Monthly Archives: September 2009

September 30, 2009

I Know What I Know

A country fair in rural Connecticut
two weeks ago
Saturday night

There’s a kid
as crew cut and blonde as a farmer stereotype
wearing a side tipped black on black Yankees cap
and this T-shirt that says in white on black

TODAY I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO USE MY AK
I GOT TO SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY

I know where that came from

I pride myself on trying to know
things my friends don’t know
It’s a hipster thing and knowing that line
qualifies me as a hipster
among my graying pals
and like a good hipster I snicker to myself

What could this hick
still wet behind his exposed ears
know about something like that
out here in the fresh air
next to the cider donut stand
under the fireworks in the woods?

I don’t know where that’s coming from

Then tonight
on a late night drive home
from Providence
I hit the preset on the car radio
and pick up a new station
“BSR in the 401 — 88.1
Hitz From Da Left”

Now I know what I know
but I don’t know anything I’m hearing

Here’s a shoutout to “my boys
on lockdown tonight in the ACI”
and “Jacqui sending this out to Rab-dog
wherever he is tonight”

I think I know this piano sample
Think it’s from Curtis Mayfield
but it’s not long enough for me to be certain
And the beats that travel with it
make it hard to hear the past for the present
so I don’t know if I know

Then the announcer cuts in with
“Who’s making rhymes like this these days?

a few seconds go by before he says

“…that’s right — no one’s
making rhymes like this, son
This is twenty years old”

and the words are similar
to something I know
but far enough away to be strange
to ears that think they’ve heard everything
there is to know

(By the way, if you’re sitting there waiting for me
to bust out in some lame replica
of the rhymes I heard
waiting with incipient glee for my failure
may I suggest
you kiss my middle aged
fat round ass

because I know what I know
and I know when I’m licked
and I’m licked so hard here
I’m still wet behind the ears)

I’ve never heard this stuff before

and the tracks roll on
like breathing that won’t stop
and I’m trying to breathe like this
but I can’t

I’ve got the window down
with this unknown old school turned up loud
listening
to the wind rush by
until the signal breaks down to static
two miles out of Providence
still thirty miles from Connecticut

I hit another button
and find a few more rhymes
a little farther on
I recognize this stuff
and can almost follow the words
but this time when Ice Cube drops
I shut the hell up

because I know what I don’t know
and what I know now is that I know shit
except it seems that hip hop’s not something
to be found in the blood
but in the air

and maybe that kid back home
with the buzz cut and the shirt down to his knees
knows something I don’t
or maybe he doesn’t
but I know I don’t know

I know now
what I know
isn’t enough

and because of that
I got to say

today was a good day

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September 29, 2009

Glassfist

By Tony Brown

Glassfist,

the weirdest superhero
of all time,

broke his hands
on another villain’s face,

leaving the enemy shredded and wailing
and himself
crippled
yet again.

Back at Headquarters,
his snickering friends
in their capes and masks
watched
as he thrust his hands into the Superkiln
and refashioned them,
blowing shape back into each finger,
gloving them after they’d cooled.

“What, exactly, is the advantage
of this particular attribute?”
they asked him. “You’re only good
for two shattering blows in any battle
and then we’ve got to save
your sorry ass.”

He smiled, didn’t answer,
but later in his lair
he pulled off the gloves
and his mask and stared into his palms —

so clean,
no trace of blood anywhere,
and his own honest face
staring back without needing
to blink back tears.

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September 28, 2009

Remembering What Four Stones Said

By Tony Brown

You came to the bank of the stream
and saw them spread out
through the torrent before you.

The first,
white as a fish belly
and small, so small,
said that the Way
has no sense to it, but
leads forward in any case.

The second,
black as wood long submerged,
slick as a suspect, said that
if you could risk believing
that it offers solid footing,
you would find yourself halfway there…

and the third, rusty
streaked, seated high and dry,
solitary and distant,
mumbled a secret worth hearing,
perhaps only minimally intelligible,
but still invariable and true.

The fourth stone
lay below the surface.
It was no more than a shadow
and a threat of tumbling, of immersion.
It urged and coaxed: venture,
leap, steady as you go.

That far bank was high and green
and paths were visible under the pines,
leading up toward
the sun on the high meadow,
the moon on the high meadow:
you fell in love with it at once,
a perfect place for dancing
with wet feet
and knees
still trembling from the journey.

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4 Comments | tags: poems, poetry | posted in poetry

September 24, 2009

Workshop in NYC this weekend…

By Tony Brown

For you NYC folks…I’ll be in NYC this weekend running a workshop. If you’re interested, here’s the link:

Acentos Writer’s Workshops

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September 24, 2009

Notice to site watchers…

By Tony Brown

Taking a short break from posting poems here. Couple of weeks tops…

Good chance to go back over the six years’ worth of work in the back pages, though.

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September 23, 2009

Gun Song

By Tony Brown

World in peril
under the lead
night sky: we stare at

the nose of a bullet
aimed up
and viewed from within —

each of us one grain of powder
ready to ignite
and push it toward its target —

each of us wondering
what blow will create
the moment of ignition —

and how can we know
which of us will be the first
to set it all off?

We were created
to vanish
in that moment of propulsion.

Everything we do
before that
is just waiting:

potential in a chamber,
knowing what will crumple and fall
when The Day comes.

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September 22, 2009

The Remarkable

By Tony Brown

In the middle of
the infield
during a stock-car race,

he lifts his camera
from the roaring before him
and snaps several shots

of barbed wire
atop a chain-link fence
with the blue sky behind it.

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September 22, 2009

Pronouncing Worcester

By Tony Brown

Yeah,

it’s spelled weird

You pronounce it
“Wistah”

Easier to say

with a cigarette in your mouth
and a chip on your shoulder

Give it the strongest grit you can offer
in the face of the unrelenting
derision

Remember

the “Wist”
is for
wistfulness

a wish for it to be
something else

the “Ah” is for
“Ah,
whatever…
it is what it is”

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2 Comments | tags: poems, poetry, worcester | posted in poetry

September 17, 2009

The Original Question

By Tony Brown

Is there any way
to begin a sentence
that doesn’t immediately
predestine its ending?

I keep talking
in hope of breaking through
to one. It’s not working,
and it’s not easy.

If you speak often,
you’ll repeat yourself
often. If you act often,
you’ll act and react.

Whatever chance I have
to say or do something original
before I stop speaking or doing
is rapidly vanishing into the haze

of things I’ve said or done before
that hangs around my head
and keeps me from seeing more
than what I know I have done.

Silence, of course, is the answer
to the original question…

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September 14, 2009

Meditation #21

By Tony Brown

Everyone on this show is
LOUD

from the insistently
neutral host

to the mother
screaming indignantly
at being accused of sleeping
with her eighteen year old stepson
calling the accuser
A DOG

to the stepson who is proclaiming that
it’s not true
that the four year old is not his
he would have been fourteen
and that’s
NASTY

to the aggrieved father
of said eighteen year old
who is making the accusation
and is himself accused
of not

MANNING UP

to the crowd cheering on their favorites

and the only moment of hush comes
with the ripping of the envelope
and the announcement that
NO ONE HERE
is the father

at which point there’s more yelling than ever

and everyone running around
to thunderous applause

All we ever see of the four year old
is a still picture
his eyes wary
his head thrust forward just a little
leading with his chin

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September 14, 2009

Newport Beach, California

By Tony Brown

In the embrace
of the best Scotch
I’ve ever had
in the Four Seasons Hotel
in Newport Beach, California;

a perfect measure drawn neat
into a brandy snifter.
One hundred seventy five dollars a glass,
purchased on a rich man’s dime.

I catch the crawl
on the muted lounge TV
telling me that Kurt Cobain
has died.

“What the hell did he have
to be depressed about?”
says one of my companions,
and I take a swig, not a sip,
and mumble,

“You wouldn’t understand…”

I notice the rich man
turning his eyes down,
looking into the gold
rapidly disappearing
from his own glass.

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2 Comments | tags: death, depression, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

September 14, 2009

This Ship

By Tony Brown

Considering
the vagaries of life
and time, we should discuss
what will happen if
we do not see each other
again,

for this ship we’re on
is vast and leaking,
and a boatload of mystery
it is, with a cargo of loose ends
not likely to be tied up
while we roam rootless
around the Earth.

I can say on my part
that I never meant
to deliver the first wound
and am sure each of you felt the same,
it was never in our nature,
I know that now; we hurt each other
through unsteady footing
as we rocked and fought storms
and lost sight of the horizon,
I know that now.

There are words each of us meant to say
which remained unsaid
and things we did say
that we left mostly undefined,
so let us
admit without judgment
that we did not understand
each other well enough to be clear
of our mutual necessities for the voyage;
let it pass that all those things were unclear
and will remain so,
let us accept that this is how we are
and who we are,

for we were put aboard
with blank charts,
no anchor, too little sail,
no engine worth the mention.
No need for such power
when there’s no course before us;
we were put here not to arrive,
but to journey.

If we do not see each other again
in this life or any other, let’s agree
to each take the time,
whenever we can,
to imagine us all standing at the rail
confused but delighted at the endless,
deathless sea before us
with no need to speak of desperation
for once. Imagine us all
in sunset, in sunrise, under a laughing moon.
Imagine a shared moment
where it didn’t need to make sense
that there was no sense to the voyage.

Imagine that moment
is this moment.

What is there to say but:

isn’t this
a grand, daft,
sacred sea we’re on?

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2 Comments | tags: love, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

September 13, 2009

NYC alert:

By Tony Brown

Details in the Show Schedule accessible at the top of the page, but here’s the story in a nutshell of a reading I’ll be participating in on November 3rd in NYC. Show up!!!

Who: “November 3rd Club” editors Victor D. Infante and Tara Betts host a night of poetry and politics featuring Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Corrina Bain, Tony Brown, Jane Cassady, Lea Deschenes, Amy Holman, Emily Kagan Trenchard, Geoff Kagan Trenchard, Erika Lutzner, Jon Sands, Jade Sylvan, Edwin Wilson Rivera, Darren Taffinder and Derek JG Williams.

When, and when should I get there: the reading is at 10 p.m. Tuesday, November 3rd, following the Urbana Poetry Slam. (And if you’re inclined, Victor and Lea are co-featuring at the Urbana Slam beforehand, so feel free to come early!)

Where: The Bowery Poetry Club,308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker), Manhattan.F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker; mail@bowerypoetry.com, (212) 614-050.

The November 3rd Club is available at:

http://www.november3rdclub.com/

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September 13, 2009

The Poet Reflects On The Nature Of His Body of Work

By Tony Brown

Dug a hole
with my face

Dug it wide but not deep
Then threw my face into a stream

Pulled it out sputtering
“damn, that’s cold”

to no one in particular
Scared a young couple on the bank half to death

They were so in love
I wanted to buy them a house

but of course I’d been digging
and still looked a sight so they screwed

I’d snotted myself solid
with dirt

and now it was mud
and I couldn’t breathe

Not sure what the hole was for
Not big enough for me

Maybe a dog-friend
familiar and lifelong dear

Maybe a bundle
made for concealment now

and discovery after I’m gone
A time capsule full of cryptic souvenirs

Maybe that young couple
will come back someday and find it

a pit of bones
or postcards from lost names

Maybe it’ll be a foundation
they’ll build that house on

and maybe one day the house will be haunted
and they’ll finally put two and two together

and one of them will say
“Remember that guy on the bank

who was soaking wet
muttering something

about digging a hole with only his face?
Remember how cold he said he was?

I can feel the chill now
Maybe we shouldn’t have built here

Maybe it wasn’t a sign
and now we’ve learned something

about making a home
on a crazy man’s strain

and we ought to move”
And they move

to a different river bank
less full of self-destruction and wasted efforts

and this saga of my folly will end there
leaving me to shake my head

in a good plain grave
someone else dug for me

still trying to clear my nose of dirt
while thinking about how little I really knew

of love and work
that time I shoved my face into the ground

and started to excavate
the shallow site of my future memorial

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September 12, 2009

Candid

By Tony Brown

When I saw
the photo of myself
I squirmed
for only a moment
then looked straight at it.

I saw a gray man
with a crooked smile,
my father’s face looking back at me,
sporting a half-mouth grin
I’d only ever seen in one photograph
from Korea, green before first combat
in his uniform,
his whole platoon around him,
his hair short, his eyes bright,
nine years before my birth.

In the picture he’s smirking
as if he knew even then
that his son would someday come
to a similar moment of recognition
and amused resignation,
a moment of humor
before a terrifying future,
that my face
would inevitably become his
in spite of all my years of being certain
that if I just kept my head down
and did everything he never did,
I could keep such a thing
from ever happening.

I wonder if he knew
that it would take this long.

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4 Comments | tags: heritage, identity, memory, poems, poetry | posted in poetry