Chorus Lines of Jumping Jack
I only fell in love because I bought you flowers;
And I am alone because I drink beer,
But now we are together in state sanctioned borders,
Which greatens the odds of running my fingers
Through your hair:
Maybe we’ll meet on another planet in Disney World,
And I’ll use roman candles to divert your
Candy cart off the tracks,
And I’ll overthrow your knickers and unhinge your straps,
And eat all your salt water taffy while the munchkin
Automatons do chorus lines of jumping jacks.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Ethereal Turnstiles
Resins over the four corners of the earth, and
Mexican hands picking watermelons- supposing this was
Always where they were meant to show up:
Busses leaving high schools and disappearing down familiar
Roads-
Running through the smoke of chalk and seashells, trying
To raise up some god just to pass the time until they can get
Home to the trailer park of their
Television:
With the sky as rich as a snow pea: as slender and fragile,
With the airplanes smoking through
The ethereal turnstiles.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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In A Ball of Kissing Dreams
Stillness in the river
In the unanswered season—pledges of
Allegiance to a classroom in
The summer—
And other ghosts—like the graveyards of
Kindergarten—
The television still turns on when you
Are not around—
Hummingbirds hover in the ether,
Propelled by the wishes of
Abraham Lincolns—
You are up in Ocala with the orange trees,
The horses,
And your husband—or you race above
The earth,
A comet who struck matches across my
Bedroom like rattlesnakes entwined
In a ball of kissing dreams.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Sad Wolves
Burning in the sapphires- I have plow shares to hold,
And the constancy in the infancy of this form
That burns the coal cinders for the muse,
While out there the trains ride high upon the levies,
And the nocturnal blooms look up and seem to whisper,
And gossip about the school children who have already
Passed into the grave;
And the Mexican mothers who have two children but
No husbands,
They pass across too making the diminutive orchestras of
Music boxes,
And the sad wolves howl: and the sad wolves sing.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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This Juvenile Rope
Well—so this juvenile rope
Hangs us as we won't go out and light the wicks
With the dragons coming home
Over the equinoxes—while our fairytale fathers fish
And look up at Saturn,
And can never be resolved if this is actually the place—
Maybe a beautiful uncle paints a mural in a trailer park
On the other side of the canal,
While something else plays on our television—
And the ghosts leave the burned wings of our paper
Airplanes—and go outside between the cypress and
Melaleuca to explore
And explore.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Age Old Terrapin
Wordless Calliope- what are you,
Standing there
As a blue monument: what do you mean
After so much tragedy;
The Roman Candles are only shooting forth
A jealous blue,
And another night is ruined into the world:
The monuments float unstructured:
The witches curse the baseball diamonds,
And the schoolyards aren’t even fully formed:
The air-conditioning escapes outdoors
And all of the football teams lose, lose:
And I lye weeping underneath the school bus
Even as it rains and the age old terrapin
Eats my muse-
My muse.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Morning Before Dawn
Imperfect though beautiful weather
Inflating the weather veins,
Carving the tombstones were the zoetropes
Of lost housewives step so
Carefully,
And the lost dogs lay- they have forgotten any
Names that man may have given them,
And they run from stone to stone
As if recognizing their lost masters,
As deeper in the foothills the elk step over
The blue echoes of Navajos and other
Nameless Indians,
Their bugles resonating and catching in the
Red clay,
Rattling the song birds awake so that the
Bring the morning before dawn.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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By The Sweat of Your Brow
Giving me too much time to consider that
I am not going home:
Snails on my shoulders in their little houses:
Roman candles pointed earthwards toward
The canal-
And I am in a place they thought may not
Have existed-
And they burn effigies of broomsticks until the
Candles become sauce and gravy,
Until, sometimes, the midnight works,
And you can float underneath her as a little boy
Going up and up into a chimney
While yards of aerobuses circle beneath you
And the magic is in your armpits:
And the magic is by the sweat of your brow
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Ethereal Rises
If that garden is here, it is no longer beautiful,
Trained as it is to look up at the sky
And to wait for rain:
The mountains around her are beautiful, though
Scarred by the fire
And the uncountable fireworksâ€'the things men
Have sworn and sold into her:
She is the garden's brighter sister,
And she rings around her,
Protective'as the sun leaps over them,
A headless animal'
He too is in a rush to find the things that he can
Resell, as she waits in her captured world beneath him,
Her sister a bride to the ethereal rises in those mountains.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Better Princes Than These
Tenderness in the vagabond, going about his lost
Routines- in his ways to worship on
The side of the road- hunting for the shade with the
Panthers- waylaid from the tourists off
To busy in the storefronts of shells: like pollen who finds
Asphalt to kindle into-
Looking out at the passings by of the enthusiasm of
Housewives:
A stream of lottery pearled in skirts- their strange gills
Swim in the sooty alcohol by which they feed
Themselves despotic dreams;
And go about their ways, their suits getting dirtier,
Becoming even better princes than these.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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