Monthly Archives: September 2015

September 7, 2015

Tomatoes

By Tony Brown

Lost poem that keeps nagging me.
Dates to 2000 or so following the death of a close friend at Easter that year.
This is an attempt to recreate it, knowing I’m no longer the person who wrote the original. RIP, Terry…

I come home
thinking of fall and 
craving tomatoes.

I go to my backyard beds
and pick whatever’s ripe
for my favorite summer meal:
thick-sliced plum tomatoes,
Gorgonzola cheese,
a few shreds of basil, 
balsamic vinegar,
light on the olive oil.

You once questioned me:
why not traditional Mozzarella?
I said it’s because I feel that 
strong blues make flavors pop
and without strong flavors,
what’s the point?  You tasted it,
agreed, told me later
you could no longer imagine 
not using a strong blue cheese
in a tomato salad, and I was 
as well pleased as I could be
that we’d fallen once again into 
the same place on something — 

I remember this as I stare into
strong blues and bright reds
in this bowl, stare into oil bubbles, 
a brown slick of vinegar, remember
you weren’t here to help me
plant this year, to plant the beds
scant weeks after your passing;
weren’t here to help me weed
and toss and water and feed;
realize again, as if for the first time,
that you aren’t here to help me savor
the likely last summer salad of the year,
picked ahead 
of the inevitable 
killing frost.

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September 6, 2015

The Ceiling Called God

By Tony Brown

When I was young,
God lived in buildings. 
We heard He was everywhere
but we knew his home address
was down the street,  just past 
the market.  

Now I think God is a building.  
No walls, no floor, just a ceiling
as high as one can imagine. 
Every door you can find, marked or not,
is an illusion that one must work with
to find the path to lead into God. 

Some tell me I’m not right
or I’m downright wrong
as they sneer about the whole notion
of The Ceiling Called God; no matter.
There’s infinite room
for all of them
under those rafters
when there are no walls to divide us, 
when there’s no floor upon which 
to trample each other as we rise
toward a great height 
we will never touch.
God The Ceiling
is always out of reach,

doesn’t know what we’re up to, 
doesn’t care. It hangs over us
without fussing and war and struggle,
with no gender, no creed, no race,
not even a face. Serene in its indifference
to those things, the Ceiling Called God
does its job and assumes we
must be doing the same.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in poetry

September 3, 2015

The Best Eyes

By Tony Brown

The best eyes to me are always the ones
with a slight cast to them
as they focus on things unseen,

such as the ghosts of vintage pets
tapping across the old linoleum floor
of the tilted kitchen,

or the glimpses
of long dead children darting
into the hall closet to hide,

children who are not there 
when we jerk open the door
to catch them, though we can hear them giggling

somewhere else in the house.  Aren’t those
the best eyes?  I may not love the person
who owns them, but I cannot deny

my love for those eyes that can see
what I cannot, eyes I admire
for their cursed accuracy

now that I am so blunted
by age and pain and cynicism
that I am trying to stop believing in such things

before my sorrow
at never seeing them
can crush me, at last, into nothing but blind dust.

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September 2, 2015

My Dance, My Bad, My Deep

By Tony Brown

Originally posted 2/7/2013.

My dance, my bad, my deep…
gave a sorrow opening,
loosed it on
the gap within, and now:

ornery. Tantrum.
Layabout and cry. Going to victim
this whole long day;  go pick me some kudzu,
funeral bouquet for never-ending grief show.

Still, got rocker hips, roller hips, jazz
groin and lips and hips;
 joy must end up somewhere
when pushed from head and heart…thus,

I end up as one sad grinder.  End up bad.
Bad, sinking in deep but still, there’s
one way to set it off
and hold it back — 

so I’m off to music while still in the hole
to give my bad, my deep a resistance,
give it rhythm, a big mole digging in 
under the roots, charged up,

rubbling my dark village, quake cracking,
flipping dirt into the light.  When I, frightened, shake,
I still gotta dance my dance, my bad, my deep;
I dance, even if I dance sad,  because that’s my gotta happen.

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September 2, 2015

Eggplant Parmesan Versus Evil

By Tony Brown

I understand the glorious alchemy
of salting slices of just picked raw eggplant 
to draw up the bitter essence from the flesh
so that it may be rinsed away, 

and it’s not hard at all for me to delight
in the mysteries of the scent 
rising from the oven as the slices
are baked for inclusion in a dish
to be served late tonight to someone well loved.

I understand these things.
I feel the joy of service and making
when I turn to them from news of this world
that’s starving for such joy.

I don’t know how to approach those children
dead on beaches and in the streets; 

how to speak to those among us so willing 
to let freedom be wrung out of us,

can’t bear to lose the sweetness
being drawn from us daily;

I don’t know how to love a nation
so openly bent on hate and madness, 

how to love and live in that world — but

I can ladle good fresh tomato sauce
onto the layers of eggplant and lay on
thick cheese; I can bake it and wait for it
to come into its glory; I can broil it briefly 
until it bubbles, I can set it before a loved one
and say “here’s something”
with some small joy,

for here indeed is something,
something small
made from food I grew to be good
and food I sought out to make it better; 
this is a thing I can do
to make love visible 
that is too often hidden.

It’s not enough,
but tonight it will have to do
to keep away despair,

to fill us up.

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