Assertions of Torpidity
If I stare at you too long,
You may be mistaken that I want something,
But even though you represent a beautiful
Object going nowhere with a busy background
Of traffic,
I am only waiting like you, for things to come
My way and then depart;
Or maybe you are waiting for the bus?
Or on your mother, or the ice-cream truck?
Did I tell you I’m attempting to finish my
Fourth novel this year? It should be my last,
For I don’t want to seem intolerably desperate,
Though its quite easy as long as you shouldn’t
Be bothered with publication,
Or that I saw my dog drool on a swarthy
Caterpillar, which sounds vaguely romantic, but
Turns out to be rather gross, like most
Acts when they get down to the nitty-gritty.
Are you like me, preferring tomboys to bimbos,
And find it rather sad when flushed women graduate
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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No Sea
There is no sea here,
I see no sea;
This is the body of the desert,
The rich made faint blue,
From stolen oceans,
And it is where I live now;
In the dizzy trail of the sleeping conquistadors,
In your memory,
And the super-market sample of love
You gave me to try some many years ago:
Here the cactus I pricked my thumb on,
And this one has stolen my jersey;
These are the naked declivities,
The changing rooms absent of shadowy abdomens,
The red stones of stolen Indian reservations,
The retirement homes for snow birds;
The corrugated roofs where no rain falls,
While your lips peck his opium neck,
His steroid elbows,
His cocaine phallus: I walk out into the naked abscesses
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Picasso's Pugalist
All I can really say is that my new face
Looks like Picasso got punched,
And that’s okay: a little crooked, like President
D$ck, unsymmetrical, but big,
Like Dolly Parton’s tits- Some things which
Are real: speedy motorcycle, hearse’s right-of-
Way, sea-shanties which stormy areolas mermaid:
The phone rings from another planet,
Or demoted Pluto- I think its just you, but it never
Is: Solicitors, tax collectors, sisters.... Rivers
Run to the sea, but that is not where you can find me,
So for very long I’ve been reading naked in the igneous
Rockslides of her undraped back, crooning-
Video games say I’m overweight, but they’re stupid,
As the hands arrest empty Michigan, your groom’s
Flannel tuxedo accordions- When you didn’t answer,
As you can see, it was a Holocaust, a default,
The bankruptcy of a favorite super center- The trick
Lady’s overweight shoulders shrug, and we light off
Fireworks: Semis honked, this is the great America stretching
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Waiting For Her To Get On Home
Scarred in all too little ways- waiting for you
To come around, kicking balls,
Your jaw so well outlined in the pullulating rind of
Sun:
And I have cannon balls, and bathroom passes,
And reasons to believe that I am a straight shot of a
Conquistador,
Reason to believe that this last little bit might survive,
Even while the flamingos fart,
And I untie the expensive lace of another flirt,
And you don’t come,
And Disney World is such a trip- decapitated, flash-
Bulbed, waltzing now with the last of the senior
Class still flecking the promenade like the lazy shells of
All the palindromes and paladins:
I do this to check the rigging- To hear the whispers of
Xs of buried wealth, to pretend to stream out on an inflatable
Raft, to take my kindergarten and all its stolen goods out
Underneath some brightly pollinated flowers-
You know the ones, and show the poor boy the topless dwarf,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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New Girl Smell
Houses like limpid shells,
So limpid, smell and taste like their
Previous masters,
Like girls so god-d-mned old;
They no longer smell of the sea
Before it might have been the sea, but of
The wash basins and jet fuel;
They don’t smell like swing sets anymore,
But their daughters are still arcing in
Sunlight:
Their daughters are real play- Just these
Things: believe me, you don’t understand,
Not even if you think you got it on
The tip of your tongue:
Pretty little girls sandcastles, spider-flume,
Arcing in the breaks of God,
But if you lay a hand on them, corrupted:
He will leave them,
This jealously abstaining bachelor:
He will just get on his bike and ride away into
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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She Just Doesn't Care
My dogs fight in a box car of make believe children;
They nock them down like weather-beaten bowling pins;
What am I doing in this city,
With the river so near but not fearful; and yet the correct
English of this is appalling,
Like a fisherman unconcerned there is no bottom:
How will we get to the floor to sleep,
And looking at the phrases critically, as if you are supposed
To interview them for a job: They are paltry at best
They haven’t worked for ages, and who have they loved?
How many other words have they known laid down beside
Them to keep warm after some such and such midnight?
Their vocabulary is poor. Skin. Teeth. All poor; its diseases-
Not fit for mermaids, those topless dancers like selkies
Inciting barfights: And I’m sure I loved her: I sent her bouquets,
But why is the sky blue? The bad news can go on forever
And the fountain of youth is not real: All the conquistadors laid
To rest beside it are so old and unexciting, they put the tourists
Into a gummy eyed malaria; it is their disease. Cheap candles
Are more exciting, open wounds along the bromeliad,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Whatever Rhymes I Choose Tonight
Your friends are super-fine
And I’ve seen them in the back seats
In the back of the bus
Or the movie theatre figuring 69:
And this is what I do when I am not
Hiking,
When my imbedded molars are aching
From cheap liquor,
And I persistent to write in freeform,
Not rhyme:
But there you go, in silent parks which aren’t
Real,
Under slash-pine: sweaty, humid and recreational
In the daytime:
They have no sums or parking codes,
But at night they provide shelter for the nocturnal
Scavengers and homosexual hobos:
Beardless, how could you tell Walt Whitman
From most anyone else,
Even his poetry couldn’t keep time;
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So Amputated In The Black and White of An Out of Date Newspaper
I can’t use a dime to call you anymore,
So I look at you red-eyed in photographs,
And your face looks like the tanned rainstorm of
A pretty girl’s misplaced secret desires.
Why are you so sad, Erin- Is it because you are
The last of your kind, and everyone else has failed
You. Aliens in their garden of hotdogs and baseball
Parks- Then you are like me, oh sad thing,
What a vermilion holocaust you give the dusk
When you stand out in your front yard flaunting like
A tenebrous ornament for the homeless black men,
Or whoever else comes around,
As the wayward misfits of your neighborhood are
Always courting the comfortable sound of your
Doorbells-
But you don’t read me anymore, because last time
You thought of me, it was by a different name; and
I don’t know who you love even though seven years
Ago I used to jog around you hoping to soup up some
Kind of homeopathic love potion; and even again,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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She Is Not Mine
The dog walked down the street
Where her eyes were languid above him,
Suckling child-
And I cried, my eyes really moped,
Because the child was not mine,
And even more beautiful because the child was
Not mine;
Of needing lips not mine;
And I watched her leave for buses home-
And they were not mine;
All I had to do was lie in bed and jack off,
While the souls of tin birds crenulated against
The upstairs porch with the broken-down
Jacuzzi that molded and grew with the ululations
Of tadpoles and unfortunate princes, puckering undiademed:
And I wanted her lips, and ping-pong-
And the shadows stretched throughout the weeping
Hallways of the school,
The smoked out bathrooms,
The unicorns in the soccer field, the cherry red
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Where I Remain Dreaming
When the lions germinate they are asleep:
The airplanes are silver quarters in the arcade of cerulean sky:
And this is south Florida, or this an arcade:
And the lights are out, but the power lines, like camels,
Are still good for something:
And the canals form a safety grid so that the afterlife of
Crocodiles doesn’t flood in and disturb our Christmas;
And I don’t know what better words to use
To become the special place of fawning reptiles: If you are not
Around to receive this attention, then make sure to garland yourself
And your daughter in the sweet shade;
For it was never my intention to vulgarize you in the salt-lick plane:
Yes, I have been up the backside of so many mountains,
I have effervesced with blue collar legs from the insouciant of
Ice-cream shops of tourism;
And now why don’t you serve rum, or why haven’t you become
The better iconoclast of my sleepless harem:
Why don’t you turn off the lights and become brail:
Why are you still starving me with empty lunch pales you use to
Build sand castles when you know the tide is coming in,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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