No NYE festivities for this boy tonight — the cold/flu thing’s in full effect.
Have a grand fucking night and happy happy to all.
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Juxtaposition
I just watched a video of Saddam being hanged — bad quality camera phone footage. I noticed that unlike the earliest reports had said, he was not hooded and certainly didn’t seem afraid so far as I could tell from the shitty resolution.
Did get a closeup of his face afterward. His neck broke at an odd angle and he was staring straight up, eyes open.
Why do I watch these things? Because I hate the sanitizing of brutal news and actions. I think one of the reasons that capital punishment remains popular here is because people are so insulated from the realities of death and execution in general.
Anyway, about that juxtaposition: I caught the video on a site with Google Ads. Directly above the video frame was one which read:
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Browse through our wide selection and find exactly what you’re looking for!
I didn’t.
___________________________
Trivial Detail, silly poem, and a Scott Woods challenge
Waiting for the Ambien to work before I sleep…
___________________________________
Famous Last Words at the New Year’s Eve Party
I should drive home but
I think I’ll wait a bit
until I’m sleepy —
I don’t want to miss anything.
___________________________________
Dear Mr. President Scott “Zod” Woods:
I think you should have a virtual press conference here on LJ so that all of the aspiring journalists and interested parties could hear your thoughts on the future of slam, PSI, and other things poetic.
You know — post a request for questions and then take what you get.
Naturally, I wouldn’t expect that this crowd would ask you any SERIOUS questions…in fact, I’m actively discouraging it right here and now for the record. Your snarkiness is what I’d like to hear, especially as it relates to things like the prop rule and the group piece rule and why slam isn’t a required activity in all public schools and what you plan to do about it, dammit.
This is, of course, just a request from an unworthy constituent and therefore meaningless unless I am living in Florida in an election year, at which point it becomes a mutable and tension fraught exercise in the nature of reality and the integrity of our democracy — but I digress.
Your most humble servant,
Tony “pain in the ass” B
I’ve got that
head hurtin, runny nose, achy body feeling. In other words, I’m gonna be sick. My apologies for missing the party at Ralph’s — just couldn’t handle it.
In other news: I just saw “Boondock Saints” for the first time a couple of days ago and loved it, despite the many “Pulp Fiction” references (or perhaps because of them). Good flick, highly recommended.
I’ll have a new Zero Point Zero column up on the Gotpoetry site in the next couple days. Two words: American Idol. That’s all I’m gonna say.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled post-debauchery drunk browsing.
hanging him
tossing at night
we remember our history
do not suffer
a witch to live
kill the children
because nits make lice
destroy the village
in order to save it
hang him high
his fall will be
an important milestone
for his country
so many casual deaths
that you’d think one more
would bore us
but in the moment when
the body drops
the rope’s snap
echoes old mantras
and we sit up
to listen
for they’re playing our song
Year in Review
This wee life
has been triumphant
more often than not
so I will not choose to recall
what is under my nails
or where these bruises came from;
why the squirrels will not
speak my name
or why I know every car
on this street and recognize
their drivers before they emerge
from behind their wheels.
In the small hours
I have watched the day wrestle
to be born. I’ve laid
next to warmth and sometimes
been cold, more often
scalding, always aware
of the pressure on my hip.
There were dark nights
and dark days
but there were also so many hours
that were soaked under a lava sun,
drowning in the company of friends.
I was never too far from the lesson,
though I did forget it now and again:
the time is short and the life is small
in comparison to what surrounds it —
there are miles between moments
you can either fill with hope or despair
and the choice,
if only seen in hindsight,
is no choice at all.
You will live and you will die,
and your life and death are yours
to create or let rot.
If there is a way
to hold this, keep it here
in my pocket or close
to my core, I will hold this:
This wee life can grow or wither.
Choice is all I have,
and so I will forget the names
of drivers and learn them anew,
ask the squirrels to forgive my trespasses
and bake myself brown as often as I can
beneath the volcano that is day.
When I sleep I will not sleep alone
and when I sit up late
it will be for the stars’ sake.
I will be the life I think I am
and take my death as adviser and confidant,
listen to it whisper soon, soon enough,
learn to race it until
we tie at the line
and choosing is finished at last.
Listening to James Brown In A Bar
Everybody in this bar
wants to be my baby
because I’ve got
the Cigarettes of Love
the Booze of Enchantment
the Ace Face Jeans
the Godzilla Tongue
the Frankenstein Member
Down the bar
some dick is wearing
a T-shirt that says he’s
“10 Feet Tall and Bulletproof”
Shithead, I’m blast-hardened
James Brown
stole my blueprints
I’d have sued him
for patent infringement
if he’d lived
because I’m that machine
Outside
it’s fucking colder
than my eyes
There’s a wind out there but
there’s a fire in here
I spark up another Cigarette
(of Love) and down another drink
Everybody in this bar wants me
Everybody in this bar’s
just biding their time
and I’m not leaving the building
till they come for me
NOTE: I just recorded this and put it up on Myspace, if you’re interested.
Holiday
You can’t make
everything bad
disappear in
one day,
she tells me,
rubbing my back
as I sit head down
on the bed.
Around us
is all the wreckage
of a holiday: paper,
boxes, gift cards,
small scraps of drama.
All I’ve ever learned
tells me to cry
but then I remember that
the light grows longer after today
and when she kisses my neck
and pulls me closer
I find I can see through the dark.
I’m back.
Xmas was fun. I’m tired.
Maybe new poem later — got a few lines kicking around that have been begging for completion.
Hope yours was good, too.
Anger Management
Day one: I was born
with fists. Empty lungs
atop bowed legs and below
a balled up face. Skin dawn-pink
and eyes bear-brown, but it was still
those fists my parents saw first: knurled
walnuts on pumping, jabbing arms.
They laughed. I stopped swinging.
Day two: today. Speaking
to them at lunch I recognized
the sound of those fists
in my voice.
Weird query
What emotion drives you most — love, hate, anger, envy, compassion, something else?
Be honest. Be ruthlessly honest.
It’s anger for me. Sometimes it’s a full-on rage, more often it’s a slow simmer. I’m rarely if ever at peace, even if I try.
Honestly, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. There are saints and pacifists in this world. I’ve never been either and can’t see myself becoming either. Rage isn’t unnecessary or implicitly harmful. Violence held in reserve for extreme situations seems OK to me.
I have been perpetrator and perpetrated upon. I have been sinner and victim. I have been the peacemaker and the warrior. All those things are part of me, but I know I have been a perpetrator more often than most people would like to admit about themselves.
It’s untrue to say I am indifferent to that — but I do accept it, and change is unlikely at this point.
Who are you? Tell me. Tell us. Most of all, tell yourself.
New MP3 on Myspace
I’ve just uploaded the first “new” poem MP3 I’ve done since I started that Myspace. It’s a recording of “”The Hole.”
Please feel free to check it out. I still need to get a Faro and Tony cut up there, so I think that’ll be soon.
It’s here: http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
Also, delrica — haven’t forgotten, I promise. I just need to bug him again.
Cultural Differences
He shuddered and said,
“I don’t think I could even
look at a dead body, never mind
touch one.”
She jacked up her eyebrow
and said, “Do you never
look in the mirror, then? And how
do you wash yourself?”
News and silliness
Let’s get the news out first:
1.
Andrew Watt ( anselm23 ) will be the feature at Gotpoetry Live tonight. Andrew’s doing an all-improv set and has challenged the open mike readers to improv at least one of their two pieces tonight. You up for it? Come down — this promises to be a very good night, and our last show until January 9.
2.
Faro and I are scheduled to perform at the Community Voices reading in Westfield, MA on January 8. It’s their 5th anniversary and a number of features will be showcased, no doubt ably hosted as always by dkeali_i. Again, this promises to be a good show — come out and celebrate.
3.
I’ll be putting a new MP3 up on the Myspace later today. Think it’ll be a new poem for a change — probably “The Hole.” That’s http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown .
Silliness:
The iTunes shuffle meme that’s going around.
Jack Johnson — “Where’d All The Good People Go?”
Stiff Little Fingers — “Suspect Device”
Billie Holiday — “Lover Man”
Charlie Parker — “Sippin’ at Bell’s”
A Silver Mt Zion — “Long March Rocket”
LL Cool J — “Big Ol’ Butt”
Daddy Yankee — “Gasolina”
Jeff Foucault — “Ghost Repeater”
Exhaust — “This Is Our Borrowed Equipment”
Damien Dempsey — “Party On”
Weird set. Irish folk, postrock, rap, reggaeton, punk, jazz, and whatever you call Jack Johnson.
The Hole
After a cigarette
smoked so quickly
on the cold porch
that I can feel the cells
in my lungs dying,
I come back to my room
and shut the door
and think about the hole
in my words.
There’s a place
in my speech
that is void.
I know I must fill it
but the words that will be required
terrify me.
They’re hiding in my room with me.
In the closet, on the bottom
shelf, under the bed —
shards of language waiting
to be pieced together,
and I can’t face them.
I find myself thinking
not that, not that
whenever I open my mouth.
It’s not that I don’t know
what I should be saying —
it’s that what I should be saying
scares the breath out of me.
Picture my daily sentences
swerving around the hole. Words
whir like cars around a traffic circle,
entering pre-designated roads,
leaving the big space in the middle
untouched.
This is not about art
or science. The hole in my language
is thousands of miles deep
and if I fall in I’ll never get out.
No magic applies, no physics,
there’s no masterwork waiting in the pit
for me to climb upon.
Not that, not that. I know
I’ve got to go there but I can’t
face the dark of the familiar places.
This is why I suck down smoke
knowing what it will do to me.
Some fears are so distant
they mask the closer terror.
When I sleep tonight
I’ll not bother to dream. The words
I won’t use steer me every night
to the singularity, and until
I can wrestle with them and make them
into a bridge instead of a ladder, something
I can cross and look down from, until then
every day will be more of the same:
not that, not that;
certainly not now,
surely not tonight
when the mere thought of breathing
steals my breath.
Dark Matter 