About Tony Brown
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.
Originally posted 1/21/2010.
This is how I learned it
On the one hand
Big Shiny Jesus
Sweetness
Little-children-come-unto-me cuddly
On the other
Scary Bloody Jesus
Big wounds
Three days give or take two thousand year stare
Just-got-in-from-Hell-and-boy-are-my-arms-tired
On my own I figured out
that if there had been a third hand
Jesus could have built his own crucifix
Nailed himself there with a rueful smile
so
whatever I wanted most after that
I called on Jesus to give me
I sang out
Lay me like a babe in the arms of Papa Jesus
so he can toss me backwards over his thorny head
in a salty ritual against the enticements of Satan
Let me grab hold of the ammo belt
of Soldier Jesus and bring him
into my trench before he’s cut down
I loved the Jesus of the moment
whoever he was
like a mirror
until one day
Loc’d Jesus
in the blue grime rags of the alley
wouldn’t take my pity dollars
Then Righteous Jesus went through a phase
where he’d only listen to Rise Against
and bemoan my bad taste
and Dice Thrower Jesus
laughed like Einstein
whenever I chewed my nails
over bills and lack of work
I’m not a fan anymore but
because of how I learned
I keep looking over my shoulder
for whatever Jesus
I might have overlooked
3 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, revisions | posted in poetry
Originally posted 12/31/2009.
They’re working on race cars in Charlotte,
baseball bats in Louisville,
beer in breweries coast to coast
and logo T-shirts in Singapore.
It’s the day of New Year’s Eve
and not much is going to change
in the world tonight.
We only think
we write the music
time dances to.
Someday a hibernating creature
is going to wake up from the winter
and we’ll be gone.
It won’t notice anything different except
an increased freedom to be itself.
No engines will roar, no baseballs will soar,
and the only drunkenness will come
when wasps suck the fermented sap
from fallen pears.
Everything left alive
will be naked, nothing
will happen as a result,
and we’ll be regretted
only as much
as Creation regrets
any other extinction,
which is to say,
not at all.
Something still alive
will begin to dance
on the melody-free earth.
5 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, revisions | posted in poetry
Originally posted 12/31/2011.
Any day can start a year.
Any day can end one.
Every day starts a year.
Every day ends one.
Any day can be celebrated,
any day regretted.
Regret one day for one day,
let celebration of the next begin.
All I need for any year or day:
one with whom to celebrate, one with whom
to commiserate, one with whom to share
the New Year of every single day.
Just one
with whom to straighten up after the labor,
one with whom to soothe
and be soothed;
one to whom the calendar
is merely a suggestion,
one with whom to start anew
each daily New Year’s Day.
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New Poem.
Pretend there’s a fable
about a one-legged flamingo
(born with one and only one)
who somehow survives
the vagaries of indifferent
and unrelenting nature
to grow to adulthood.
Pretend there are passages explaining
how a one-legged flamingo
grows easily tired of standing still
and so must fly more often
than its counterparts.
Pretend it’s not all farfetched and pretend
that such a bird could truly survive.
Pretend there’s a moral:
to those from whom much is taken
much is also given,
or
unending fatigue in living may draw out
an urge and capacity to soar,
or
perspective and vision may come to one
as compensation for grievous wounds;
pretend that it matters
which words are used.
Pretend like mad
that the moral
is strong enough to hold the bird back
from drowning
as it is exhausted tonight,
descending though there are no
shallows in which to land.
2 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry
Originally posted 10/31/2011.
Ripple
this age
Throw
yourself into it
not for that instant
when you will be
target or
bullseye of target
but because
as others join you
the circles will
turn to full disturbance
Then what you’ll be
is immersed
What you’ll be
is in it
for the long swim
Part of the stream
the flow
the flood
You might drown
You were drowning anyway
Make of your body
a best chance to survive
if not for yourself
then for the one next to you
struggling
to breathe
2 Comments | tags: poems, poetry, political poems, revisions | posted in poetry
New Poem.
Highway signs that
flash and warn
“LAST EXIT ON HIGHWAY”
and
“HIGHWAY ENDS 1500 FEET”
thrill me
Beyond that last turnoff always
a wall
a barrier of yellow and black boards
some mound of untended concrete
gone to brush
saying
here is where it all ends
It intended to go further
but exhausted it stopped
You should too or
take that last turn if
you insist upon continuing
People say the road goes on and on
always on and on
You can go forever if you want
Keep turning off and you’ll never stop
When they say that
it just makes me even more
want to crash into those highway graves
just to prove
a point about the desirability
of limits
and satisfaction
to offer a definition of
far enough
There I’d rest
without regret for that last missed exit
and filled in my last moment with joy at avoiding
the collapse within me (had I turned)
upon seeing more road ahead
and more of the unrelenting boredom of
endless gray below me
above me
and within
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New Poem.
brown heart
color of august
arms race
sweat singers
try not to think about this too hard:
did you want love? did you come here
for love? did you expect
love?
sorry
brown heart
but love’s not
here — white heart’s broken
today
sad face can offer you nothing
today
sorry
white heart broken
in westside bin
by garage door
wedged open so
breath and air
get out and in
sorry it says
SORRY
at least I
sly and shaky
stay alive this way
SORRY
no time for you
brown heart
today nothing
from white broken heart
for brown heart
love is
not there ever
brown heart
no matter
its stolen beats
and its claims
to love you
white heart is never more than
guardedly there
and never there
for you at all
love you
brown heart
that’s your song
you love you
you love you
for white heart knows
the same song too
you love you
you love you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Want to hear it as a recording with guitar?
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Originally posted 12/19/2012; original title, “Blue Sex.”
This early,
this warm.
This dark
singing,
a tangled
blues;
lemon squeezing, starter mashing,
rolling, tumbling,
juice runs down our legs blues;
“can’t be satisfied — ”
challenge, not lament;
slide ice cube
stinging it,
gliding it
fast between mouths
and bellies;
sun will barge in
soon enough —
how humid it’ll smell then,
our hair torn up along with the room,
‘Sweet Home Chicago” in the background.
No matter how Mississippi
it gets in here
this warm,
this early,
this dark,
we always end up
asking each other,
“baby —
baby don’t you
wanna go?”
Leave a comment | tags: love, meditations, music, poems, poetry, revisions, sex | posted in poetry
Whatever your spiritual or family tradition, may this season be one of reflection, increasing light, and love. Thanks for reading here over the last year; hope to see you all in 2015.
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New Poem.
“We have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ Police Department…We will act accordingly.”
– from an NYPD internal email, Dec. 2014.
It is wartime now,
exclaims the badged blue army.
We stand up. We hear:
it is wartime now,
wartime — as if before this,
they were not at war.
It is wartime now,
as it has been for more years
than there’s been a flag.
It is wartime now.
They want to call us killers.
We will not be moved.
It is wartime now —
our weapons are the strong tongue
and the sharpened eye.
It is wartime now —
smokescreens, deceit, far flung lies;
what we say cuts through:
wartime now? Let us
see how that differs from how
we’ve lived until now.
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New poem.
I wish I had
a forest inside me
speaking only
through leaves and wind,
but I do not.
I wish
the whistle and squeak
of the branches
rubbing together
had been my only
soundtrack from birth,
but it was not.
If only I’d been
filled with ocean
or cave-song
or the howl
of blizzards
in far mountains,
but I was not; instead
I am today as empty
and as silent within
as I have always been,
as always
am waiting
for my own song
to rise from that void
and fill me
and the air
and the sky
and the rest
of this whole
damned world.
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New Poem.
May it be said of us
when the time comes to write history
that we crossed the bridge
we were faced with. We crossed it
though it was not the bridge
we’d hoped for — not the genteel arch
over a clean and narrow stream
with little but discomfort to face if we fell from it,
and not the steel artifact of a golden past
teeming with millions crossing it with us;
for us instead that archetype of peril,
swaying and crumbling one slat at a time,
with so many working to kill us as we crossed,
bullets pealing like bells as they struck
the stone all around us. May it be said of us
that we never turned our gaze
from the other side to the drop below;
that we held onto each other all the way over
and clung as long as we could to those who fell
along the way, and that when we were across we turned
to the task of putting a better bridge
where the rotten one once had hung.
May it be said of us when we are gone
that we did it the way it should always be done.
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Originally posted 2/11/2012.
the distraught parents
don’t know what to do
their children
have fallen in love
with dust storms
they reach for a bible story
with which to chastise them
god is coming soon
come in out of the grit
but the kids
otherwise enthralled
aren’t waiting for a tardy god
they start a faith
based on watching the wind
bore holes in rock
with a gospel
of how sand
gets into everything
without trying
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Originally posted 3/31/2011. Original title, “Chastisement.”
First time you noticed
that brass smells of dirty fingers and ozone
was the day you learned your mother had died.
The keys were in the hand
you bunched up to your face
upon hearing the news.
You could smell and taste them
mingled with tears and dust from the oak table
upon which you laid your head to weep.
These days you dust the furniture frequently
and whenever you handle your keys
you wash your hands right after.
It’s been years
since you thought about
that day.
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Originally posted 10/12/2008; original title, “Hearing Slapbak On A Sunday.”
Invitation to Sparkle City.
The bass a friendly hand opening the door.
The groove shuffling me along to comfort
with a shout to someone unseen
to break out sweet tea and a good meal.
It’s not much — no,
it’s everything. It’s church
softer than any formal pew,
warming me top to bottom
on no more
than an ember.
Big pillow for a sad head,
holding me like a cradle I never had;
this is no offer I can ever refuse.
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