Edgar, Edgar, it’s me.
Did you see the news?
I think that was Dad
they pulled from the river,
some dead, dead drunk —
it sure looked like
our father from that angle
and considering
the water running off him, well,
he looked just like
the last time I saw him, last week,
when I went to speak with him about
him getting help, maybe AA or something,
and he sprayed me
with the garden hose,
and for the first time ever
I fought him, Edgar, I took the hose from him
and sprayed him with it, the two of us
screaming in the front yard — so, well,
I have some experience
in seeing my father soaked and drowned
and they said this body was unidentified
but dammit Edgar, it looked like him.
I know he won’t answer the phone if I call so
I am going to his building
to see if he’s there and then to the cops
if he’s not. Call me,
Edgar; this is our dad, we need to get together on this.
We have to stand together.
I think it’s him. I hope it’s not.
I swear if the old man’s still alive when I get there,
I’ll give him something to cry about.
Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
Voicemail
Bad Guitar
No matter how I coax
and stroke,
she will not reveal
truth tonight.
I’m sure it’s there.
I can hear it
hanging somewhere
between us,
but not with my ears.
Bad guitar!
She knows
I’m no good,
knows I’m angry
and that putting the truth
into my hands tonight
would serve war
more than music.
I pull at her strings
trying to make her believe
that if she gives me the truth
I can make one song serve both,
but bad guitar laughs at me
brokenly, cross-rippling splashes
of what I want across my face,
telling me
to snap out of it, saying
maybe someone can
but tonight
you’re neither soldier enough
nor player enough
to do anything like that.
Beaches
A boulder, it is said,
is turned into sand
by patient action of water,
but then,
what happens
to the sand?
There has to be
a longer story.
It can’t end there.
I don’t care
that I don’t know
the story,
but I care
to learn it
and tell it.
I don’t care
that you don’t know
the story;
I care
that you are among those
who don’t care to know the story,
who are content
to see beaches
of vanished boulders
as a perfect ending
to a long tale
of this world,
who are content
to tolerate the myth
that there are beginnings and endings.
Privilege
Before it’s fully light,
I step outside in shorts
with my flute in my hand.
I might play a note or two,
something quick before dawn,
a bit of whimsy on my part.
No shirt, no shoes, not nervous.
No one to see me, or at least
can’t tell if anyone sees me.
No one can hear me yet.
No one sees me standing here
round and full and pale
in the last darkness.
If I want to be noticed,
I have to do something
outrageous.
Neighbors, can you see me?
The fat, pale man,
out-of-place moon
on my porch? What am I holding
in my hand — a flute of some kind, or
a gun — is that a problem I’m holding,
something for public concern?
Playing this flute
this early, knowing it will likely disturb
someone if I do, knowing if I do
and someone calls the cops
I will likely at most get a talking to
because I am a round pale man
and I get to be whimsical
and have it called “whimsy”
and I won’t likely get shot if I do —
here is the definition
I have never understood completely
until now,
the one beyond the dictionary
and the dry arguments
and the earnest explanations: Privilege
is the fact
that I get to hold a flute in dim light
and think about playing it
half naked
on a weekday
in a working class neighborhood
because I can, no other reason,
only half-concerned about
consequences, which for me
might involve being an asshole
but probably not a criminal
or a dead man.
Stopped Short
Mom, I never trusted you.
Seems like I had good reason.
Seems like something
was telling me you were lying
about something big.
The Monte Carlo? I recall
the black car and the white roof.
I don’t recall the face of the man
who owned it. You say, now,
he was my vanished father,
and not Keith, that rubber-faced twerp,
drunken little man I’ve called my father
since spit was wet. You ended up
with him versus what I recall
of the loud and flashy and wire wheeled
Chevrolet and its plaid coated driver.
What was his name, I asked you. All you did
was cry and ask how this could matter
when life has been so good and plain
and quiet. With him, you sobbed, it would have been
all noise all the time, Fourth of July
every night. Well, maybe I would have liked that,
I shouted. Maybe a few explosions
might have helped around here. Maybe not,
you said. Maybe not for you, I said — and stopped to think.
Storming
A huge limb torn off the tree?
More light comes in.
The wind and the rain
were as a hand sweeping hair
from where it had grown over
our eyes; we see now what’s important,
and the house shall be condemned
so a new house can be built.
You can make a disaster
into as many metaphors as you desire
but loss is loss. Pain is pain.
I could give you images to describe it,
concrete and solid and sharp,
but all they would do is cut and crush and cut some more.
Get your pen out of the way
and pick up a hammer. Put a blanket
on someone’s cold shaking shoulders,
and put a sock in it while you’re at it.
Noblesse Oblige
Don’t starve the mice, dear;
don’t leave them in their holes
to wonder about the cruel world.
Leave a crumb for them — they’ll have
to climb the chimney bricks like Half Dome
to get to it, but let them know it’s there.
A little sign in mouse language.
A tiny recording device blasting advertisements.
Is there mouse TV? Use every media outlet available —
are there mouse newspapers? “The Daily Mouse Ledger?”
Don’t waste time on social networking as their tech
has not developed to that level. Still, we must do
everything in our power to make them climb for the crumb.
Make them whisper of it in their mouse circles.
Martha, my love, my dear — everything we are
depends on us making the mice climb for the crumbs
we can offer them! To cut them off entirely would be cruel
and we are not cruel people, not as long as I can say something
about it. You say they frighten you, they are dirty creatures,
they carry diseases — and I agree with you; the Black Plague
rose from among such as these…but we must not kill them.
No traps, no poisons. No hard boot on a frail neck.
We depend on them as much as they do us, you see.
We leave them crumbs to amuse us, to teach us how to be
gentle and generous. We are The One Percent. It’s our one job.
What Is Left Over
The only road
I will travel from here
runs due north from my door.
One day after I leave I take
a left turn and drive into my hometown
with all the small houses
clustered along one street
that runs from the North Road west.
At the end it goes into the river
like a boat landing,
though no one here has boats
and no one swims in the River.
My house here has three stories,
a small front yard, a huge backyard.
I call the front yard “the grounds”
and the back yard “the estate.”
I call the first story of the house
“The Factory.” The second is
“Dramatic Sex.” The third,
“What Is Left Over.” It’s a pretty
house, uncluttered outside and in.
I’m an uncluttered, pretty man in this house
where I spend my days between
the Factory and Dramatic Sex
and fall sound asleep every night
in What Is Left Over. What goes on
in everyone else’s house, I neither know
nor want to know.
Full moonrise over my town
is a party and a half for everyone.
We watch the River silvering, the fish
striking out beyond the reach
of anyone’s best cast.
Everyone’s out of their houses talking
and laughing, the way we didn’t
when we lived south of here
in the tangle of other people.
We are small enough
that everyone knows each other by face
and large enough that names are a bother,
so we laugh and talk and go
in and out of our homes without them.
It’s better that way. I couldn’t even tell you
the name of the town,
not that I would. If you’re meant to find it,
you will.
A Little Water Please
Thirstier
today than
yesterday and
the day before.
My mouth isn’t dry, so
how to explain my throat?
No sound coming up,
no water trickling down.
A hard road from here
is where I’m going.
Will need a drink soon.
It won’t matter if it’s cold
as long as it’s wet.
There’s not much left here,
just a small spot of smolder
and a thick skein of smoke.
A little water please: enough, at least,
to let me hiss my last.
Put a spark or two in flight:
dying embers, sputter.
Walpurgisnacht
If this is the last poem I will ever write
I do not want to fall back on The List
(Apache, Italian, White-appearing, biracial,
bipolar, old, fat, ex-punk, ex-husband,
ex-corporate, ex, ex, ex…cetera) again,
hanging all I’ve become
on any or all of those hooks
at one time. Not for the last poem.
They’re what I was and will soon no longer be;
to speak of them again seems to be
more cling than release. When you look back
from a poet’s last poem, you ought to be able to see
the bright peaks and sludge valleys of all the others
in the light from the last one; it ought to be hard
to look directly into a last poem. It should burn.
If this is the last poem I will ever write
I should deny my categories. As I could not even now,
this cannot be the last poem. If this had been the last poem
I was destined to write, the poem would already be burning,
and I would have leaped or should now be preparing to leap through it.
What the reader should be doing with this one
is up to the reader. Some would tell you a poet
should never write about writing a poem. Those people will turn away
without realizing that this is not a poem about writing a poem.
Dreaming Of The Ghost Autobiographer
What I wouldn’t give
for a ghost autobiographer
to do the living for me as well
long before the book is due
or even conceived
Let him do the inevitable tour
after publication
Let him choose the star
to play himself in the movie
about my life
The whole reason for writing
about your life is that something
about it was or is unique
and the longer I live
the more I realize
I’m exactly like everyone else
so having someone stunt the life itself
is at least novel enough to write about
(even if that defeats the purpose of the
autobiographical label)
Let’s just skip the book idea
Who is willing to just live for me
and not write about it afterward?
Don’t make me come after you with a gag order
to stop you talking about my life
Don’t make me hunt you down
and kill myself as you or you as myself
I would hardly know where to put the bullet or
which way to point the gun
Maybe I’d just have you do it
because I’m bored with me enough
to not want to talk about me
any more in any forum but
the eulogy — yeah, let
my ghost autobiographer handle that one
I’ll be elsewhere not hearing that
I’ll be in Saskatchewan
or somewhere no one else is
doing what the other guy said I’d be doing
which is nothing most of the time
Night Voice: Blood
whose voice outside
this early? next door’s
ray, upstairs jeff, or someone
different?
not one i recognize
right away. it’s spanish,
now i can tell. it’s not very
energetic. it’s a little slurred.
it’s tired. it rises only to fall again
quickly.
i could say it sounds tender,
depressed, resigned: no, it’s just uneven.
slows down, climbs in volume,
hesitates, fades, rushes, stalls.
what it sounds like to me is nothing
without knowing the words,
which i cannot focus on right now
as i have looked down
and for the first time
there as promised just two weeks ago
there’s more than a little blood on my sheet,
right where i have been lying.
i need to take someone
into immediate confidence, no matter
how much i may slur, no matter how hard it is to control
my voice. i need someone to listen to me.
i need someone to listen to me right now,
this early, no matter how i ramble, stop, start,
talk out loud, hesitate, reach out, withdraw,
seek in vain for the company
of those who will care.
A Madman In The Fabric Store
The madman finds himself
among fabrics. He walks
with one hand out, running it over
corduroys, denims, twills;
running it over crushed velvets,
satins, silks. He is about
to become a problem.
He is almost ready to be a crisis
if he doesn’t leave here right this second.
He’s the kind who blows up from time to time
and all this touching of the changing textures
is setting his trigger. It’s too much,
he tells himself. It’s all too much
and simpler is better and clothing is
optional. It’s all flammable and vain
and who still makes their own clothes?
God, I am a consumer not a producer;
God, I am a flame and not a torch.
And so he kneels in the middle of the store
with a lighter, baffled by the choices before him:
should I light the tulle, the organdy, the glittering
green Spandex? How I do rebel against all this
when I don’t know what to burn first?
The madman is not going to burn down the store
this time. He’s tackled, driven to the ground.
brought down screaming at how it is all too much
and too much to feel and choices and blah, blah,
blah like it is every time we hear it from one of these
who find being American so damn hard.
Poetry Lesson
If it comes
from a poet’s mouth
it is probably a lie,
unless it’s completely factual —
or unless it’s in between,
one of those stupid things
artists do all the time:
putting a bent frame
on a picture,
deliberately scarring themselves
just to fit in.
Facts, lies,
damn lies,
statistics,
poetry: every one
a method of dissembling
and all of them
sometimes used
to get at the truth.
What I mean to say:
don’t trust any of us
unless the earth nods
at what we’re saying.
It may take a day or two
but you’ll know if and when
your old things settle into new places
after we’re done.
Dangling
The dangling done
by the body at the end of the rope
is tragic when encountered
unexpectedly, especially if
the dangler is familiar
and was a friend or loved one.
At that moment the dangling
seems sinister and the antic jerking
of feet becomes more battlefield spasm
than circus ring gag to most,
but someone always laughs.
We scorn the ones who laugh,
suspect their humanity
and call them animal or worse.
Those who can recall
the totality of all the dangling feet
they’ve ever seen
from cartoon comic to vaudeville,
from gallows and noose
to bedsheet and balcony,
are scolded, shunned, or shouted down
just as we have always done with those
who think as well as feel;
as we have always done with those
who see all sides at once;
as we have always done with those
who cannot narrow in enough
to meet our narrow expectations.
They leave us cold.
They leave us unexpectedly fragile
and disinclined to laugh with them.
They see everything at once
and we only let them back in
when we need them.
Dark Matter 