Author Archives: Tony Brown

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.

July 10, 2009

Control+Alt+Delete

By Tony Brown

Highlight, select, cut and paste,
delete, drop and drag, and all before
I ever turn on the computer.

Decisions upon decisions —
what shall I attend to, discard,
move up in my queue?

Was it always like this, and now
we just have the proper metaphor
for how it works, or has it changed?

Was it ever a longhand world
with carefully considered strategies
and long pauses before scratching out

what was written in favor of the new,
and even longer ones before we tossed
the whole page and started over?

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July 9, 2009

Pretty

By Tony Brown

I don’t do pretty.
I do real, which is not to say
that pretty is unreal: instead I mean to say

that pretty is as pretty is
and so is ugly, and so is
nondescript, which is what
I most like to describe

and what most catches my eye:

the random and completely
featureless (to our esthetic)
nature of All Nature, including

the artificial one we have made
while preferring to forget that a skyscraper
and a road scraper are as much natural phenomena
as any beaver dam or ant hill:

unimaginable to the blissful photographer
who maneuvers that camera of hers
so carefully to avoid

the wrapper in the foreground,
the rapper in the background:

all that is as meaningful
as any bloom, and negation of the whole

is ugly, which I see is real,
which I see is not pretty by definition
but which must be told.

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July 7, 2009

A Cure

By Tony Brown

I can’t
knock it off
or cut it out

It’s not perched
anywhere
I can strike it

and
if there’s a tumor or organ
where it’s staying
I can’t find it in order
to excise it

though I have tried
these violent means
before
they have not led
to a justifiable end

I must assume it lies
like a third dermis
under all of my skin
and removing it would require
a complete flaying
done slowly
leaving me in excruciating pain
unless I removed all my nerves too
pulling them out one by one
and then

how would I feel? and
would I still care
to try and live a new life
that way?

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Leave a comment | tags: depression, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 6, 2009

Ancestral Voices

By Tony Brown

There’s nothing to say —
they don’t speak much,
at least not to me.
There are no Italian whispers
or Mescalero shouts
in my ears.

But I imagine
they talk a lot
to each other
behind my back,
gossiping at my indiscretions,

my betrayals
of their own long-vanished worlds
that are usually based in trying
to live up to one set of expectations
at the expense of the other.

I imagine grumpy men
with dark faces
staring at each other
and passing
tiswin and good red wine
back and forth.

Bunch of drunks!

The best thing to do with gossip
is ignore it
and get on with your own life:

one proverb everyone shares
and no one follows.

To hell with that!

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Leave a comment | tags: heritage, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 5, 2009

Over at the Audio Frontier…

By Tony Brown

I swapped out a few of the pieces on the Reverbnation site to make room for what I call the “Parental Issues Suite” from the last CD, “americanized.” That would be the two(actually three) tracks “Sing Before Seven” and “Notes From A Reptile Son/Peppermint Schnapps.” A little bit of Faro on guitar.

New Stuff –real, new stuff– coming very soon. Promise….

Give a listen if you haven’t yet. Never had them all up at one time before…

Check out the “Show Schedule, Tracks, and More” page up there to find the link.

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July 5, 2009

Act Of Contrition

By Tony Brown

The bluntest thing I ever did
was spit you out.
To pop you from my still-unsated mouth
and let you fall and crust with dirt
was no proper farewell.
There should have been
some gentler acknowledgment
of how we had burned together
in friction and in revelry,
of how the scent that lingered over us
was not solely stench,
but incense too.

To put it more bluntly still,
what I have said to myself since was a lie.
To make it even more plain: yes, I loved you.
You tasted of constant and true
and you lay upon my tongue
more readily than my own flavor did.
You asked for something simple from me
and what I did in response was find

a single knot of distaste,
one thing I could talk myself into despising
on the nights when uncertainty crept up
and stole my sleep,
one thing I groomed and stretched
and poked until it soured
and all went flat,
and then

I spit you out. I let you fall
from me and looked at you
discarded upon the ground
covered in specks and flecks
of filth that were not you,
which I could use to justify
never picking you up
and lifting you back to my mouth
ever again.
And then, I blamed you
for the soil where you’d landed.

There is no apology I can make
that will make that go away,
but if it matters to you, I can say
that how you made me feel
cannot happen
in this life again.
Every time I am offered
something new,
something recommended,
something tempting, pure
in its wrapper just seconds ago.
I lick my lips
and think of you,
a smear in the sand
where I discarded you,
I recall the way ashes taste and
while I may partake,
I will never enjoy
anything as fully as I did
the first time
I laid you
upon my tongue.

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2 Comments | tags: hypocrisy, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 4, 2009

Objects

By Tony Brown

— for bell hooks

They do not talk
amongst themselves
when we are not looking at them.

When they talk,
it is never about
who owns them now.

We hear them reminding us
of the past. We listen as much
for our own voices in response

as to what they say. Sometimes
we drown them out with loud shame
at their shabby appearance. Sometimes

we make them too heavy to carry
from this place to the next. When they
remain behind, we call the place where they stay

“home.” We call the place
to which we carry the others
“upward mobility.”

Occasionally, we gather
to speak of them, to recall
where we came from. We don’t listen

to what they tell us then,
preferring our own stories.
Eventually they become mute

and are sold to someone, or tossed
aside. We forget what we’ve been told,
and slip into our own silence.

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Leave a comment | tags: memory, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

July 1, 2009

dialogue for god and atheist

By Tony Brown

NOTE: This is part of something larger I’m working on. That’s the working title. Not sure yet where it’s all going…but wanted to get some part of it out there for a sense of progress, if nothing else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if you want
to be happy,
you have to
believe in something.

Why?
Is it not possible to be happy
simply by knowing what you don’t believe?
For instance,
I don’t believe in you, and I
feel fine.

how can you not believe in me?

I’m of the opinion that
I’m really just listening to myself.
And while I’m not happy,
I’m also not unhappy.
While that may be a poor substitute
in some people’s eyes,
it’s better than the negation of despair
and better, also, than the credulity
of bliss.

oh, come on.
you’ve got to believe in something.
the world is controlled by unseen forces
out for your soul.
you have a duty
to fight.
to believe in the struggle,
if nothing else.

Not buying it.
Stuff happens, sometimes for a reason,
sometimes not. The powerful
have too much greed to coordinate
their efforts so consistently
over such long spells, and anyway,
to buy it would mean
I’ve got to fight you as well,
and I’m having too much fun right now.

what about ghosts?
the spirits of the dead
returning to seek answers
or stuck here thinking
they are still alive?

Nope, can’t believe in ghosts,
at least not that way. I believe
we see stuff, or at least I have,
but I’m not in any position to judge
causes, only effects. I know they happened,
know what I’ve gained and lost from those visions,
but don’t care to know
why they happened.

you’re pretty messed up
if you don’t know why things happen
and don’t care to know.

I don’t believe that either.
I think “why” is too often a jumble of trees
that keeps the forest hidden, too often
a muddying of the ocean that keeps you
looking at the bottom for treasure when
there’s so much gold in the horizon.
I like forests.
I like my oceans full of shipwrecks I can’t find.
I don’t need to believe in forests:
I can see them.
I don’t need to believe in the ocean:
it’s spread out before me.

you rootless tree,
you rudderless ship…

Perhaps…but,
I choose my best self from each moment of self.
I move.

I can slip my bonds at will.

I am free.

you believe that?

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Leave a comment | tags: "monster", god, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

June 30, 2009

business closing, fire sale

By Tony Brown

there is a fire ready to go here
where the sign reads
“building for lease, business zoned,
great location.”

here’s the tinder:

a manager’s Audi TT
in a parking lot full
of old pickups and beat vans.
the receiving dock empty.
the shipping dock empty.
fifteen minutes between phone calls.

and the sparks:
the few who are left
are still unpacking, testing,
repacking.

a time clock
marks the quiet.

when the last workbench is clear,

here comes the smolder
as they lock the doors
behind them when they leave,
looking around at each other.

later, the blaze:
at night,
in bars and homes,
bursting forth
full force:
danger
and hot fear.

the building is intact;
the people, embers.

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2 Comments | tags: poems, poetry, work | posted in poetry

June 29, 2009

draft in lieu of a poem

By Tony Brown

When the hard work
of putting one word
after another
becomes a trudge
through mud
while being whipped
by the thin branches
you’ve pushed aside
and then released
which then snap back into
your face,

it is best
to find a perch on
one of those
cutting twigs,

let yourself dry
and rest

until the words
fall from you
as song,

doing for themselves
what you have been trying
to make them do.

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June 28, 2009

Interview on Eclectica

By Tony Brown

There’s an interview with me by Write Bloody Press author Lea Deschenes in this month’s Eclectica Journal:

Eclectica

Thanks to both Lea and Eclectica for this opportunity to talk about myself…a poet’s greatest wish.

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June 28, 2009

Celebrity Deaths

By Tony Brown

since it is decreed
that everyone shall mourn them
I shall write a poem of mourning

in which I say that I do not
mourn them

except as selfishness applies
in the sense of mourning
things they are not here to produce
which I might have enjoyed
even though I did not enjoy
the products they did produce
when they were here
so I do not mourn
what potential they did not achieve
as it was nothing I anticipated

if I mourn anything
in a genuine way
I mourn the connections I have made
with others in heated discussions
of the worth or character of the dead
and their efforts

the memories of the faces of those
who joined me in my opinions
and argued on my side and then
we went for breakfast still talking
of anything other than where we began

and the faces of those who later became friends
agreeing to let the disagreements stand
as no obstacle to respect
so we shared a drink and talked again
of anything but the topic that separated us

what those who died have done for me
is offer me
a place to stand while i determined
my own path

what they did is only as important to me
as to how much it allows me
to make my own stand

it makes me
feel all-american
to use a celebrity death
for my own purposes

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2 Comments | tags: celebrity, death, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

June 28, 2009

Background

By Tony Brown

Excited? Passionate?
No. Not me. I listen
to sidewalk and kitchen talk,
any sound of my own
veiled in the meter of a slow rain.

There are times I wish
I was thunder, or more: lightning
tearing a tree down and startling everyone
within view of it, leaving a hole behind,
or splinters; at the very least, my own story.

Instead, I’m the hiss of
a presence sensed, soaking through,
making the ground soft.
Everyone who walks by
can see where they’ve been
because I’ve been there.

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June 27, 2009

Scrolling Down

By Tony Brown

Bird with three wings
found in Suffolk. Infants
born singing
in Sao Paulo. A ghost,
seen by thousands and identified
as a long dead rock star,
hovering just above the rush hour traffic
on the ring road around Atlanta —
in broad daylight, laughing
and strumming a lute.

In Tehran,
green turns overnight
to red.

The severed arm of a Jamaican wrestler
miraculously regenerates right on the floor
of the ring. A Swiss man five days underwater
is found alive and breathing through a straw.
Slingshots have replaced cell phones
as the new status symbol for Japanese youth.

A Karachi flower market
reopens for business with a new look
after a car
previously pollinated with C-4
bears fruit.

A new puzzle craze
sweeps the Internet:
people competing
to connect dots
and create pictures
on a screen filled with nothing
but dots. Winners
will be chosen
at a date to be announced.

In Kentucky, authorities report
a young boy has killed his entire family
because they were demons. The death
of a middle aged shepherd in Andorra is linked to
a traditional curse of the Roma. Paris
is now the world capital of sleeping sickness.

The news takes the world by surprise.

Investigations continue,
with results expected.

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Leave a comment | tags: current events, poems, poetry, the news | posted in poetry

June 26, 2009