Daily Archives: November 3, 2010

November 3, 2010

Poem For Bud

Memorable dog
that you are, pissing
on your trees,
lying down in prime sun to sleep,
offering a belly for my comfort
when I need to touch living flesh,
alerting on the slightest triviality
and reporting it to all:
“THERE! THERE! THERE! THERE!”

I”m going to miss you
one of these days, I know
that already. No way we’ll
spend the rest of our time
together, bud; you’ll go on
before me, you and your
signal tail and fresh eyes
on things I’ve long ignored.

I’m sure I’m going to see you
when I get there, wherever
it is. There will have to be things
I need to see, or will want
to see. Bud, I’m counting on you:

wait for me, just like you do now,
and shake a tail when you see me;
roll around in front of me
and then leap up like your old
puppy self and point me
toward the good stuff, the bad stuff,
all the stuff; tell me all about it, Bud,
with a sun drenched yelp of
“THERE! THERE! THERE! THERE!”

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November 3, 2010

Please

By Tony Brown

Please,

will you kiss
a highway through
the marshes
around my head and
open what has been closed?

Will you plunge
your learned fingers
through to my core
and coax that shadow
out into light and heat?

Will you please
soak my bones
in acid and make them
writhe? It’s been so long
since they tripped,
felt anything except
their dark muscle blanket,
their tendon tethers
holding them to
prescribed paths.

I’m not lonely
so much as empty,
not empty so much as
clueless as to what
fills me.

So please,
come and throw
corn meal on me
the way you’d dust
a warm but incomplete loaf
of good bread.

Come
in my eyes and wash them
the way you’d flush out
a poison;
the only floods they’ve ever known
are their own.

Bring me
to completion,
to myself. Please,
teach the stunted parts of me
a lesson about how to
surge, grow,
and fly.

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November 3, 2010

Slam Poem To Learn And Sing #3: Identify This

By Tony Brown

Being biracial in America
isn’t new
and neither is the fact that
America doesn’t like me
I am split
so America doesn’t like me
Because I do not fit
America doesn’t like me
Half of me is one thing
Half of me another
One file folder won’t do the trick
so America doesn’t like me

I’ve read the history
It’s all about figuring out where to fit
Ever since we dumped that 3/5 rule
we’ve forced everyone to fit
through blood quota and careful record keeping
through skin and eye and cheekbone check
through legislated confirmations of all of the above
we’ve eliminated “all of the above”
as a check box category
so America doesn’t like me

I’m not calling out black or white
Or red or brown or yellow
Stupid simple labels that say nothing
Color fields don’t tell the tale
of growing up with one foot in one grave
and one in the other
and the best explanation
of why America doesn’t like me
is that in a country built on bipolar thinking
folks like me scare everyone
They make up stories to cover the fear
“You look like this, you must be this”
Oh, America will not like me
when I say that being split creates a new whole
and a new hole in the armor of convenience
Here’s the secret of that new whole
(America doesn’t like me
for saying this
but it needs saying)
It’s not some living thing, this America
It’s just another box
Everyone’s got a box they call America
and they’re either in it or they’re out of it
and every box called America
looks different from every other American box
Someone keeps building these boxes
and makes us think we need them
But I think they’re made from the same stuff
the emperor wears
in that fairy tale
No boxes at all when it comes down to it
except the ones the con men built and talked us into
and it’s going to take someone like me
or a lot of someones like me
Someone the rest of you call half and half,
mutts, breeds, mixed bloods,
crossblood interruption in the boxing of us all
to say that the boxes aren’t real