Bruce McRae

Balderdash

Maybe poetry is a treasure buried
at the back of your closet.
Maybe a poem is a mother
slapping her errant son;
a little too hard a little too often.

I heard once a great poet sing
from a burning balcony,
from the abstraction of an absolute,
from a chair at the barber’s.
So maybe a poet is a hog
wearing tweed and brogues.
A poet is a professional loafer.
A poet is a symbol
representing dead languages.

“What does that say about you?”
an employer once asked me;
the meaning of which, like a poem,
could be interpreted any number of ways.

Maybe a poem is a question
that doesn’t deserve to be answered.



Fortune’s Fair

The palmist told me your name
is a tin star in a duster,
a scarlet numeral, a pledge
to warn away misunderstandings.
She said your name is a mouthful
of Sumerian nights and dulled edges.
Twice, she crossed herself.
Twice, she spat in the fire,
shivering like a digit, like a wet kid.

Eyes clenched, she witnessed and cursed,
pointing at the new moon, swearing
oaths in another, alien, language.
The palmist said your name
is a stifled belch
or scapegoat biting its tongue.
That it was a borrowed badge
to be returned come midnight.

I looked at the cuts in my hand,
the dried gulches and farmer’s furrows.
I saw a road, a battlefield,
a hill in a downpour,
a drifter asleep under a hedge.
The palmist clutched my wrist.
She read me like a page
being torn out of a book,
your name an unpronounceable smudge
written with a closed fist.

While all I saw were fjords
and crazed antique porcelain,
she peered into the well
of selflessness and self.
Your name is a key, she said,
the tongue of a shoe,
a bridge washed out.

The palmist spoke your name again.

Like being kissed on the mouth.



Pushcart-nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 800 publications, including Poetry.com and The North American Review. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ is available from the Silenced Press website or via Amazon books. To hear his music and view more poems visit his website: www.bpmcrae.com, or ‘TheBruceMcRaeChannel’ on Youtube.

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