Stopped Short

Mom, I never trusted you.
Seems like I had good reason.
Seems like something
was telling me you were lying
about something big.

The Monte Carlo?  I recall
the black car and the white roof.
I don’t recall the face of the man
who owned it.  You say, now,
he was my vanished father,

and not Keith, that rubber-faced twerp,
drunken little man I’ve called my father
since spit was wet.  You ended up
with him versus what I recall
of the loud and flashy and wire wheeled

Chevrolet and its plaid coated driver.
What was his name, I asked you.  All you did
was cry and ask how this could matter
when life has been so good and plain
and quiet.  With him, you sobbed, it would have been

all noise all the time, Fourth of July
every night.  Well, maybe I would have liked that,
I shouted.  Maybe a few explosions
might have helped around here.  Maybe not,
you said. Maybe not for you, I said — and stopped to think.

 

About Tony Brown

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A poet with a history in slam, lots of publications; my personal poetry and a little bit of daily life and opinions. Read the page called "About..." for the details. View all posts by Tony Brown

3 responses to “Stopped Short

  • leamuse's avatar leamuse

    Ah yes, my sources tell me Mother’s Day is nigh upon us. For many of us it may arouse the serpents we hoped were asleep under their rocks.

  • Daisy's avatar Daisy

    This is an amazing piece, how long have you been doing this for? Full of admiration for your blog 🙂

    • Tony Brown's avatar Tony Brown

      How long have I been writing, or blogging the results? The answer to the former would be roughly 43 years (I published my first poem in a children’s magazine when I was 9) in total, getting serious about it being a lifelong calling at around age 14. Blogging the resulting poems — well, been posting poems online for a long time, but this blog goes back almost ten years as it includes poems imported from my LiveJournal account. On here, you can find close to 2000 poems, I suspect…Thank you for your kind words! Plenty to dig through for more reading… 😉

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