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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What They Were Never Meant To Explore
I have chances to believe
While my dog drinks his fill of water, and my muse
Is in another house,
Around her, her children as if at a fair-
In the theatre of her television, her favorite telenovela;
And her umbilical hernia mending,
So in a week or more we might make love again,
While the airplanes keep on roaring,
Roaring: going straight at it,
Reaching their destinations skipped across the seas-
The mermaids in their grottos, the gods at their
Ease,
And never a single creature here on the earth ever missing
What they were never meant to explore.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Paper Heaven
Trying to break into Hollywood underneath
A vaudevillian sky:
All of the billboards are answering the cool shadows
Of housewives
Which roll off of their shoulders like cotton candy
Or angora sweaters:
And she still goes to work with my cousin:
She still gets up in the morning to
Paint those signs of blue berries and Indian
Corn:
But we don’t make love anymore: I just masturbate
And lie on the carpet with my dog
And look up into the ceiling fans and into that
Paper heaven where the airplanes of
My miss calibrated soul keep turning around and
Around.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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The Light From Their Wounds
Chatreuse caterpillar upon the brown stem
Of Janie's nose—
Ever wondering if she'll ever grow up—
And what is the thing that she was made to be:
A stewardess upon a quest for the
Service industry—learning to leap from
Like stony wishes from bed to bed—
As sweet as chicken, hypnotized from
Paris to Shanghai—
As I lay in my classroom listening to the tornado
Drill,
Waiting for the beautiful girls to come in
And to promise such sweet things to me—
A zoetrope of heeling wounds—
The foxes laughing around the,
Drinking the light from their wounds.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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