Monthly Archives: July 2017

July 17, 2017

Quantum Superpositions

Whatever the fuck
I am,
I’m not Italian
pretty much ever
except when I am;
whatever.
Whatever the fuck
it is that I am,
it is not White
except when it is,
when I am, whatever.
Whatever the fuck
I am, it is not Mescalero
pretty much ever
except when I am,
when it is, whatever.
Whatever I am,
I’m not Indian, not Native,
not Indigenous — I am

whatever is in the box before
you look or name me —

(BTW,
did you know
Schroedinger’s experiment
was designed to show how
ridiculous the concept of
existing simultaneously
in multiple states was?)

whatever,
I exist
according to this world
only in collapse
of my totality. And

when it collapses
whatever is left is what
I’m supposed to
live:

the role
of the fucking whatever.

No lines,
no blocking,
no motivation —

just an act, a
character until

it’s time, and then
back in the box

to sit
in quantum superposition
until my crushed being
can again
be fucking peeped
by whoever for
whatever.

Leave a comment | tags: heritage, meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 16, 2017

Bellwether

By Tony Brown

There: a being visible
in the edge of the forest,

barely solid in the dusk;
silver mist, cloak with no face within.

Unwilling to find it supernatural
until other options are exhausted,

you call to it using names
of living people it might be,

ending with “Hello? Hello?
when there is no response

and there is still no response
with those greetings. Day dims

and that being, now firm
and opaque, moves into clear sight

in the backyard. You still can’t be certain
of what it is, but it seems honest

and ominous, not trying to hide
as it moves toward you.

You’ve heard of such things
lurking in other lands, poorer lands;

bellwethers, harbingers,
avatars. Perhaps divinity,

perhaps depravity, perhaps
something not defined well

by your limited experience. It seems
all news in recent days suggests

such beings have been among us
at all times, are more numerous

than ever now. You stare at it
approaching across land

you thought was safe,
thought was your own.

It’s stopped now, stands
in your sightline. Takes

the measure of your regard.
Waits for you to name it, then

to move toward it or flee;
waits to name you as well,

since it sees you as a silver mist,
a cloak with no face within.

None of us have names now
or faces. All of us clouds of fear

looming in each other’s woods
on the outskirts of safety.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

July 16, 2017

How We Keep Time At This Age

By Tony Brown

There are moments common to all of us
when we wake from sleep and do not know
the time or even the day, moments
when we decide not to find out right away.

I know that just as I do, you lie there disconnected
and think of all your firsts: first pet, crush, love, cigarette,
drink, blood, kiss, sex, death. All your recents:
current pet, crush, love, cigarette, drink, blood, kiss, sex.

You consider death separately, right before
the moment (common to all) when you choose
to look at the clock and remind yourself
what day of what week we are in. You consider

death separately as it means something different now
to contemplate the idea of the most recent death
in your world. You have to count on your fingers
and then get to know the calendar again, asking

if it was Todd or Joan or Aiden or Mike that was
the most recent. This is how we keep time now, how we
pull ourselves out of the blur. We fumble for glasses and phone,
asking: are we still here, still in recorded time?

Leave a comment | tags: death, meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 14, 2017

Underneath This Fire

By Tony Brown

This is how
I hope it will be
from here:

underneath this fire,
as required,
ash that when

I cool down
you may take
and scatter.

It is not cremation,
not accidental, not
visible flame I speak of

but a steady life of immolation
only seen upon
its dying away and

revelation of what
is left behind. I will not
glow as I burn, there will be

no smoke. Life
will continue as normal
and when it is over

there will be ash to whiten
bare ground that will
turn green next year

with savory herbs and
when you feed you will
remember me.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 13, 2017

Crowned Demon

By Tony Brown

When I was your crowned demon
I lived better. I slept better
and dined easily with no
shredding pain in my belly
after. I was kingly in my affect
yet had no subjects to fawn
for me, scrape for me, die
for me. I fought you like
any threatened being and
wore both winning and losing so well
you ground your teeth at night
with the nagging cancer of
victor’s envy.

Now that I’ve become
your logo, your clowned
honoree, your advertised
history, I can’t stop bleeding
inside. I see what you’ve made
on posters, hats, cigarette packs
to help you lay your claim
to what you think I was, to help you
twist me into believing
that all I am is memory and
template and rogue wave.
You name me ancestor without
a crumb of shame, name me
friend without a hand to offer,
name me chic without a care.

When I was your crowned demon,
your merciless savage, I was still
a better human than you.
When you named my children
nits, called me lice, I was
still a better human than you.
When I was your obstacle,
your plague, your big “in the way,”
I was still a better human than you.
When you beat me into pale imitation
and cut me free of my tongue,
I was still a better human than you,

and if I am now to be your mascot,
you had better learn how to sleep
with one eye on me, because
I recall what it meant to be
your crowned demon and as such
I am still
a better human
than you.

Leave a comment | tags: heritage, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

July 13, 2017

Channel G

By Tony Brown

What a true
religious experience
it would be
were we to learn that
some known star,
some common
twinkle, some blip
whose true influence
has long been hidden from us behind
astrologers’ misunderstanding
for millennia,

was in fact what we call God
and has been sentient
and laughing out there
in space, thinking of
what it has done
for us and to us,
and all the time we thought
it was all because
of Sirius or Betelgeuse
or some epic cluster
we’d configured
into an image of grand myth
or metaphor when in fact
it was a small yellow sun
not terribly far away
that had taken on the role
of our celestial deus ex machina
without us even knowing

and done it all for fun, on whims
and fancies, just to watch
what was happening here
for entertainment; imagine us learning
that it has invited other stars
to watch as well, that we are considered
interstellar appointment watching,
longest running show in this sector,

although it must be said that
the plots are getting
a little stale and whispers
are growing about
what, if anything, can be done
to erase the slide.

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

July 12, 2017

Revisionist History

By Tony Brown

(Originally posted 3/20/2012.)

In the full history of governments
it has never mattered how they start;
they’ve always ended the same way.

The venal game their way to power
and stay there regardless
of the label they choose to wear.

In the full history of nations
it has never mattered how you love them;
they’ve only liked you back, only at certain times.

In the full history of history
what happens has never mattered;
all that ever matters is what is said

about what happened
or did not happen, or is said
to have not happened.

I tell you these things
not to make you despair
or get you angry.

I tell you this not to make you
shrug away the urge to justice
or fall into dumb acceptance;

nor do I do it
to delight in your
earnest helplessness.

I tell you this to say
battles are never won; instead
they become games to be replayed.

You will lose, and you will win;
some will die playing,
killed by others who are also playing.

There are no nations but two:
the strugglers and the lords.
Both are everywhere, speak all languages.

If you want to pursue happiness,
chase it
but recall

history
and nation
and government

pursue happiness too —
they do it, always,
by hunting you.

In the history of humans
there’s dancing and loving,
making of art and music,

good sweat,
grand tears,
and lots of laughter.

Those lift us into being human,
keep us hoping,
make us happy

beyond the vagaries of
what the lords desire.
It’s our story

to hold, not theirs to hand us.
Do not forget that
when you tell it to your children.

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

July 12, 2017

Posts on the Patreon Blog

By Tony Brown

I’ve started getting even more patrons on the new Patreon site, and have begun putting up some short critical essays on aspects of my poetry that are available to patrons only.

It’s gratifying to have some of you be willing to offer some material support for what I do. It’s already making a difference in my monthly resources, and for that I thank you from the bottom of my ink-stained heart.

I want to reiterate that the POETRY, all of it, will ALWAYS be here and always be available for free. Only supplemental content will be available on the Patreon site behind a paywall of sorts. This may include some eBooks, videos, audio, etc., but the poems will always be here.

If you’d like more information on all of this…you can use the link below, and there’s also a link up at the top of the page on the Dark Matter blog itself that can help you.

Thanks in advance,
T

Tony Brown’s Patreon site

Leave a comment | tags: Patreon, plugz | posted in Patreon news

July 11, 2017

My Gods

By Tony Brown

You come at me
and come at me
as you have for years
with gods
you brought with you
from your land
and tell me I am
cursed, doomed,
blighted.

You cast spells,
toss masses;

lay ghosts under my feet;

offend with talk of
how wrong-soaked
my soul is.

You brandish
the things you stole from us
as if they were your own
wands or censers or
crucifixes,
as if your hands
upon them are
enough
to use their power?

Listen to me,
missionary;
listen to me,
pagan colonizer;
listen to me,
plastic shaman,
thief,
dog

so unleashed from
your own stone and sea
that you cannot feel
how lost you are:

you are
on ground where
my gods live and
no matter how far yours
traveled to get here,
they’re still

tourists, they’re surely
tired,

they certainly
do not
belong;

I have gods
at my back
rested and waiting and
grounded deeply
in this earth.

Nothing of yours
has ever
shaken them.

Nothing
ever will.

1 Comment | tags: heritage, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in uncategorized

July 10, 2017

Superheroes

By Tony Brown

Seems sometimes
I am surrounded by
armies of superhero
fans poring through
canon and alternate
canon and non-canon
for secrets
and larger truth

and here am I
impervious, because

so often in my youth
my heroes were
your villains and
your heroes’ canons
sketched and cut my heroes
into fodder
and nothing more

To resist such obsessions now
seems to be
my lonely path

to sanity

1 Comment | tags: heritage, meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 10, 2017

Mon Dieu, J’Accuse

By Tony Brown

Did you mean
to drop

your entire meaning
for us before us

in our
quiet moments

as if they were held
in a holy sphinx

carved
from hard sugar

into such clear water
that we could not help

seeing it dissolve
so swiftly

that we ended up
with a permanent ghost

unsettled
in our memory

as if we’d seen
your face in that pale shadow

of deity and from that
understood

how all things
work in tandem

and now we
have forgotten

all but the fact
that we once knew

and sit bitter in
the aftermath

of that lost, melted
truth

because if you did it
knowing how we

would fail
and despair

it becomes hard for me
at least

to credit any effort
toward art or

relationship or
society at all if it you

are to be
part of it

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

July 8, 2017

The Mysterious Hanging Boulder

By Tony Brown

There is a difference
between knowing
the Mysterious Hanging Boulder

is safe and feeling it is safe.
You stand under it, smiling.
I take a picture.

The sign
that says it’s balanced
on three points of pressure

and weighs tens of thousands
of pounds is visible
just over your shoulder.

In my head I get
how these things work and
we both laugh and move on,

but I’m not in my head much
these days. In my body
I’m terrified. What part of

balance suggests it lasts
forever? I’m nowhere near
strong enough to hold up

the rock, to lift it if it falls,
to do anything more than
document and scream.

The Mysterious Hanging Boulder
is going to be there a long while,
longer than we will, I think. But

I don’t think much these days.
I feel more than think and I feel
like I want to put an arm around you

and get us away from here, no matter
how stupid that seems, no matter
what the words on the sign

seem to promise about
stability and balance
and permanence.

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

July 7, 2017

Orange Crush

By Tony Brown

In a New Hampshire
tourist trap cave, confused
in mid-step
about which way to turn
by the dim light,
my hammering chest,
and the sudden rubber
in my knees.

I’m not getting
any younger, of course. No
one is, even the kid behind me
who settles against the wall
with obvious impatience,
waiting for me
to move again.

I take another second
and grunt myself through
the crevice someone long ago
joyfully named “Orange Crush.”
I think of soft drinks and R.E.M.
and the Denver Broncos and

what if I have a heart attack here?
Don’t know what that kid would do
if I did. I doubt “Orange Crush”
means the same to him
as it does to me but I’m sure
its meaning would change
forever for him then, becoming
“fat old man expiring before my eyes.”

Fat old man expiring before my eyes,
none of us getting younger, militia flags
on the trucks in the parking lot,
“Blue Lives Matter” T-shirt on the kid,
the Orange Crush in constant redefinition.

Someone once said, “the personal
is political.” Someone once said to me,
“Not everything is political, y’know.” Someone
once said “isn’t it nicer not to talk politics
and just be happy?”

I make it out of the cave into
the light, the view across the valley
into the White Mountains. Someone
named them that, someone who came here
and called them White.

That Someone has sure said a lot of things.

Me? I’m just saying,
I’m suddenly sorry
that was the last cave on the trail.

It was cool in there, and dark, it smelled
as it’s likely smelled since the last Ice Age,
and I didn’t feel like I had
anything to worry about
except dying.

Leave a comment | tags: poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

July 4, 2017