Author Archives: Tony Brown

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.

Gone On A Gust

Let me make certain
that I have wrung
from my self
every possible drop
before I dry up
and blow away.

I’ll be only
a small cloud,
a dust devil
on the sidewalk,
if I do it right.

My worst fear is 
that when I pass
I shall pass
as a tornado
with its attendant pain
and wreckage.

Not that such damage
would be unexpected
considering what I’ve
left behind in life
so far

but one should 
after a certain age strive
to leave less mess,
to ghost the party
having become
a grateful husk

which, when
the time comes,
falls apart
in a sweet smoke. Let me be
gone on a gust.

Let any legacy of mine
not be based in how I pass.
Let it show in what I left
that was not me and my
attendant troubles,
but was the work of spiting

and triumphing over those;
but as for this person — no.  
Let me be forgotten — my atoms,
my soil, my funks and wars
and storms. Let me pass
without notice

into that
good, good night.


Note from the musical side of this project…

The Duende Project (the band in which I do poetry and a little guitar while three really great musicians make it all sound good) just released a free download of the poem “Falconers,” a tribute to librarians everywhere — you can read more about it at the site.  Available for free or pay what you want right now.

All of our other work is there too — buy single tracks from any of our five albums, or grab the whole discography as a download for one discounted price.

thanks in advance, 
T

Falconers

NOTE:  If you are having trouble listening to or downloading anything, could you let me know?  There MAY be an issue outside the USA but I’m having trouble pinpointing it.  Thanks.


Beer Time For The Mystery Crank

sit back, ease a hand into
the cooler, snag a beer,
open it and take a long pull
with one eye on
the neighbors and how they
wash their cars, how they
garden. they’re doing it
all wrong. you are better 
and faster and more productive
with your time than they are
which is why you’ve got
beer time now and they don’t.
of course, they don’t know you’re
watching and judging, you
neighborhood ghost — as far as
they are concerned you’re just
the mystery crank in the old Camry
that no one talks to and that’s fine
with everyone. it sure suits you right down
to your pale toes. leaves more time
for beer time, for sitting and judging
and watching incompetence
while wondering how you got so old
and everyone else got so damn stupid.
ease back with another beer and think
a little more, for a little while longer —
how much longer, you wish you knew
how much longer it’s going to be.


Ride This Train

In a crowd of those
laughing and pleased
with themselves and their words
for a minute or two

Been trying to write my own ticket
Spending my words
like subway tokens 
to get nowhere really

Realizing that my tokens
are anachronisms
for this crowd
I look around for

a faintly rumbling track
and get myself up
to the edge
to wait

thinking to disturb them
and make myself
a splatter of memory for them
for at least a minute or two

But of course I cannot jump
so I get on the train
with everyone else
Seeing how many of them

have the same clear
and hunted look I am wearing
Recalling how many of them had been
standing as close to the rails as I

In a minute or two
this train will stop
Some will file off
Others will get on

using their own versions
of tokens or transit cards
Many wearing the same clear
and hunted face

which may in fact be
the truest and most trusted ticket to ride
If you are born to ride this train
through these darkest tunnels

for anything longer than a minute or two
your certainty that you don’t belong
may be the surest proof that in fact
you do


Pure Sound (revised)

heavy revision to poem from earlier today…

If I were a pure sound
I’d be low hum in the concert hall
before the first note is struck, 

sound of 
a rung bell 
fading;

enough presence
to make myself known
without intruding,

enough uncertainty
that one could argue 
for hours if I should be

considered
part of the Music.
If I were pure sound

I’d insinuate, whisper,
murmur. I would
barely be there

simply so I could
stay with you, 

right in the ridge of your ear,

a tone
almost unnoticed
behind daily din;

disappearing
at the moment 
you fell asleep

as I prayed, sotto voce, 
to be permitted to pulse on 
in your dreams.


Pure Sound

If I were a pure sound
I’d be a low hum in the concert hall
before the first note is struck, 

or the sound of 
a rung bell
fading;

enough presence
to make myself known
without intruding,

enough uncertainty
that one could argue 
for hours if I should be

considered
part of the Music — 
I do, of course, but then again

I think the indecision
and arguing over that
is also part of the Music:

sometimes percussion,
sometimes counterpoint melody.
If I were pure sound,

I’d stay with you,
right in the ridge
of your ear;

disappearing
at the moment
you fell asleep

unless I were allowed
to pulse on
into your dreams;

if I were pure sound,
purely sound,
I’d be honored

to sing 
in your sleep
for as long as I am wanted there.


The Authority Cultivator

the authority cultivator
is possessed
by its almanac fictions

it cannot help you
by design

it will be a reach
to lift your own yoke

to march is not enough

you must stare
all cracker 
impulse
including your own
down

toss it a grenade’s worth
of humor then 
as it fumes

snatch away what you are owed

hurry into risk
rock it till it kneels

spoil it as best you can

hurry


Insistent Mistakes

Insistent mistakes
frame the debates
among the factions
righting wrongs
and dispensing justice;

insistent mistakes spilling
from mouths and documents,
trickling into the water supply,
chuckling as they embed themselves
wherever they can live longest;

insistent mistakes
disguising themselves,
and once disguised becoming

prayers, doctrines, orders, law;

clothed in what they claim 
is faux-leopard — don’t believe
it — can’t you smell the blood there?
Speaking in what they say
is God’s only tongue — how odd 
that it’s the one language
you understand.

Insistent mistakes become
conventional and eventually 
canonical, and then 
insistent mistake is piled upon 
insistent mistake;

the stack reaches the sky,
blocks the Sun,
confuses you into taking
Dark for Light — 

insisting upon it, in fact.


First Decrees For The New World

Originally posted 3/14/2014.

From now on,
those who must

for the sake of family or form
mourn in public
a person they did not love,
one who may in fact have been
loathed and feared,
shall (after the funeral) be granted
a huge, selfish wish.

From now on,
those who must

in the presence of general or specific bigotry
bite their tongues to save a job and to provide
for their loved ones shall be granted 
one roundhouse swing at and full connection with 
a target of their choosing, and they shall get away
clean.

From this day forth,
those whose lives

have been slated for demolition, 
slotted for dimunition,
whose 
lives have regularly been broken
by the blows of ignorant policy,
shall be given keys to once-locked doors,
matches and gasoline to use as they see fit,
and violins
for something to do after
the burning 
begins.

This shall not be called “karma,”
as one 
should not have to wait
till the next life for recompense.  
This shall not be called
“revenge,” as there’s too much
to avenge and so much work to do
that can’t be done if vengeance 
takes hold.

This shall be called bookkeeping — 

accounts will be 
reckoned and settled,
with the balance owed 
to be determined 
by those to whom so much
is owed.


Holding Her Breath

Our previously reliable
front walk daffodils
haven’t yet bloomed.

I’m watching the trees in vain
for the customary signs
of imminent breakout.

It feels a little
like Gaia is holding
her Spring-quickened breath

before a plunge
into an ice-skimmed
drowning pool

and thinking 
about diving deep
then taking forever to return.


The Answer

An inclination
of mine that sets me
rolling downhill
more often 
than not
is to begin each day

with a question
and then spend all day
not answering it. 

Not just not answering it,
but fleeing from the work
of answering it,

sometimes through pleasure,
sometimes through wallowing
in agony or what to me feels like
agony — it would likely
resemble simple irritation to you,

but then again, 
you’d probably just
answer the question
off the top of your head
when it first came up
and get on with living.

We are inclined differently — 
you toward the ascent, me
facing the other way. It’s not
a moral failing

but it is a failing, a hole
deep in my metal
that you can’t see, a hole 
that will crack open
and break me someday
when at last I collide

with the bottom of the drop.

On that day I will be unsurprised
and frankly disappointed
if you do anything 
beyond social tears
and a shrug 
to see me off;
if on that day you break

because of my breaking
and you don’t 
quickly heal,
that will mean I was wrong

about everything,
about all of it, it will mean

that I should have faced those questions
with the first answer
I could come up with
whether it was wrong or not,
and then gotten on with living

as if I was right.


Gentrification Comes To The Hill

Each unit in this building has a clothesline outside
the back porch window.
On the clothesline at the far top left
hangs a white rayon shirt.
On the shirt, a majolica-styled rooster,
embroidered or screened on — hard to say from here.

I feel like I’m on deadline
to come up with a point here
about a cheap shirt and a tacky design
bellied out like a landlocked sail
over the backyard of a tenement
in my scarred and scrappy town,

like I should say “stop the presses!”
and insist that this is a story
that must be told, one of beauty
in the heart of ordinary, in the face
of what gets called “ugly” too often
by those who like their beauty

caged in an archival box, penned into
the richest part of the Cultural District
that was snatched out
from under the noses of those
who gave it culture
in the first place.

We aren’t far from there right now;
we’re miles from there right now
up on 
the Hill that hasn’t changed much
and won’t unless some folks decide
they like the view from up here,
and pass an ordinance to steal that view

and free it of rayon
and roosters 
and backyard chickens
and on-street parking and the wrong people. 
It feels like I’m on deadline to say all this
and it’s coming fast, if indeed
it hasn’t already passed.

If anything’s going to happen,
anything at all to keep that sail of a shirt
from billowing toward 
a good and lovely life
on our own terms, it feels like
we are almost out of time.


Listening To Young Poets

Listening to 
young poets

whose work
does not itself hold my interest

but whose joy in the work nonetheless
raises in me

my near dead longing
to be 

transported again
by words

first by the words of others
renewing enchantment

and then by my own
finally reminding me

that indeed I still 
have within me the spells

I once cast 
with ease 

releasing from my chest
hurricanes and after

soaking downpours
followed by sun

Listening to young poets
whose work does not itself hold me

yet I honor and thank them
and those who honor and nurture them

for being water and sun
in these parched days

reminding me
that I may still live and grow


CR-V

grime on my bumper, and so what.  
it’s not like it hides a beautiful body.  

enough rust and holes
to make next inspection a worry.

enough grunts and clicks and creaks
to make driving anywhere a symphony.

it still runs well enough
to make me mostly unafraid to go anywhere.

it’s got lots of room and red sass to spare.
above all it’s got a banging sound system.

sometimes I joke and say I’m going out 
to drive the stereo around my city.

it’s no joke to do it the way I do it, though.
they hear me coming long before they see me.

in dead of winter I crack a window
to let the big noise out for passers-by.

in height of summer I open it all up
and let it rip for everyone to hear.

there’s an occasional strange glance
from a car or a walker when I pass.

it’s not pretty, and neither am I.
gray on my head, grime on my bumper,

holes where no holes should be;
two hundred and forty thousand miles

of rattle, squeak, bomb-bay bass and 
shouting along to blood passion songs.

it’s not like I can hide in a beautiful body
so I might as well turn up and show up,

for as long as I can, for as long
as the rust holds together.


Six PM

Six PM.
Darkness not far off.
A neighbor’s cat
loafing on the front wall.
Doing the afternoon thing —
TV, a glass of water,
a wish for enough ambition
to practice the guitar,
a self-loathing raised
from the soil of knowing
how much I could be doing.
It’s a lost day, again, one that goes
by the formal name of
Monday through Sunday.

I’m jealous of that cat
for such willing public laziness.  
I’m jealous 
of the dead
for never having
to move,
for never being expected

to move.

Six PM
and you shouldn’t look at me.
If you look at me, 

don’t be jealous of a damn thing
about me. Move along.
Do something I won’t or can’t do —

look alive.