Poetry by Bruce McRae

                     Ross Griff CC



 In And Of


A painting of the world
as it is in the moment.
Including turtles and tax returns.
Including carnations and palo verde.
With candlewax and dog-bark and cod roe,
the myopic painter mixing metaphors.
He stirs colours.

In this painting are a pig’s knuckles
and thigh bone of a Chaldean general.
There’s a coin dropped down a grate,
neither head nor tails.
A child is bawling for its mother.
There’s a car crash on the autobahn,
for which death is certain.
A deft hand has shaped a horse’s mane
and braid of wheat-coloured grasses.
It’s captured light’s moody temperament,
sunsets of pinks and purpled strands.
A contented cow. A miserable coxswain.

Millions of years in the making, this painting
contains pocket lint and buttons of ivory.
And there are you and I, we’re walking by the mill,
the artist having it rain. Impeccably portrayed,
we seem oblivious to time and loving.
Stood defiant to death’s erasure.





The Mystery Man


His atoms were formed inside exploding stars.
He’s not at home on any planet.

Grace. Élan. Savoir faire.
Attributes beyond his ken and reckoning.

He stands outside in the heaving rain.
And how else does one capture lightning?

I’m going to sleep like baby Jesus tonight.
This statement typifies his on-going inner dialogue.

All things are not possible to all men.
Which is why he reconnoiters the impossible.

Behind his mask is another mask, and so on.
At the core of his being is a little blue sun.

“It was so dark I could not find myself.”
He is the master of illusion.





Disappearing Act


A carnival barker 
encouraging 
the passing crowd –
come one, come all.
See the disappearing man
exercise his options.
Watch him attain
heretofore unknown
levels of invisibility.
See for yourself
that which is unknown…

A hot summer’s night
in a town so small
they haven’t named it.
My gal and I
nibbling cotton candy,
squinting hard to see
what our faith refutes –
a terrible truth
which won’t be denied.
Not to mention
the tattooed lady.

​

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 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); ‘Like As If’ (Pski’s Porch); ‘Hearsay’ (The Poet’s Haven).

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