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.

April 23, 2008

The election so far:

By Tony Brown

I’m still out in front with the voting for this, but Rob McClennan is moving up FAST.

If you haven’t voted, haven’t cajoled your friends and neighbors into voting, or haven’t yet convinced everyone you know who really could care less about who the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere is that it’s totally worth their time to cast a meaningless vote for someone they don’t really know or care about, this is the time to do it.

The election ends on April 29. Join me in making this happen, and I promise that nothing of interest will happen as a result.

Go here to vote:

http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/category/poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere

Remember: a vote for me is a vote that isn’t for someone else.

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April 23, 2008

overheard

By Tony Brown

i can’t help it.
my ability to overhear
and then to recombine what i’ve heard
into something else is at once a curse
and a mechanical puzzle.

my ear and mind
just bend to the task
not quite at hand.
i hear what i hear and make of it
what there is to be made.

take the case of a man i know
with a flame tattoo on his head
who lives, apparently, on his friends’ couches. take the way
he comes to me for a cigarette. when I ask how he is feeling
he tells me that he is unspeakably angry.

he walks over to the curb
in front of the corner store, sits down, and talks.
you must believe me when i say
i am not trying to hear him speaking to —
who? not me. someone inside, perhaps to himself, who knows.

but i hear him anyway. he tells that listener
that he hasn’t had sex in years.
he tells that listener,
you can’t play god with me because i’m already dead.
they broke in and stole my balls.

a few days later in a foreign airport
i hear a woman on the phone
telling the listener that she IS a woman
and he IS a man goddamn it
and she is sick of it not being clear.

i am certain that somehow i have found
the source of the voice in flame guy’s head. if i had never
overheard the first conversation i would not know
how to interpret this second one but
it rings true: the man is impotent, on fire,

unspeakably angry, especially at them, but at least he can speak to her.
she is tired of how unclear he has become, and sick of trying
to make him clear from her side of the border. all the while,
some crazy man is listening to them both
and stealing from them for his own needs.

yes. i am the thief they know is there but never see.
i steal from them and everyone, conspirator,
poisoned ears openly looting even as i wonder
how much of what is beyond them is really mine.
is anything i say anything more than what i’ve overheard?

i won’t answer that, but you can whisper your own opinion
on the matter if you want. i’ll know in a second
what you think of me, what i should think of me. and if two of you
should disagree, i’ll take that argument too and make it my own.
you wonder why i eavesdrop. i wonder why you think of me at all.

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April 21, 2008

By Tony Brown

Please remember to vote for me ( and send your friends, too!!!) for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere starting Monday! You can do it here:

http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/category/poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere

If elected, I promise:

— a vastly expanded Poetic Cabinet, including new Departments of the Pantoum and Sestina;

— a spending cap limiting all political poems to seventeen syllables or fewer;

— new regulations allowing slammers to take containers of more than two ounces of alcohol on flights, or anywhere else for that matter;

— support for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the death penalty for lost protests at Nationals.

My slogan: “Tony Brown. My phone is off at 3 AM…what the hell could be so important at 3 AM anyway? I’m a fucking poet, dammit. I can’t save the fucking world. Call me after noon.”

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April 20, 2008

Protected: By the way:

By Tony Brown

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April 19, 2008

Blatant and Crass self promotion

By Tony Brown

Screw it. I’m in the mood to be totally selfish.

I want to be nominated for and then win the title of 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. It’s an essentially meaningless award and as I maintain an essentially meaningless blog, I think I deserve this.

Besides, I ain’t pretty enough for Famecast and since I’ve never actually shamelessly shilled for myself to win something before, this seems to be about my speed. I NEED to do that at least once in my life in order to share in that experience with the rest of the slam world, don’t you think?

So someone go here and nominate me (just once is all that’s needed):

http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/nominations-for-the-2008-poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere-ha.html#comments

and then send everyone you know to vote for me.

If elected, I promise to change something or other with my vast experience on day one and then keep doing it for a hundred years. (See?? I’m topical yet oblique. What more could you ask for?)

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April 18, 2008

Godspeed, Danny.

By Tony Brown

I’m glad I got to see him one last time.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/17/obit.federici.ap/index.html

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April 18, 2008

Crazy Poetry Day

By Tony Brown

So let’s see:

–Two assemblies at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School this AM with a host of student writers as well as Harlem125, Christopher Johnson, and Bobby Gibbs. Enthusiastic crowds that totaled about 1200 kids over two assemblies. Cool.

–Spent a long but fun evening at the Captain of the Ship Invitational Slam at the Vernon, hosted by Bobby in his usual genial drunk style. Christopher Johnson won and got to wear the Captain’s hat for the rest of the night.

I sacrificed before the final round and scored a thirty — high score of the night. Nice to know I can still pull one off once in a while.

Off to bed. No poems today…I’m poemed out.

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April 16, 2008

today’s quickies/quickie poem #2

By Tony Brown

14:28 talking about death is so normal to me I don’t even think about life anymore #
02:51 if asked for a photo of myself i would offer one of me at 22 — 26 years ago it looked more like who i am today #

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
in the photo

he’s looking a tad drunk
his beard is full and dark
and he’s smiling

as if he could die tomorrow
feeling like he was perfectly entitled
to say he’d led a full life

when i knew him
he didn’t care and if he did something
dangerous

he would laugh it off
saying no one lives forever
so you might as well live

if i die tomorrow
i know the truth about full lives
and living is that every life ends

fully lived with its share
of heartache right alongside
the rush of not caring about it

he was mostly an idiot
which is why he looks so happy
i have forgotten how to fake that

and i envy him his incompleteness
but that smile’s still inside me
waiting to be plastered back on by someone else

on that day
when i do something dumbass
and pass on, life full and complete

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April 15, 2008

Bipolar disorder metaphor

By Tony Brown

penguingod made a comment the other day about how it’s incredibly hard to describe bipolar illness to anyone; much like describing a psychedelic experience, you never quite capture it.

I won’t try, but I recalled this story the other day that can explain one part of it — how when you’re dealing with the condition, you end up analyzing and parsing all your reactions to decide what’s a legitimate concern and what is the disorder talking; is your good feeling a symptom of mania, are you stressing and depressing over something unimportant? You end up distrusting a lot of your own perceptions…

It’s something like this:

You go for a walk in a swamp. There’s a lot of thick brush, and you know there’s also lots of quicksand that has killed a lot of people. You take a cane with you to help test the ground.

It gets foggy, and you get lost, and it’s night time with no moon. You move along very cautiously, trying to find your way out.

You get through a particularly thick patch of thorns and branches, stumbling through, the wood breaking around you as you trip over things.

You place your cane on the ground to test your footing…and it doesn’t resist. There’s no pushback. You try to interpret that, and you think to yourself: it’s quicksand, there’s no resistance back because the cane is sinking in.

You touch the ground all around you, with a steadily increasing sense of panic, and realize that you’re standing in the middle of a patch of the stuff on the only available solid ground. A step in any direction will be fatal.

So you stand still. You spend the night terrified to move at all, and though you’re exhausted and are ready to fall over from hunger and cold, you just…stand there.

In the morning, the light comes up and the fog burns off. You look at the ground in order to see if there’s a way out and realize that in the struggle to get through that thicket…you broke your cane off about a foot above the ground, and the lack of resistance you were feeling had nothing to to do with quicksand. The cane just wasn’t giving you accurate information, because it wasn’t touching anything at all.

The road home is just ahead of you, but you’re so exhausted and stressed and disgusted with yourself and your stupidity that you just can’t move toward it…

Something like that.

Yeah.

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April 14, 2008

today’s quickies/poem from the quickies #1

By Tony Brown

03:44 trying to go to sleep… #
03:44 yup, still awake… #
03:45 ok, now i’m asleep #
04:01 I lied. I do that sometimes, especially about sleep and its presence or absence. #

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

In the middle of the darkest night ever,
I am trying to decide:

if you are asleep and you tell yourself
you are not, or if you are awake and say
you are asleep, and you believe either or both are true —

is there any truth that is worth its salt?
If you are not
sure of anything anymore,
is it worth trying
to be sure?

I know one thing only:
I will only fully open my eyes
to a solid answer.

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April 14, 2008

fuel

By Tony Brown

burned, all burned.

dragged from their homes, pilloried,
made to stand trial in rooms
where the air did not bend toward their truths,
no matter how honest they were.
taken from places of power
once they had been judged. burned,
and though the smoke lifted away from their bubbling torment
and settled onto the skin of those who had judged them,
it took them just moments
to wipe the obvious stains away.

and after that,
the burning again, and again,
for it is heat that makes the engines go.
what fuel is used is unimportant.
it will change every time a source is exhausted.
it will not matter to the tenders what new shape it takes,
or how the burning happens…through wood
or atom or zyklon-b, through poverty’s slow
coal seam smolder or in the death by tiny sparks
that comes from daily denial.

all fuel burns the same.
look into any ashes
and you will see yourself there.
do not pretend that if you were fuel once,
you are not now.
do not pretend that if you were a fire tender,
you can never burn.
do not pretend that they see a difference among you.
to them there is drought
and kindling
enough to keep this world
on fire forever,
as long as one man
with one match
can be made
to strike it.

so come.

come to the place of burning.
come as water this time.
come in the name of everyone once burned.
come up
from the unjust ashes
and drown that match. come up
from the wet of soaked old pyres
and drown it. come up
from the freezing graves of the middle passage
and drown it. come up
from sand creek’s shoals
and drown it. come up
from memory’s camps,
from the chimneys of horror,
from the alleys of walled remainder,
from the forests of hidden famine,
from the conflagrations of invasion,
colony, assimilation, genocide,
and every other firestarter,
come together to drown it…

but do not come with lightning
when you come.
bring no fire of your own.
come as rain only,
joining with stream and spring,
come a little at a time
until we build,
long and soaking,
to a steady downpour
swollen
with a billion times
a billion drops.

no end can come to this blaze
until we believe in our watery hearts
that every scrap of fuel
tastes the same to the tongue of a flame,
and that nothing left dry
will ever be proof
against it.

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April 14, 2008

The Muse in the Basement

By Tony Brown

She lays out the gears on the tables in the basement, the ones she built many years ago from sawhorses and sheets of marine grade plywood, nailed down and then glossed thick with polyurethane.

Each gear is perfect with the exception of one missing tooth. Where the tooth has broken free, the stainless surface of each gear goes abruptly gray, rough and glinting as if an inner core of lava sand that had been hidden since the Forging has been suddenly exposed.

There are hundreds of them, some as small as fingernails, some as large as sunflower heads. She stacks them to make them all fit, some in orderly stacks of identically sized units, others in haphazard and top-heavy towers. Where she can, she meshes them together against each other, as if an engine were forming here, waiting for repair so that the turning may begin.

This is no machine, she thinks as she sizes up the tableau, counting softly to herself. She has seen the machines of the past and imagined the machines of the future. This, which to her mind is the machine of the present, the beginning of it at least, is not ready. At the moment, it’s a sculpture in line with the ancient dictum that if it is nothing else, it must be art.

She turns from the tables and asks me for the missing teeth, which we are both sure must be around here somewhere…

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April 14, 2008

Cryptids

By Tony Brown

I learned of this website that allows you to spin a wheel and land on a square that tells you how to make a life decision based on you doing what a unicorn would do in response to the same situation you’re facing. I spun the wheel this morning and it said i should “whinny and rear.”

Whinny and rear. Well, I do this all the time so it didn’t seem to be a huge stretch. I was glad I was not advised to nuzzle a newborn or frolic in a meadow; although I was hoping that I’d be told to impale evil things, I guess I’m not really in shape for that. Good call, wheel.

So I went out the front door on my hind legs and waved my arms around. My voice has too much tobacco in it for a solid whinny, but I made some sort of approximate noise and sortied forth.

At the gas station, the pump refused my credit card so I whinnied at it. There wasn’t much space to rear up since I’d parked too close to the pump, but I managed something that didn’t look too un-unicorn like and fulfilled the prophecy. I was becoming mythical! Certainly, the pump’s refusal to honor my credit made that a distinct possibility!

I drove out to the Tower Hills, just outside the city. I knew I’d be the lone unicorn out there, since it’s not the season for the regular unicorns — while they equally adore frolicking in meadows covered in snow or wildflowers, the mud of a Massachusetts spring is something they’d rather not touch. I pulled off the road by the reservoir and found a trail there, which I followed to a bar in a clearing.

The bar was better furnished than I would have expected, and the drinks were well made and cheap. The bartender greets me with a nod; it appeared to me that I had been there before, though it all seemed new. I knew no one else, at least by their faces, though I recognized them by their traits — the floor was covered with their tired muddy tracks: griffins whose wings had been stolen, chimeras with odd parts from random plastic surgeries, basilisks who could turn you to Corian with a single glance. I joined my fellow cryptids there and we indulged in our fortunes for many, many hours until I was drunk on the dizzying rhythm of my whinnying and rearing.

Tomorrow, I’m going to return to that website with its majestic wheel, that dynamic image of cardboard and bits. It tells me old stories that make me feel like I’m not alone in believing that there’s a greater purpose. I know it’s supposed to be for amusement only, but if it’s just a joke then why did it lead me to the place where I feel most justified?

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April 14, 2008

Genesis

By Tony Brown

It has been easy, these first few days after buying the studio, to go through the motions: to sit at the easel in women’s clothes and think of himself as the painter who had owned it before him. He’d only glimpsed her work in passing, shards of it peeking out from under the tarps she’d wrapped it in prior to packing and leaving the place she’d held on to for so many years, the studio inherited from her father who’d expected her to move on and become a doctor or something else more practical instead of dressing herself in his shirts and sitting before the easels he’d left as well, sitting for many years until the day that a whisper, perhaps the sound of a train in the distance or a voice in the hallway, moved her to pick up a tube and squeeze it onto a palette.

From what he could see, there was a lot of red under those tarps.

Now, sitting here, he understood a lot more about how this might have happened. One sits and thinks, he tells himself, until an unoriginal thought becomes so strong that the weight of it breaks over you and you rush to fill the crack with whatever you call art.

He arranges a fold of her smock over his jeans. He puts on his headphones and begins to drown.

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April 14, 2008

Twitter Poems

By Tony Brown

I’ve noticed a lot of people on my friends’ list using Twitter, and I’ve got an interesting idea about using it as a poetry tool.

I’ve set up an account and using LoudTwitter, I think I’ll use it on a semi-regular basis to capture lines and stuff during the day, then use the resulting daily crosspost of the collected Twitters to this blog (11:00 AM EDT) to be the source of a new poem. I may not use it every day, but it’s worth experimenting with…finding a way to ensure that I force myself to use all those odd things that occur to me during the day.

If anyone else wants to try it, that would be cool. Maybe we could set up an LJ community for it eventually…

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