The Zingara Project

Tag: The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press)

  • Strange But True by Bruce McRae

    If you put your ear to a stone
    you can hear the earth being born.
    If you eat a tree
    your breath smells like houses.
    (weep, willow, weep)
    When winking at a clock
    you travel in time;
    but you have to really want it,
    like sitting on an egg.

    Please, bear with me . . .
    An astronomer is someone
    snooping through the stars’ curtains.
    Snow is like an unread newspaper.
    (blow, wind, blow)
    Sunshine is an eyeful of planets.
    Dancing bears destroyed life’s tapestry.
    No two people drink water alike.
    And I’ve an umbrella made of fishes.

    Yes, this very spot, under that nickel,
    is where we’ll establish
    an irrefutable calm.
    This is where the ouroborous
    of malcontents
    becomes a green, keen
    thinking machine.
    Here’s where we turn
    flowers into men,
    gasps into groans,
    pillows into pillboxes.

    There’s a spike in a punchbowl.
    A hurricane with a black eye.
    An old tomcat hissing at a bitch.
    (I couldn’t write this fast enough)
    You need to turn three times
    and rub spit in your hair.
    When a galaxy implodes
    an angel dies in its sleep.
    When a telephone rings
    certain creatures in the Caspian Sea
    weep unsalted butter.
    The town of Dum Dum is in India.
    And I have my very own
    personal thunderhead.

    It’s true, if you drink lightning
    you’ll piss sparks.
    A hog is our governor!
    A letter arrived,
    addressed simply to ‘You’.
    The infamous thinking-cap
    is listed as for sale:
    still in its original packaging.

    And leastwise, but not lately:
    A witch weighs less than a bible.

    —

    Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with well 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), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

     

  • Running With The Wolves by Bruce McRae

    An hour of joy, an ounce of sorrow.
    This monumental moment, in part and in whole.
    I’m being touched by moonlight, so a little bit mad.
    Moonstruck and nightblind. Gone the way of the wolf.
    I’m lying in a loony half-light and recounting the myths,
    the stories we tell ourselves in order that we might carry on.
    Meaning imbued over coincidence. Memories shorted.
    The past redacted and redressed, so all is calm.
    You can put away those nerve-pills and quack confections.
    You can rest easy. Write a poem. Go whistle.
    A full harvest moon, and you can see into the darkness.
    You can sail that moonbeam over the shallows of paradise.
    Hang tight, my passenger, it’s full on into morning.
    —

    Bruce McRae, 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.

    Read these other poems by Bruce on Zingara Poetry Review: “Hinting at Eternity,” “Making Do,” and “Stop the Clock.”