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Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
I’ve been neglectful of late
in tooting my own horn about a couple of recent publications and such, which I think also devalues the outlets that saw fit to give me some room, so here you go:
My poem “First Letter Home” appears in the “soft launch” of the new e-Zine Spindle ( http://www.spindlezine.com ), created and edited by the always picky Guy LeCharles Gonzalez ( loudpoet ). As this is a site devoted to NYC and I’m not a New Yorker by birth or relocation (though a large section of my heart resides there), I’m very proud to be in this one, and that this poem is the one that’s there.
“Lady in the Harbor” appears in the current issue of The November 3rd Club ( http://www.november3rdclub.com ). (Gee, a New York thing again. Hadn’t noticed that before now!) Seriously, this site’s important for its central effort to create a site for discussion and display of the ongoing struggle to reconcile solid political thought with solid writing. Victor Infante ( ocvictor ) and crew are making this a prime destination for this sort of work. Many thanks. (If nothing else, go read the current issue for the great discussion on what makes for good political writing.)
More are in the pipeline, but I’ll talk about those later.
Finally, I was interviewed last night for a segment on Eadon’s Place ( http://www.eadonsplace.com/ ), a relatively new Internet radio station devoted to the spoken word 24/7. It’s run by old time Nuyorican slam master Keith Roach and southern NJ/Philly poetry organizer Linda DiFeterici, and features shows and recordings with all kindsa folks from now to back in the day. (Think Moondog, think the Rev, etc.) Interview should be up next Sunday — will let you know.
“Glorious Fatherland, Rejoice!”
History tells us
of a rock
on the edge of a parking lot
in Irvine, California,
that decided it wanted to be
an independent nation.
It made up an anthem
and an economy. It drew a flag
on its downside
with the help of mercenary
sowbugs.
“Glory, glory,”
it sang to itself
when the sprinklers came on
at four in the morning
as the office blocks slept.
The Country of the Stone
was neutral in most
international disputes
but loathed its neighbors
and defended its borders
through a clandestine policy
of leaching dangerous minerals
into the adjacent soil.
With a population of one
it had little internal conflict.
It parsed its rich history
to obscure anything beyond
the Ice Age and the volcano
that spawned it.
Unfortunate incidents
like the Cracking
of the Bike Messenger’s Skull
were hushed up.
Dark in the damp morning,
gray in the sun of high noon,
indistinct in the glow of the streetlights,
concealed by the shade of the gingkos,
national pride swelling within —
this was a proud place
and the rumbling of bulldozers
coming to expand the parking lot
was as nothing to the rock, all the way
up to the moment when the steel
struck sparks from it as it raised it
high in the air toward the dump truck
which carried it away without a second thought.
At the risk of sounding like an old fogey:
I’m really uncomfortable with that career meme going around.
The site you’re all visiting is a pay website used by a professional career counselor to help his/her clients. It seems obvious to me that someone who used the site is sharing a proprietary username and password to allow others to access it, and that info is now all over the Web.
If you read the info on the site, it seems to me that the person/company that runs it intends for it to be used by professional career counselors with their clients after paying a fee to use it.
Now, I don’t know all the ramifications, but it smells slightly unethical to me to use the site this way.
the new Duende CD
Just completed a marathon writing and recording session for the new CD. Of the 15 or so poem/music pieces under consideration, we managed to get solid, usable takes for 10 of them. We only had three written when we started the session.
Fatigue had set in before we finished and it felt like we were getting sloppy, so we called it and decided to finish up next weekend.
Having Chris act as full time producer and engineer is a phenomenally good move, as it frees us to work and adds a pair of objective ears.
We’re not going to be doing the new version of “Punk” on Wednesday at the Cantab. I need to be more comfortable playing rhythm on electric before we use it.
I’m so excited about this work. It’s a new level, and I think the show on October 6 will be something else.
Day 2 down
Just came home from the second of three training days this week. One to go tomorrow in Boston.
My feet — especially my right foot, the one with the plantar fascitis — are aching and bruised. I hope I can get through one more day. I’ll probably be skipping Storytellers to let them recover, because on Saturday Faro, a_solitaryman and I are turning the living room into a recording studio and going into a marathon session to try and write and record the entire new CD in one day. We’ve got four poems done, I’ll try and pull together the version of “Punk” we’ve been working on with me on electric, and the rest will come together, I’m pretty confident. Chris has got a hot new digital 8-track and we spent some time last weekend learning how to use it and dialing in effects and stuff, so we should be good to go pretty quickly.
(this also means that I’ll be missing Maxine Kumin in Brockton Saturday afternoon. poop.)
I also was the recipient of an undeserved good deed last night. It’s not something I want to talk about here, other than to say that sometimes, I am moved to tears by people.
If I owe you a phone call…I will return it a bit later. I need to recoup some energy right now.
PS:
Thanks to frequegrl there’s a PS2 in this house. I’m finally getting hooked on a video game — “Just Cause.” I spend time every night attempting to overthrow a small South American government, with the assistance of the CIA. Total amoral kiling and expedient politics in a blender on my TV.
Blair, tonight
Blair was fantastic tonight at Gotpoetry. PERIOD. Standing O from the crowd and he inspired a few people to come up and add their voices to the second half of the open.
Terrific poems in the open and an almost mystical level of connection. Everyone brought their best work. It really was an outstanding night.
If you’re in the neighborhood and you’re not coming to Gotpoetry regularly, you’re missing a great and growing reading.
Don’t make the mistake again…come next week for Bill MacMillan, the week after for Marlon Carey, the week after that for…well, come down and find out!
This is what a reading should feel like, at least to me.
Deleted post
I deleted my earlier post about the bin Laden videos.
I made a vow long ago never to get into arguments about 9/11 and al-Qaeda conspiracies. I’ve broken it twice today — here, and on Gotpoetry.
Because I’m an administrator there, I will not delete my posts. But I will not continue the argument there.
This is my personal blog. I choose to delete it here.
Sorry.
Bored, indeed
when I do a meme. Ganked from happinesstogo. I’m actually feeling a tad ill, so it’s therapeutic to get such things out of my system, i guess.
Copy this list; leave in the bands you’ve seen perform live; delete the ones you haven’t, and add new ones that you have seen until you reach 25. An asterisk means the previous person had it on their list. Two asterisks means the last two people who did this before you had that band on their list.
So many concerts over the years it feels like a list of 25 is a real cheat. But hey, those are the rules.
1. The Who
2. Deep Purple
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. The Grateful Dead*
5. U2
6. Buddy Guy and Junion Wells
7. Pharoah Sanders
8. Eric B. and Rakim
9. Public Enemy*
10. KISS
11. Greg Brown*
12. Richie Havens*
13. The Clash
14. The Ramones
15. Bob Dylan
16. The Cure*
17. The Violent Femmes*
18. Elvis Costello
19. Patti Smith
20. B.B.King
21. James Brown
22. The Replacements
23. Metallica
24. Motley Crue
25. Black Sabbath
Christ. I’m not even scratching the surface with 25. Keep in mind that I used to do concert security, so some of these bands I saw while on the job and not by choice.
I’m adding ten more.
26. Frank Sinatra
27. Santana
28. REM
29. Fugazi
30. Boiled In Lead
31. Peter Gabriel
32. Sting
33. Boston (9 hellfucking nights in a shitfucking row…I’ve never been the same, I swear)
34. Devo
35. ZZ Top
Still have barely touched the club years and all the little bands I’ve seen that later got big, the old blues guys, the local bands…
Never fails.
There’s a documentary/dramatization of Flight 11 on. I’m watching it, despite my best intentions.
I know there will be nothing about my friends in the show, but I am watching it anyway.
Why do I do this?
two more days
till the anniversary.
it’s not bothering me as much this year, for some reason…maybe the fifth anniversary was the last step from immediate pain to the lessening of sorrow and the turning of grief into remembrance.
i still think it led me to where I am now…that it was the catalyst for so many life changes I’ve been through since then.
strangely, I will be at the company next week…got a contract for a couple of days of training there. I will visit the memorial garden, see what’s been left for them, and think of all of them…Tara, Susan, Robin, Christine, Neilie, Lisa, and Linda…
and that will be that, again, till the next reminder…
Night
is so rich and sad that there are times I can barely stand it. But the amount of time I spend in it, dreading sleep, seems to indicate that I am built for such things.
How to Let Them Know Who’s Boss
Dog them early while the scent of their sulfur builds.
Maze the rules you make them play by until loopholes become jaws.
Stack them where they belong till God approves of the height of the pile.
Open their prison doors and pour on lingering fame.
Approve their paroles with a voice full of long chains.
Denounce them at the whiff of impure thought.
Relegate their romances to the dustbin of hysteria.
Imagine their lifestyles as moldy bread.
Bite mincing mouthfuls from them till they spit back.
Reject their strapping response to infractions.
Blow them rat kisses.
Darken their doorsteps.
Assume their compulsion if you have it not.
Burn their books.
Own them.
Remove them from their lands.
Speak of universal love only when they aren’t there to hear.
Steal their women for a cabaret of night monkey wars.
Splay their men’s genitals upon a flea market blanket.
Drown their children in salt.
Rend their garments.
Bruise their heels.
Bivouac where they pray.
Infiltrate them when they make their own worlds.
Imitate them.
Give them names to conceal the names with which they were born.
Carry a sponge to sop their servant blood from your white loins.
Blacken their teeth until yours are moonlike in comparison.
Honor them with caricatures while you shred their portraits.
Play their music in your nurseries.
Wear their feathered robes while you drop their bastardized secrets on the tiles of your temple.
Cut off their water.
Tell them the righteous can live on dew alone.
Suck their grass dry and watch the edges get crisp in the bright daylight you have made from their smiles.
Let your mercy rain down upon them as a mighty river.
Sitting up late
with the cat watching a crime show.
Well, I’m watching it. He prefers HGTV, so he’s sulking because I won’t give him the remote.
I gave him some catnip, so his level of sulk is somewhat reduced by the fact that he’s stoned. Which is as it should be.
The things you think of at 3 AM, Brown…
Hope
“If there was a way
to be sure he’ll never find us, I’d feel better
about all this,” she said to me
as she tied a ribbon onto her daughter’s present,
evening the ends
and taking scissors to them to curl them
so they lofted, just a bit,
and bounced when she let them go.
When our backs were turned
the ribbons gave one languid flap
and the box
rose and
soared around the room, not quickly
but deliberately, moving among
the scattered boxes, avoiding the just-placed
new knick-knacks that were much the same
as the old, broken ones she’d left behind
on the night she raised the little girl from bed
and took the two of them away from
the ruins.
It hovered by each
unmarked wall, blessed
the unlisted phone for a moment
with a near-kiss, slipped off to the bedroom
and drifted over their clean beds.
“I wish
I knew something about hope —
how to find it, how to make it stay
for more than an odd breath,”
she said with one hand out
gesturing at the new walls, new TV, new
shelves, and not a fist in sight.
She looked down at the present
(suddenly back in its place
with its travels undiscovered)
with its floating ribbons and perfect creases,
and smiled
for the first time that day. “She’s gonna love
that, I know. It’s nothing big, but she’ll love it.”
She brushed back the hair
from her bruised cheek.
The box — was it a trick
of the light? — the box shook a little,
its wrapping rustling.
Dark Matter 