The Illusions Of Its Joy
I love you more than my cousin of silent thought—
As the blue cat, enamored of Indian headdress, sated by
Porcupines and the first European explorers to this
Region,
Stares from the perch of her dunes
To the silent fumbling of the chaos in the architectures
Of the sea—of a beauty I have never seen before—
And the cenotaph in the waters,
Granite cross, way post for the men who will have
To eat their horses and make rafts out of their ribcages-
Before the Castillo de San Marcos—
The first retirement city coughed a cannon ball across
The bay—and there was any other fantasy we could believe
In—Disney World and the diseases of gated communities—
Before my tiny nostrils first flared—or I walked the streets
Smelling the night blooming jasmine with a woman
Who was not meant to stay with me—
There was this void in a feral heart—
Already some of the heavens had already died—
And your eyes had not yet awakened to your mother,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The White-Washed Sea
White bread and white maids,
Marmalade and sugar tarts: stick me
High atop the citrus tree,
Like a paper airplane, paper nose pointing
The way to the white-washed sea:
Pretty dolls and forget-me-nots,
Ivory beavers slapping dams,
Lover-boys in snowy trams making their
Procession to the white-washed sea:
Tourists there, Mickey-Mouse, and fricassee,
Conquistadors jounced on vanilla poles,
Saints and crosses like Spanish scarecrows on
Concrete atolls, bleed anemically towards
The white-washed sea: Hills of windmills are
Picaresque, lovely cherries on her white washed-
Breasts, bones of birds and pica ninnies;
Aunts sing cantos at their nieces nurseries,
Pale and freckled and on their knees,
Girls who’d been roller-skating as if on foam,
Stop and pray to the white-washed sea;
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Glorious Ways
Your brown body pulls me across the desert,
Just as desirable as the luck of the hares in your overgrown
Backyard:
You do this to me in your ways, swaying like the séance of
A metamorphosing violin:
There you are
Crenellating the last calls of a fortress like the signals for life
Over the nameless hills
And the tourists mulling like jackanapes in the soft golf courses
Of icecreams;
And that you were so rude as to bother the sky with your eyes
That way,
Whose most direct of senses found their way across the fronteras
To Texas and your old backyards,
Calling up my dreams to meet your soul;
The involuntary arrows you plucked me from across the streets
Of our work places
Until I kissed and laid you down into the newest grottos under
The chicken wire stars where the films had just started shooting,
And there alongside the carport where my mother
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Pretty, Pretty City
Now the city has a studded nose,
Because the city is so pretty, and the city knows:
The city, she almost fooled me underneath the
Chicken sky- The city is so pretty,
But the city lie:
I loved the city and all its vermilion moods and ice-creams,
With parks and busses and city airplanes
And city rides- City coffins and city dies;
And I watched the city get drunk and turn around
And raise its monuments and party down;
And I sat upon one of her benches in a speculating mood,
And wondered if the city was so pretty,
Why was she so rude: The vulgar nebulas of the city’s
Eyes, the narcissisms of its displays:
There are so many well suited boys better than I out walking
In their sunny city days:
And I realized, the city didn’t love me,
The city plays and paws and eats up little boys such as
Me- She said she loves her little poet boys, such as me,
But the sweet, sweet city lies,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Vantage Point Of Their Lonely Studios
Bottles hidden under couches which turn out
To be beds:
Bottles on top of red cement, bottles spinning
Burning with questions:
Bottles the answer to this;
My face bleared with roses and abandoned highways,
And cars abandoned,
And forts except for their mad soldier blooming fireworks:
And Kellies are in the sky,
Rippling as if with banners of all her men,
The kaleidoscope of her delinquent theatre, the rosaries
Of her body’s tattoo;
And I am fully scarred and pretty, and I think of her,
Because I have nothing left in who I am:
And she sees her children as dolphins swimming beneath her,
Swimming through the immense greenness of this underage
Garden,
Going towards the sounds of dinner, like bottles spinning
Attune to the whistling of such an immense foreclosure;
For when her eyes are closed, everything is going to
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Muse I Once Had
Wrapped inside the cages of hedonistic
Byways, looking for the hemlock of the anniversary one
Last time,
At least I can say I kissed her lips and held on to
Her, and took her out into the waves
Even though she could not swim: which made all of the tourists
Watch us even more;
And we made love: and we made love in almost a year
Of adultery,
But all throughout those fiery nights, the souls of my
Words ran lonely-
And it got colder as more of the years approached:
She went back to him, sated and bent and subtle like
Soft wood I had imprinted with my telephone number:
And her two children, waiting for fireworks-
Hungry as rabbits- she said she was not a good mother,
But she would not leave them- A Mexican woman,
Her husband exhibiting entire control over her,
Except for with me- for this last year,
And the times we made love- now she is a lion,
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The Amusement Rides
It is happening in the cul-de-sacs in which all of the housewives
Spume:
Birthing new likely cadavers into the worlds from the shopping
Malls of womb-
It is happening like the sweet end that gladdens like espionage
Like sunlight across the amusement rides between
Two related mountains- swaying through the fruit trees
Who lounge in the sated glades like tourists all too happy to
Never have known her summits;
And it is a ride I gladly take with my paper dolls and marionettes;
They are of a finely selected sorority, but they always
Keep me company- across the playgrounds and the soccer
Fields,
The kilns of muses sent to the elements: as Alma basks her infantile
Shoulders beneath the lumber mills of all of the elements;
And sings herself to sleep over songs of her beauty, her infantile
Daughter nuzzling up to her, like a hungry bird up
To a water fountain in the hallways of an abandoned high school
Long after classes have started, mimicking,
And singing back to her across a millennium of trailer parks and
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Meat
Fibrillose like a centipede and counting backwards
From the laundry or the arcade,
Following the bred crumbs and the beer cans until your
Hair was yellow again.
And you were just a freshman emptied into his class
In a school that was just finding its legs,
While cicadas skipped themselves discardingly amidst
The over red blooms of the bromeliad
Outside by the archipelagos of landscaping where the
Bicycles hid
And the grass was mowed just as orderly as housewives
And they had firedrills that took you outside so you could
Be all by yourself until the pretty girl who played
Soccer who you would never make love with
Came over to occupy a space near you, both of you bared
To the sun- underneath an important sapling
Until you skipped school to go to Spain and Michigan,
And the fair came around selling you the caesuras of unnatural
Haunts that seem to give you angels, only to Indian give you
Back to yourself, until you became and echo
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Fine Young Yesterday
Soft pacifists in murals of malaise:
I can barely see you sweaty over the bedroom of
My young days,
Because my ears are burning from cheap wine,
They don’t hear reveille or get up on time,
And they are past over like sated lions on Mondays,
And the tourists have all gone down their enthroned
Gullets like strawberry Sundays,
And up in the sky didn’t I say they are advertising
Your wedding day;
But anyway, hip hip hurray: and didn’t they once have
The world fair in Saint Louis or
Chicago; and weren’t we there high stepping through
The papier-mâché jungles-
And didn’t you know that Sara Teasdale is buried
Belle Fontaine, that she was married to someone she
Didn’t love,
And the way she thought of him along the stark midways
Of her younger days- I’m sure I know, if I can’t rightly
Say-
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Is It Beautiful to Say I love You
Is it beautiful to say I love you
Even though I haven’t seen you for ten years?
But you once kissed my neck and you are not my aunt.
I still feel you there, and you are behind my eyes.
I look upon you though I haven’t seen you for
All this time.
You said two years ago that I don’t
Really know you, but that was on the telephone.
How come? I want to know
You, and in the language my hands create, I pretend
To know you. I know you! Or I am just foolish
And have never loved.
Stand in front of me and tell me you
Do not love me, and then I will leave you alone,
Though you might follow me if you wish,
With the trail my heart bleeds.
My favorite high school teacher says these
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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