M.C. Bruce

Perfume

The scent of you
Permeates my sheets.
...

She brought her ghosts with her
When she came to this house.
She knows by the way the hound
Glares and growls at a space above
...

Thou little shiny box which many days
Did entertain me on my lonely walks
Containing multitudes, whose random plays
Perplexed and pleased me. Now your silence mocks
...

Her heart was a loaded gun
She went through this world
With the hammer half cocked
A bullet in the chamber.
...

The dogs are quiet
The washing machine groans
My girl naps and snores
And I am calling on the muse
...

When I was a boy
My mother put
A new thermos
In my lunch.
...

The rattle of the cups
the ringing of the spoons
the chatter of the girls
working the counter;
...

Woke up and found
I was still here.
Someone has some
Explaining to do.
...

Rough angel, switchblade heart
tattoo my tongue to your leg
pull me down and let me feel
the flames of wherever you are bound.
...

When I sleep, I am not foolish,
All of my work is finished,
Every former lover
Finally forgives me.
...

For more than a year
It has been unreasonably dry,
the skies refusing to cloud,
the rain staying away from us
...

O, Redheaded Muse,
American Goddess,
Red is the color of danger
Which fits you just about right.
...

(After a Drawing by Leigh White)


The rabble will resort to cliché
...

The dead are no burden to us at all.
The earth carries them for us
Quite nicely, putting its dirty shoulder
Into their weight so that we
...

This is not my life
But some sad parody
Of what I would have become
Had I been more cowardly
...

You are my delight
The stretch of highway
Lined with trees before
I hit the city;
...

I held my grudge
With hate and dread.
My heart was blackened
Cold and dead.
...

my girl was irked
that she had suffered for weeks
from some unknown miscreant
virus which made
...

Only sad humanity
Could take a natural imperative
For propagating the species
And transform it into
...

Kisses tasting of gas
You lay down on your
Chosen cross with alacrity
And little hesitation.
...