Monthly Archives: July 2019

July 31, 2019

My Lesser Self

In a small retreat
from all my clutter
I chose to leave
my best self at home
and take my lesser self
to a rock I climbed often
as a child.

While my best self
took care of business and
swept my dusty floors
the weaker self and I sat
on cold granite and did not care
how dirty we became
as we scuffed our knees
climbing down

to step in stinking black mud,
stumbling along the banks
of the river once full of
live dyes from the mills
that still holds toxins enough
that no one would dare drink
or eat from there,
though there were
fishers who must have hoped
for catch and release;

in the distance I could see
my childhood home,
a place I would not take
my lesser self to see:
no need, that’s where
we both were born

and then it was time
to go home, put my lesser self
to bed and let it sleep
without dreams of all this
while my better self and I
sat together and pretended
none of that day had happened.

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

July 30, 2019

Toward Oakham

By Tony Brown

North of Worcester
driving toward storms
through mad copper dusklight

in state park woods
sheltering beauty, demons,
Revolutionary legends, witch shadows:

those old settler myths
die hard. Upon reaching
a curtain of rain,

that light softens,
tinges toward silver; then
comes a voice chasing

a spark in the clouds.
Anything under the trees
that wants to cause harm

will have to wait its turn.
Then again perhaps nothing
is malicious out here

and all the danger’s
in the head of
a beholder

who just wants
to get home
after a long day

and leave
all this history and
his personal ghosts behind

to dissipate
in the last silver light
under the colonized trees.

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

July 29, 2019

Suppose

By Tony Brown

Suppose you looked hard at your life, your existence, your being, the fact of your physical presence on the planet; looked at it and saw that you, the watered-down remnant of the combination of Native and Italian ancestry, were the site and the desired product of the Genocide.

Suppose you were raised with the words “never forget you’re not White” hammered into you and yet you ended up looking in the mirror at that which was undeniably White-passing and privileged and saw, to your eyes and upbringing, the image of a great Evil.

Suppose you could never shake the constant whisper of “you shouldn’t exist” in your ear.

Suppose that as you aged and decayed and body parts began to betray you and your abilities, you found it increasingly wearying simply to get up and go, yet more and more you understood how important it was to get up and go.

Suppose you lived in the incipient days of a Fascist takeover spearheaded by a man whose hatred of people like you was becoming more and more palpable at the moment you were least equipped to confront it.

Suppose people kept assuming you were ready and able for the War you knew was coming and did not see you as anything more than their expectations of you.

Suppose this all came together for you on a hot summer morning in a pool of sweat in a soaked bed sheet on a couch in the kitchen staring out the front window at an empty bird feeder two empty feeders and birds staring back at you.

Would you go outside and water the garden?

3 Comments | tags: aging, heritage, poetry, political poems, prose poems | posted in prose poems

July 25, 2019

The Physical

By Tony Brown

There were adaptations you needed
and ones you wanted
and others you never dreamed
you’d have to make

Out of your body you come
into a new space

to look back at
the form you’ve always known

You startle yourself
How much you’ve changed

How is it possible
that you feel so new and brave
in spite of the growing volume
of the pestering voice insisting
that all your changes
have not stopped time

You look at the proof of their insistence
on display in your body there below you
All that work and all your changes
and there you are anyway

You choose the present

May as well settle back into
the physical and see
where this may go

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

July 25, 2019

Vine Borer

By Tony Brown

Was any of the work
or expense worth it
for this:

plants destroyed
before the full harvest
by something foreseeable
and preventable?

Staring down
at what was salvaged
in the moment
and knowing it is also
likely doomed as this
has happened before,

all my Work appears to me
like this pile of mush
and cankers, yet I keep
planting again and again.

It’s a reflex now:

every morning, a reflex;
each seed, a reflex;
any tearing down, a reflex;
recriminations, a reflex;
rationalizations, a reflex;

detached leg still twitching;
one bloom holding on
as dead tissues
fall slack.

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

July 24, 2019

I Burn Twice

By Tony Brown

It is lazy to call this fatigue
or exhaustion. It is evil
to call this resignation or
surrender. I don’t have the right
to surrender or resign.
By being ill and tired
I am doing evil. Smaller evil, maybe,
than others do; nevertheless
my exquisite miniature wrongs
enable Evils larger than mine
by geometric measures of scale
and so I am part of them.
I can tell myself every lie
in the big book of denial
about this, justify
a greed for self care
until I am exhausted
from that alone; in the end
neither self-talk
nor self-coddling will matter
when everything begins to burn;
all fingers will point at me,
the lazy demon,
as I burn twice, and I will howl
not from pain alone,
but in agreement
with your disgust.

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

July 22, 2019

Song For Shootings

By Tony Brown

Originally posted in 2004. Revised many times since.

Do you recall
Maggie Apple lying in the street
with her eggshell nails
and her skinny legs with the calves that looked
as if they’d been attached to her bones
as an afterthought?

Do you recall old Ronald Wrong
whose house smelled of wine but
looked like a glove full of bees,
so when they banged down the door
and a host of trouble
flew out of its ramshackle fingers
they shot him as if he were
a queen, a danger queen?

Do you recall
any of those salty throated boys and girls
who put their breath in just the wrong place
at the wrong time so that magic stopped working,
and they died like the rest of the pack?

Tonight the same lights flashing,
the same crowd gathering: the names
must be changed to protect the names alone
because the innocent are never saved.

One could say
such things
just happen; or
one could say
that the way
the boy is crumpled
leaking onto the floor of
the stairwell is irrelevant, or that
the cop’s statement
that he thought he saw
a gun was relevant.

If one could find the CD
the boy was said to be holding
when he was shot, one could see
if the subject matter of said CD
included guns or shooting
and thus was relevant.

If one could be objective about this
one could make up a simple song
to commemorate the event.
It would have a short verse and
the chorus would be over
in a heartbeat.

He was alive,
now he is gone;
smart kid who did
nothing wrong.

That’s not enough.
Fell down the stairs.
Bullet inside him.
Everyone stares.

Gun or wallet.
CD or knife.
Wrong place and time.
So much for life.

You say
if he had only known what was going to happen,
he would never have gone up to the roof at all?

You say
they post those doors for a reason, and what
was he doing there in the first place?

When the people who live there say,
going to the roof? Everyone does that.
It’s a quick route to the next building, you say,
well, that’s not supposed to happen…

Do you recall Maggie Apple,
red sand bag
in the street?

Do you recall Ronald Wrong
stung by bullets,
tumbling off his porch?

Did you forget all those kids?
Forget about
phone, wallet,
skin, voice,
hat, hood,
place, time;

did you forget
how they leaked out on TV
in front of you sitting there
calmly chewing…

do you pretend
not to see that
something must depend
on this happening
or it would not happen
so often?

You wring your hands,
hum a little shame song;

then, you swallow.

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

July 22, 2019

Minou Minou

By Tony Brown

Fifty thousand cats
owned by twenty thousand grandmothers
in my hometown and
every last one of those cats
was named Minou

That should tell you
everything you need to know
about my hometown
but if that’s not enough
you need to know

that naming a cat Minou is in French
the same as in English naming it Kitty
We all knew at once what to call
any random cat we ran across
so every Minou belonged to all of us

Fifty thousand cats we shared
with the twenty thousand grandmothers
who shared us among themselves
All those eyes in windows felt at times
like care and at others like fear

In the evenings when the streetlights went on
twenty thousand voices calling “Minou Minou”
as well as “get yourselves home it’s dark”
and who were they calling out to
but cats and kids eager to play in the night

We knew the kindly nature of those
who watched us as we tried to live and grow
all the replaceable cats and kids
with the interchangeable names
long lines of us stretching back to Quebec

from where the ancestors came
with armloads of cats
all named Minou
and kids with names
that varied little until only recently

If they still call the cats Minou
back in my hometown where I do not go
because of how hard it was
to play in the dark when I was young
then I have no need to go back

In my new dark home I take comfort
in my own cats who are not named Minou
far from twenty thousand pairs of eyes
working to make sure I’d end up exactly like
all who’d come before me

It would have killed me
to end up there listening every night
to voices calling Minou Minou
taking little notice
of which cats showed up

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

July 20, 2019

Hard Birds

By Tony Brown

Think of how hard the birds are
that survive seasons
we shudder to consider.

Every sparrow on the feeder
is a better animal than I
who cannot live long without shelter

out there whether torrent
or blizzard or a scorcher
like today. We think them gentle

and fragile, but today I saw one
peck the head of a squirrel who was
robbing him of suet until

the gray pirate ran
and did not return. Humans,
think of how we condescend

to animals who neither live
as long nor build as high
as we do, yet there they are

and there they have been and
when we say there will be none

if we do not change our ways,
I think we lie to ourselves
about our power to kill the earth.

If what is here now dies or drowns,
something will return from death
and retake these niches for their own.

It won’t likely be us,
and that’s why we cry:
not for the tough little birds,

but for our own looming departure
that we call “the end,”
centering mass extinction

on ourselves when after we’re gone,
whatever looks like a sparrow then
will say, in relieved bird voice: Finally.

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

July 17, 2019

Swelling On The Vine

By Tony Brown

Outside, heat
and humidity promise
certain rain, likely thunder.

You left the first cucumber
and the first summer squashes
on the vine for a good last soaking

before picking them
tomorrow. Crossed fingers
that downpours leave them intact,

that they will get
one more day
swelling on the vine.

First thunder, now; rain’s
not far behind, likely within
the next half-hour.

It’s comfortable, cool
indoors. You could go out
and pick them now,

stay dry, savor
your fruits of labor;
then the rain starts.

It’s hope,
you tell yourself,
hope and not laziness,

hope and not some fear
or some demon
of procrastination that keeps you

from the harvest. One more day
till perfection. It’s not quite time.
They aren’t quite ready.

You turn on news that’s filled
with tales of a monstrous thing
on the vine, ripening;

quickly you turn it off
and close your eyes.
You aren’t quite ready

for that harvest, either;
you try to convince yourself
it’s not quite time.

It’s a contest, always,
between perfection and
rot. You as always bet on the hope

of perfection as lightning
and heavy, heavy rain
mass around you, images

of bounty sure to come
crowding out the death
riding on the rising wind.

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

July 16, 2019

Jumble

By Tony Brown

Someone says to me
that if I don’t dig it here then
I should go back to where
I came from.

You are asking me to choose
what stays and what goes.
Which half of myself
should I send back,
and to where?

Divest myself of legs and cock
and balls and ass
and say unto them

go, run back
to Napoli?

Keep the top half
here, call it my Indigenous
game piece, make moves
as best I can?

Do I have it
backwards and it ought to be
feet don’t leave here now
while the chest and arms and head
are boxed up and sent to Italy?

I should perhaps split down the middle?

Or carve myself to pieces and
distribute this to there, that
to here? Say, this finger is
New Mexico, pass it over
Sierra Blanca before
letting it fall to rest
on the rez where I’ve never lived?
Send this elbow overseas
to Caserta, to Marciano Arpio
where I’ve never lived?

What cells should go where
if I am to go back to
where I came from?
None of me is directly from right here
so I already feel dislocated
on my own land, after all.
Perhaps I should consider
the land of my birth,
New Jersey? Land of my
conception, Germany?

All you care about is that I’m gone,
you sneering so certainly
with your comfortable masses behind you.
You never trusted
a half-breed anyway, right?
According to you I’m a mistake.
According to you I’m an anomaly,
an aberration, a never shoulda been.
I’ve only lasted this long
because I look like you —

and right now, considering
the white stench suffocating all,
I wish I could discard
my Whiteness
as I’m not sure, ever,
that it’s not me
who stinks —
no matter how true,
it frightens me to say it out loud.

Absurd.

I’m from here, though
I am a jumble.

I will pull the pieces together and say
and do and love and try for
wholeness, not half this,
not half that, try to belong
to myself and be true to myself
and everyone before me
and behind me
and far ahead.

You don’t like it?

You. Go.

2 Comments | tags: heritage, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

July 13, 2019

Wisteria

By Tony Brown

Originally posted, 2010; revised, 2014; revised again 2019.

i called her wisteria.
wisteria,
in its short bloom.
thought of her as warm days
and cold nights in mud season
when grass blades
start their rise from the soil.

she was remarkable.

she left me, i was lost,
though it was a night
and a day and a night again
before i could cry
for her, a long numb sweep
of hours in succession.

i wept in the privacy of the bedroom
that was newly empty.

i emptied myself.

i cried more as the walls inside me melted
and i sweated them out.
i was paper thin afterward.
light passed through me
and from within i was lit.

this is grief, i said, and it is a cold wind.
this is unseasonable weather.
the flowers on the early vines shriveling.
this is her doing, i told myself.

i said, i have been illuminated by her.
because of her, i shine.

she was much more than my purpose.
so much more than i had ever thought to say of her,
sun of a distant unglimpsed sky over a world i hadn’t explored.

not only wisteria,
but forsythia; violets;
thistles, oaks, redwoods, fig vines.

she was the very bones of spring and beyond.
i cut her down with my small interpretation.

she was a sun i will not see again.

here in a twilight of weeping
i indulge the urge
to endlessly recreate the moment
when i lost my chance
to stop and listen to her
and let her expand within me
as i should have.

what a fool.

the moment of loss is deep weather,
a season of interruption
when the simplest answers go unnoticed.

i should have been motionless
and perhaps
i could have held her here,
or perhaps not. perhaps

it was because i thought of her as
wisteria, delicate and frail,
that when she heard me
she was gone.

i still shine with her still within me
but try as i might
i still light nothing beyond me.

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

July 12, 2019

Friday Night Guitar Poem

By Tony Brown

On a Friday night
I have a date with
my guitar
a bundle of weed
and all my insecurity

because in the afternoon
I was bound by frail family
to their service
and in the morning I felt
every twinge of my chronic diseases

I need to get back to the doctor
but I can’t make myself go
because of what they might tell me
and I can’t let my family go
because of what they might call me

while we’re at it
I am only surreptitiously fighting the beasts
who are owning the world right now

I ought to buy a gun
to kill a fascist

but I know
my hands make me a terrible shot
unless the gun is pressed
against my head

I do the research
compile names
addresses and hatreds
but who is going to care
among my gentle friends
who are sure that love will conquer all
once they are bulldozed
into the poisoned earth
I need to seize the guitar
the way I used to hold my pen
before I stopped writing poems
in favor of playing guitars
with these broken hands
full of dead nerves that hate me
as I have grown to hate so much

all I want is one good touch
all I want to love is one good person

but instead I fear the voice inside saying
fuck black brown white
center left and right
America
and the rest of the world
(the dolphins too)
and all the love the great unknown holds tight
instead of letting it flow

I want to hold my guitar
and play it loud
drown out the butchers
claiming my dying ears
for their own

singing me hemorrhage songs
drawing me into their arms

I’m tired of you if you think this is
remotely a good poem
remotely a prayer
can’t see this is a wound opening with a hiss
once cherished blood
(yours and mine) flowing out
on a Friday night

you ought to
thank God for this guitar
in my hands
which is not at all a gun

2 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in uncategorized

July 11, 2019