittery residue of sorrow.

      The Jokes On You

All attempts at humour have failed.

You cant be funny, not in poems,

not in school or church or prison;

where baring the teeth is a sign

of either aggression or instability.

The other day we were watching television.

A courtroom drama, the prosecutor punned,

some lame joke about horses and whores.

Well, talk about a hung jury . . .

Joviality, a symptom of weakness,

individuals putting their lives on the line

for a snigger or grin or guffaw.

Really, people, the bombs are dropping.

Its time to get serious. Very. Serious.

         Wolf Song

The wolf in a field of maize.

A wolf in a grass circle.

In forests dividing morning from night,

a shadow among other shadows.

The gentleman-wolf in a business suit,

leaving a calling card on the wild boars path,

a lambs head in his leather valise,

and with a grin wider than any of the four seasons.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the wolf,

possessed of unpresupposing charm,

whose voice is the young does lullaby,

whose love is the final flower;

the wildflower, older than princes and war

and plucked from the white steppes mid-winter.

        Unrest

The cows are plotting against the butcher.

Sheep, dressed in the drag of wolves clothing, 

are conspiring among themselves,

treason and treachery likely bedfellows,

that break in the fence a welcome divide

between how it is and how its going to be.

In the farmhouse a kettle is whistling,  

the gentleman-farmer whittling on the porch, 

sharpening his half-wit, honing an axe blade,

a nostril trumpeting into his farmers handkerchief,

the barnyard strewn with hayseed and bone.

And these the chickens eye suspiciously,

heads nodding yes, but their hearts saying no.

But to what? The poor clucks too dumb to remember.

        Bugged-Out

Insects in drawers, in display cabinets.

Bugs stuck to the stilts of silver stick-pins,

their compound eyes seeing whats unseen,

victims of their own success, Jurassic 

survivors at odds with the vicissitudes 

of Man, unreasonable mankinds gases 

and oils mocking a Creators favourites,

which He, in His all-knowing beneficence,

sprinkled far and wide over the countryside,

the bugs outnumbering sand grains and stars,

slaughtered for their itches, bites and stings,

butchered for their crawling and buzzing,

for going on six legs or eight legs or more.

For daring to challenge our existence.

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