Bruce McCrae
3 Poems

 

Plain Spoken

There’s no simile, but a slurred word.
No metaphor that doesn’t outsmart itself.
Let’s get down to the bone of the matter,
the bread and butter of plainspoken fact.
Let me tell you of the one I love
or our delight in nature or the kindest cut.
Children gambol, and there’s joy in that,
in spite of wordy prettification.
So let’s return to the source of the river,
every poem a meat and potatoes poem,
every story nuts and bolts, lean and mean.
Let’s get down in the mud and wallow.

 

Mea Culpa

A brute inner force, forgiveness seeks you out,
your modality and tone, the hallowed ground you walk over,
and as an example of both progenitor and progeny.
All your transgressions, miniscule to massive,
and forgiveness longs to brush the kinks out of your hair,
to dress you down then lift you up to the light,
like a votive offering to the minor divinities of autumn.

Saints are dancing in their suits of flame
while forgiveness calls the tune and pays the piper,
our sins and misdemeanors meaning little to most,
our cries inaudible, like blunt smudges on the soul,
penance and punishment balanced in a black ledger.

Time will thin you out, forgiveness reminds us.
In the same way sunlight finds a way to reach the forest floor.
You’re in over your head, but water attains its level.
These incendiary moments, they shall be stricken from the record.

 

Making Things

A portrait of creation’s spark,
opus and epic of the right hand,
whirlwind invention beginning here,
the mind’s glistening corpus
rifling a subconscious index,
a bit of neuronal foreplay,
the manufacture that makes a mind,
our clever monkey antics
giving us the handgun and lightbulb,
telescopes and buzzbombs and soda pop,
wristwatches, nerve gas, opium…
The mind that gives the gift
of spirituality and conscience.
Small wonder we need to rest come night.
When we dream through frenetic slumber.
Godlike and feral.

 

 

Bruce McCrae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand 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” (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.