Ice Climbing
Send shivers to my loneliness.
Look at me with starving eyes,
The places where isolation roams
And imprints startling tracks in
The permafrost—
Show me your breath so that
I might find you
Outstretched like Prometheus’
Lover on a glacial step,
Your blooms the frigid
Chrysanthemums upon
Winter’s open sill.
There your soul is an ice sculpture,
Carved and held captive by
The Northern deities insured
No men will come and find you,
Hidden in the declivities,
Beneath the freeze framed falls
Of great longing, in the crystalline azure
Monoliths that rise up beneath
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Your Crimes of Amnesia
Make love in your
Denouement
It is almost over and then
You’ll graduate,
Take off your water skis and
Eat warm meatloaf while
Looking across the celibate
Piano and down into the very
Strange lake from which you dried
Off and came from;
And tiny green apples will be growing
On the hill,
Filled with tiny green worms,
Like the vastly lesser children of your
First influence;
And you may grow pregnant living in
The loose swelter of your uncle’s
House,
But hijacked there are parks and
Cemeteries and bicycles that know the
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Thundering Rains
Unicorns kindle like the virgins of green suicide:
You glide over the sight of me with the age old religious wound
In your side;
And now I will live in a house as old as a Bible, and I will
Flip through pictures of you while I call you from my window:
And the children will smoke out of the chimney stacks
From the decrepit factories where are they are working for
Profit:
And I will give them chalk drawings at their feet like colorful
Murder;
And I will kiss the young girls’ mouths just as they are coming
Into age,
Just like the blooming yet illegal tributaries of sharks with strange
Conjunctions,
And I will show them my fleet of paper airplanes:
Maybe I will make them say Sharon’s times like so many Hail Mary’s
Even while she falls in love with another man other
Than her husband once again in the soccer fields where she has
Surely been playing again and once again in the deeper
And heavier thundering rains.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Saints of Your Joy
Your daughter’s body was sick today, and I could not
Help it
With the customers coming in and buying corn fifteen for
A dollar until my parents painted over the sign:
And we watched each other while I carted around the
Green island fichus and sang the sweetness of
The theoretical mountains I keep you in,
Your brown body having its own prominences the size of
Dolls,
And I have desires of buying a bicycle, or taking you on
My shoulders to the island in the center of the
Lake Worth Lagoon,
But I am happy now that you don’t have time to read
The lies I’ve been singing you- Your young daughter is sick
And needs your attention,
But Sunday is her birthday and I am going to be glad to work
Your shift:
I’m going to work hard to find the work you named her after in
Spanish:
Heidi is her name, and she is your daughter, and her world will
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Up In The Morning
Coming up in the morning,
Like a fish drowning- somebody’s
Swift sided pet,
Who has never seen trees or television
Channels which aren’t waving,
Like the séances
Of working girls, come in doors
Carrying their baskets for grandmother,
Not having anything else to sell-
They have to do this, work naked in the
Glowing kitchen,
Until they become that color, all tawny
And delivered,
Like ornaments in a tree house in a storm
In Delray;
Hot pies for thumbs, dimpled pillows,
Basins where a slender drip of water echoes
The loving jewelry taken off necks-
For both eyes, these are good, and it is morning
Once more, and I am swimming up
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Their Silver-Purple Bodies
Spot on—the little immortality of the fairy nymphs—
Living like barrettes in your hair,
As you take them to school—even as you cannot figure out
What is happening,
And even as you shake out your long hair—
Even if the classroom is full of bullies, and the flea market
Underneath the overpass is filled with echoes—
This is your place:
All of the stewardesses are watching you and serving you
Drinkings—
As I think of the quieted places that must follow you home:
They are becoming more quiet,
As you become more forlorn—and the purple dragon-fly,
And the purple bowling alley—
And the purpled star in the sky hang over you like cousins—
It doesn't mean your safe—
Only that you can rest for awhile underneath the ceiling
Fans, to the grin of your Cheshire cats—
As the world of luminescent simulacrum spins around you—
Spinning, spinning—taking what is their's,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Then A Whisper Of A Sea
Subterfuge of romance, because what other sort
Of subterfuge is there: all at once running away from war,
Running into France,
Looking at her gondola underneath all of those soft lights of
Romance:
Looking up her body like along the soft pews on Sundays:
Looking along her body and seeing her secret rosaries; and kissing
Them,
And speaking to them as if they were a soda fountain of your
Unborn children,
While the sky just fumes: while it is packaged by cool jets;
While its bodies of seraphim divide to multiply, like schoolyards
Of tankards of jellyfish in the sea;
And I wish so many times that I was better at these amusements:
Wish that I was really taking off all of her diamonds of her old
Times and speakeasies:
And this is all she is, folding down like fresh laundry in the dorm room
Of her freshmen,
Trapping her like the innocent nuances of all of my neophytes:
A dime of blood, a ruby seed, a blushing point and then a whisper of
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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With the Sun Going Down With Nowhere To Go
With scars adept to traffic,
I go sideways: The dogs want out.
They are very needy, and the days are needy
Too. Another one has eaten the world,
My soul is joyous- but my face tired-
If I sold wine, I’d be beautiful,
I’d have a little family, and a house in the
Snow- I’d play with my daughter under the
Tree, and I wouldn’t listen no matter what
The serpent sang to me;
And my soul is joyous, it has nowhere to go.
Maybe tomorrow it will follow the sun outside
And around the world a bit;
Maybe it will visit you and crenellate your daughter
Like a good luck charm, and influence more
People to consummate you- They consummate you
Already with the sun going down,
The cars swirling down the mountain as if in a
Clever, automated dream; their faces winding down,
But I should think that their souls would like
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Slave To Baseball
The weather is brave but a slave to baseball,
And I like that kind of weather for this
Time of year,
Because all the aspens are naked, opalescent
And free of the charms of most birds
And tourists-
I can see you there ghostly presumptive,
Making your free-form rounds;
And it is beautiful to think of you disconnected
From the corporeal sounds:
And I wake up more disjointed- the dogs
Have been howling all night,
And I suppose I dreamed of your high-school-
It’s my greatest, most tremulous sin-
Those dysfunctional adolescent currents still
Ripple in my head,
Searching for your illusive resins this way and
That between classes,
But in the here and now I develop new obtrusive
Scars and aren’t you well-situated,
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Public Places
Sometimes the sun sets sideways
And pushes outdoors all of your hopes,
Like Cinderella is sweeping
Her eyes so beautiful but no one cares,
And her lover comes with candles in his beard
All tide up in nooses for little dreams,
Somnambulant toddlers culled from the waves,
And now they say that they have no backbone,
But even Satan has a backbone,
Even when he is lighter than the clouds
And caracoling the moon,
And the traffic sings his praises and dances
Every which way it can,
As Evan comes down from the uninhabitable
Mountain sideswiping with his brother,
As Sharon is in her little joys and her little stores,
Mopping up with all her eyes,
And I would just like to be as beautiful as her
Shadow
Coming down the mountain trying to make friends
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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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