I recorded a demo for the Duende Project for my recent poem, “Four Stones.” It’s available for free download here:
Hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think. Thanks!
Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
LES, NYC, 2009
Originally posted 8/30/2009.
Come out of the Nuyo
at midnight
to packed streets:
every person in the world is here —
no, EVERYTHING is here;
my ears and eyes and nostrils flare
to pull it into me; every shop open,
every bar filled, garbage perfume underlying
lily scent from the flower stand, merengue
blaring from a gated alley
where a column of white balloons sways
in the courtyard beyond;
short skirts, long legs, shirt tails
and two days’ growth on every corner,
everyone seeking paths through
and around each other;
the Lower East Side,
the turning, the churning,
the shirring of wheels
where the New York City Machine
remakes, re-imagines, and revives,
and does it nowhere louder
than in this place
that has always been
the source of beginnings,
beehive of promise, island of
sweet buzz
and sting.
From Horoscope To Holocaust
Originally posted on 8/25/2010.
Enslaved to a horoscope:
some won’t drive far when Mercury is retrograde.
Engaged by humor:
offense slides off their numb tongues.
Enthralled by heritage:
no credit ever given to others.
Eviscerated by holy writ:
scourging unbelievers while in prayer.
Enlisted by history:
they reap and pile the designated scapegoats.
Every time it happens
we call it inevitable, divine will
or the stars setting wheels to rolling,
when in fact it comes down to
whatever excuse we allow to rule us
without forethought,
and from horoscope to Holocaust
is not all that far to travel.
The Kick We Last Used In The Womb
Originally posted 2/10/2012.
The whisky drinker says,
“I suck the tongue of truth
in every glass.”
The wine expert says,
“This sweet burning
puts my eye on Heaven.”
The pothead at silent devotion
sits on his hands while praying,
grinning at the answers.
Whatever we stone ourselves with
revives in us the kick
we last used in the womb.
We smoke or sip as deliberately
as we would swing a leg,
trusting in that illusion
that in here, we’re utterly safe
even as we fight toward
what might be out there,
certain that
although we have never seen it,
it’s what we are meant for.
Four Stones
Originally posted 9/28/2009; original title, “Remembering What Four Stones Said.”
There in the stream
the first:
white as fish belly
and small, so small.
It said the Way
has no sense to it, but
leads forward in any case.
The second:
black, seamed as wood
long submerged,
slick as a suspect. It said that
if you could risk believing
that it offered solid footing,
you would find yourself
halfway there.
The third:
rusty skinned, top high and dry
above the current, solitary and distant.
It mumbled a secret worth hearing,
perhaps only minimally intelligible,
but still invariable and true.
The fourth
lay below the surface.
It was no more than a shadow
holding a threat of tumbling
and of immersion.
It urged and coaxed:
venture, it said;
leap, it said;
it said come now,
steady as you go.
That far bank was high and green.
There was sun
on the high meadow,
to be followed by
moon on the high meadow.
You fell in love with it at once
from this side of the stream:
it seemed a perfect place for dancing
with wet feet, wet shoes,
and wet knees
still knocking with joy
from the journey,
and so it was.
Gravedancers’ Ball
Originally posted 2/26/2011.
Which graves we choose
to tarantelle upon
is less relevant
than realizing we all
have the deep longing
to dance on the grave
of some dead someone
whose movement once
made us hate and rage.
We love to sin that light fantastic.
Can’t sit still — red, blue,
left, right — love that happy dance.
How soft the ground, how haughty
our heels. How good it feels to swing
on top of them; they can’t do a thing
about it.
A beautiful American word,
revenge; it names
a toe dance of righteousness.
Everyone’s tapping. Some on top,
some impatiently waiting
their long delayed turn,
every smoldering one of us
wanting the last dance.
Those Minute Screams
People aren’t small enough yet
for us to pocket them all
so we will need to break them apart
if we are to steal away with them.
People are too loud
for us to get away clean with them
squalling in our pockets and hench-bags
so we’ll just scream along and drown them out
or amplify everything so much
that their protests become pop music. Keep them
yelling about everything all the time
and no one will hear calls for help.
People aren’t small enough
so we’re going to have to break them down
and press them between the bills
in our wallets. When we buy anything
they’ll slip out and fall like leaves
to the ground. They’ll be underfoot
and loud to the crunch. We won’t notice
after a while. It’ll be winter,
just us
and the money
and the nuisance memory
of those minute screams.
I Will Soon Read Borges Again
Originally posted 1/19/2013.
I will soon read Borges again.
When I do I will wear dark clothes and glasses,
eat pork on rough bread,
smoke an unending series
of bowls of cheap tobacco from a cheap pipe.
I will soon re-read Joyce
but only in the spring and only upon
completion of the works of Borges.
I shall wear a cloak, if I can locate
a store that sells cloaks. A cloak and
a whiskeyflask cane. A cloak and
thick soled shoes and a whiskeyflask
cane. Yes. I will resume reading
Borges, then Joyce. And after that,
Djuna Barnes; then, Wallace Stevens.
For Barnes and Stevens I will change
to a suit of seersucker, and I will not iron it
ever, even the shirt, even the hems; I will feed
on rumcakes and seedcakes and cupcakes
in public cafes, with my books tucked under my chair.
I will be done with reading
Borges and Joyce and Barnes and Stevens
soon enough. Then I will buy a home
and lie around naked and not read anything
I don’t want to read.
All those trappings I affected!
I must have looked ridiculous. What the hell
was all that about? I will cleanse by dressing in sweats
and reading John Grisham in French
while downing supermarket croissants till I pop.
I won’t care who sees
my wide ass in the library
when I am checking out books on getting ahead in real estate,
and books on Stephen King and Patricia Cornwell:
not their works, mind you;
books about their clothing and diet.
Clothes, it is said,
make the man,
you are what you eat, and maybe
you are what you read.
Well, I don’t want to be anything anymore.
Want to be dumb, anonymous, devoid
of a reading list or its worsening symptoms.
Just gimme a burger, a roll in the hay, a dead sleep
on a dirty mattress. An easy way to vanish.
Seen From A Small Boat
Originally posted 5/27/2012.
Three look over the side of their
soon to be foundered boat,
staring out at the storm, down at the sea:
what’s coming up
from the dark water —
corpse, crab, blue pearl?
The teacher says,
I spy only the blue pearl,
lustrous mystery rising.
The practical one
seizes on how the crab, once seized,
seizes back — seizes on deniable pain.
The undertaker says,
my concern is the corpse.
Wash it clean. Swathe it. Sink it.
Which is it?
Maybe there’s nothing
down there
threatening or promising anything,
just memory
playing with shadow,
trying to claim its place
before the storm
begins to work at drowning.
Lazarus Dawn
Originally posted 10/15/2007.
The lump in my chest
still moves according to the body’s plan,
but it had its own plan once.
What did my heart think about
back when it still could think?
It’s been sleeping for so long —
there were times
when I had a glimpse of something
(breeze in a poplar; a skirt wrapping
around a leg in mid stride; tears trickling
on a man’s hard cheek)
and my mind called up
a poltergeist ache within
but I thought it had settled there because
atrophy had made room for it
and not because I thought
my heart was awake.
I still cannot easily believe
in a Lazarus dawn but
there is something here
I cannot deny
early in the morning
when I turn toward her
breathing beside me;
something directed outward,
something that wants to be heard —
there is a knocking in the tomb.
Ain’t It Grand?
Originally posted 11/11/2012.
Here is a human heart,
a fist-sized ball of thick meat;
here is its dimly connected brain.
Somewhere
in a sealed box
in the wet of the mind,
buried in
the brain’s ropes and curls,
is an inaccurate map
the heart is supposed to follow,
but never does.
The blind little stubborn heart,
running off on its own;
the jealous careful brain
whining and tagging along behind —
that’s the story of,
that’s the glory of…
H.P. In Love
Originally posted 8/29/2013.
Providence, dark bayside muse,
lent itself well to his humors.
He glimpsed potential lovers
in the same pits and holes
where potential horrors could be found.
He did not in real life love much or well.
He did not trust others, carried dank biases too far,
mistrusted at last even the devotion
of his own monsters to their creator;
in the long run, he only kept the city
as full companion and partner. He was born
here, left and returned, eventually died
muttering about the pain in his gut and
the Elder Race in his dreams, settling at last
on one phrase to capture all his intention:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
Think of the man unveiled there:
one so soaked with darkness he had to squeeze out
new words for those depths within him,
the same depths he sensed in the alleys behind the grand homes
of Angell Street, Waterman Street, Benefit Street;
the depths in the drowned eyes that sought him out when he stared into
the waters that emptied here from the New England hills.
New words for something at once terrible and inescapable —
something, at least to him, very much like love.
The Prog Rock Airplane Of Your Love
Originally posted 6/29/2012.
You, flying the prog-rock airplane of your love,
make the crazy leap to stratosphere.
Something comes knocking on the hatch door.
It is the object of your affection, wearing a jet pack,
holding the ring you gave her in her hand;
she hurls it into the plane and swoops away.
Your crew secures the hatch behind her.
They turn to look at you,
stoic in the pilot’s seat.
How did she fly so high as to get to you?
Some questions are meant either to be unanswered,
to be incomprehensible without a life change,
or to be aged into
before answering. It rarely matters which
of these is true. What matters is what the pilot does
with the prog-rock airplane of his love
after it has been rejected. Does the pilot choose
to settle into an awkwardly worded
power ballad nose dive, or to surge higher
on waves of bass triplets and Mixolydian modal guitar runs
until the plane reaches its structural limits and explodes?
You choose another way, push a tear back into its duct
through sheer strength of will; then,
as if in a coda, you head back to base.
It Just Is
Originally posted 11/30/2013.
I will again
call this place “ours”
when we can bury our dead our way
and be buried here that way
when the old blood in the soil
stops weeping from loneliness
I will again
call this place “ours”
when we can plant trees here and feel safe
about our grandchildren living to see them
when those future forests again shrug
at our presence as matter of fact
I will again
call this place “ours”
when the names we give places
hold a music that pulls the land into shape
when we forget how to ghost dance
because it’s become unnecessary
when we don’t dance
for you
when we break the last camera
you’ve smuggled into our homes
when we stop you
from plucking
pointless feathers from thin air
and planting them in your hair
when we open up the shame vault and tell you
no your grandmother likely wasn’t
and if she was
it might have been by force
and ask you if it was by love
why you don’t know her name
I will again
call this place “ours”
when we stop being angry long enough
to pity you
and to laugh more than a little at you
when I realize
that I can call this place “ours”
any time I want
because after all this time
in spite of all that’s happened
it still is
it just is
A Country Of Sick Men
Originally posted 8/28/2013.
The men of that country
must be sick
for how else can one explain
comb-overs, wars,
long nosed cars,
long reach guns,
filibusters,
a weaponized God, hangings,
unfortunate colognes, blood feasts,
the casual seizing
of women,
of children,
of other men,
the willed ignorance
of lack of consent,
the leveraged buyouts,
the wolf pelts,
the blessing of
radioactive oceans,
the balls of old oil
in the bellies of seals,
the blank-eyed drooling
in rooms full of
vintage guitars
and game balls,
the blackout drunks,
and the hard-engine bikes,
except as symptoms? This is
a country of sick men
burning their surroundings
whenever they open their mouths.
There are women there
about whom little has been written
by the sick men. It’s likely
they have stories to tell
that could clean that fouled air.
If they did,
that would be
a different country.
Dark Matter 