I’ve been busy with a number of projects, so my output’s a little off right now…That said, I did want to let you in on the new Website for my poetry and music band, The Duende Project. Still under construction, but getting there…with links to videos, places to hear and purchase tracks, etc…
Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
Leftover Child
Back in what’s left
of home turf
among abandoned houses
with lawns long ago
taken by tall mullein and
brittle brush.
Tan faded curtains askew
in flyspecked windows —
is that a slight movement
behind one? Did it stir?
That one, top left window in
that roof-to-ground shingled
gray house? Is it possible
that someone
lives there still?
Someone alive in Her House?
Childhood stories
of Her House, house
of Old Lady Shady
come sifting back: she’d be
close to 130 by now
if she were alive
so it’s probably not either her
or her son, the Hog,
he’d be
long gone
which is good, good because
those aren’t good stories.
But someone’s in there,
now it’s certain;
there is a face
that’s not bothering
to hide itself,
a child’s face
looking out.
A thin face.
A blue face —
or instead, moonlight
playing on shadow fabric
and dirty glass.
Something’s
definitely moving,
but inside or outside?
Can’t tell; too many
bad stories,
too much
moonlight,
too much
remembered
filth makes it
too easy to call up
a leftover child
from those ruins.
Drowning In A White Man
Originally posted 9/12/2011.
I’m drowning in a white man! Can’t breathe,
my chest is caving in; no one can see me drowning
for I’ve gone down, down, and down again;
I’ve sunk so deeply into him.
What I wouldn’t give right now
for a pipe and some cold air,
a fire, a circle of singers
around a big, solid drum.
What I wouldn’t give for firm tradition
and family to hang onto,
stories and cousins to pull me up and out.
Not likely. Not anymore.
Instead I’ll grow
thin white gills and survive,
but I won’t thrive — no.
What I would have to give to thrive, I will not give.
Hubris
Originally posted 6/16/2010.
Reading news
of black widow spiders
in supermarket grapes,
lightning that burned down
a statue of Jesus;
looked at the stories
with a practiced eye
for meaning,
sought connections;
was at a loss
until he saw a third story
of a miracle cure in a remote land:
a blind child touched
by an electric eel
awoke from a coma with full sight.
Recognized how to spin it all
into a narrative he could believe:
the sky’s fire stroking down;
the poison in the seemingly safe fruit;
the girl opening her eyes to see
a circle of incredulous doctors
straining to understand —
pride stumbling
against nature, then
nature laughing.
Congratulated himself
on figuring it out.
Congratulated himself
on besting God
at the Great Game Of Dice,
at getting the Win; then
turned and died
before he could
explain it all
to everyone.
The Razor Beauty Of Things
Originally posted 12/26/2007. Formerly titled “Still”
I’m not sure how they happened
but there were times in my life
when everything slowed
and each of my moves was perfect,
no wasted effort,
arms synched perfectly swinging
as I turned toward the yard
away from the screen door closing behind me.
My vision sharpened at the edges
and deepened at the center of the field of view;
a jonquil stood out dead still from the lawn, its petals
cut into the green behind it.
There was a time I could stop the world
but I didn’t understand how useful that could be.
I have forgotten how. I have learned
how to think instead. Instead of
making the world stop
I stop myself and sit ass-heavy on the couch
thinking of good times.
Whenever I leave the house
I close the door behind me carefully now, never
letting it slam, making sure of the lock; I don’t know
how good times happen anymore
and I don’t want to scare them off.
I step out of the door
and I don’t see much color
out there, which is fine;
I’m excited now mostly by monochrome —
marathon television viewing, the relief
when a cigarette is finished and I can breathe
something that’s not
grey fire in my throat, the relief of
the fire that lights the next one,
the ice cubes in the whisky,
the longing for a long dead sleep
because the only time the world stops now
is when I am not thinking of it,
when I cannot see it at all,
when the dark eats my dreams
and at last for a while at least
I’m not regretting
the nagging poisonous hope
that one day I’ll remember the world,
recall how I used to see
the razor beauty of things
growing without thought.
The Tangle
Originally posted 11/24/2013.
This tangled mind
takes the word “mouse”
and transforms it
to “rocket” or “dagger”
or “fishing shack”
when I hear it spoken;
the thought of vermin feet
in my walls becomes
a space race,
a war,
a life
on the sea.
Hear mouse, realize everything.
This is something that is Wrong with me
according to the arbiters of Right,
but I’ve learned to live with it.
I’ve turned into a poet, though.
I mostly call it blessing and not curse,
though when I thought
the word “blessing”
I admit at first I heard
“California redwoods” and then “magma”
as “blessing” became a vision
of forests jumping into blaze
along rivers and roads of liquid fire.
Blessing is fire here within me.
Any one word leads me to another
as fire leads to ash, as flash flood
leads to canyon, as mouse
leads to dagger rocket fishing shack,
as blessing leads
to volcano-sparked trees
lit like candles
along the coast…
Shh, says the Universe,
by which I mean
the dying willow
in the backyard.
Shh.
Tomatoes
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.
The Ceiling Called God
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.
The Best Eyes
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.
My Dance, My Bad, My Deep
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.
Eggplant Parmesan Versus Evil
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.
Broken Windows
They say a lot of things…
they say a rising tide lifts all boats.
They say policing quality of life issues
(broken windows, sad panhandlers)
will raise all boats.
They say the eyes
are the windows of the soul;
if the soul has broken windows
that’s the fault of the face they’re in
and we should police them
right into the big clean up…
they say a lot of things…a lot of things…
They say the path to a man’s heart
runs through his stomach.
They say center mass
is the best way to aim.
They say the surest path to the heart
is to aim for it directly
and if the heart shot misses
then a gut shot kills too,
slowly but certainly,
especially if you can wait hours for it
to kill…
they say a lot of things, along with so many things
they don’t say…
they say race is a social construct.
They don’t say they built it to bind and blind and kill.
They say all lives matter.
They don’t say how they define “all.”
They say it’s best to be polite if you have to scream.
They don’t say much, politely or otherwise, when someone does…
they say so many things,
they never shut up,
they don’t say enough
when they’re talking,
they say what we should do,
they don’t say what they will do,
they don’t say they’ll stop
wringing their hands
or sitting on them
and put them to use,
they don’t say they say so much by saying so much,
by saying so little…behind it all
a white sheet,
brown shirt, gun hand
voice…
they hear it…no, they don’t hear it…
they hear it…no, they don’t…
then they tell us
to forget it
and get over it
and stop
and nonsense,
it’s all in our heads, in our
bitter cores…they
hear what they want,
drown the rest
by talking,
talking…
all that clatter
like a storm of broken windows,
every last word
a window shard seeking
its coat of blood.
What It’s Like
Like coming home each day
to a house with no floor,
just a drop when I
walk through the door;
like endlessly wondering
how far I’ll fall as it differs
from day to day. Some days,
there’s barely an inch of air
between me and solid ground;
other days, I don’t think
I’ll ever land. Either way
I fall through fog and can’t see
the bottom before I strike it
and I’m jelly when I strike it.
It’s like that, this life of mine,
and I dread it unless
you’re there to seize my hand,
unless I see you, bright spot
in the fog; then the fall’s
more like floating,
and the landing is still hard
but it’s not as hard as landing
alone.
A Conversation May Have Never Happened
It may have been
a conversation
held entirely in my head
as it was dark
wherever we were,
there was light
around our faces,
I don’t know
who you were then
and am still unsure
who you are at all
but I address you now
as if I do know, much as
we addressed each other
in that conversation, as if
we were intimates enmeshed
in deep caring for each other, and
who we were in fact
was less important
than how we did not stop
to consider it at all
as we told each other
things that mattered
without caring what would happen
to the information later
except that we were saving each other,
perhaps, from ourselves —
and if in fact this entire conversation
did not happen except
within me, if all I was saving
was myself,
I’m at peace with that,
I do not need
to know who I spoke to
in my head
except to say
welcome,
stay as long as you like,
forever if need be.
Late August Waking
Summer’s work is
almost over; it prepares
to retire as
Fall comes in fresh
to the game, crisp
as any rookie.
The two meet
before dawn, nod
and shake hands.
I pull the blanket
a little higher and think about
turning off the window fan.
Dark Matter 