The new Zero Point Zero column is posted, in which I urge poets to stop writing so much.
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Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
Animals
I walked toward the drugstore door
where a skinny man
in a worn green plaid shirt
and dirty bagged-out jeans was standing
unsteadily near the trash can.
“You don’t know shit,” he said,
after catching my slight recoil at the way
he spit large into his palm
and ran his hand through his hair
to flatten the strays that had come loose
in the wind. “Don’t look at me like that, fucker.
“Nothing works better than spit
on my hair. If I wanna
spit in my hand and wash myself all over with it,
why the fuck should you care? We’re all fucking animals, ain’t we?
How’s it any different than what a cat does,
or a dog? And are you gonna tell me you wouldn’t lick
your balls if you could? Course you would.”
He lurched away from me
into the store on whatever errand
had brought him here. I stayed the hell away from him
once inside, where I picked up my prescriptions,
bread, a lemonade for the ride home.
I almost hit a stray cat
before entering my street. He scooted across the road
and sat down once he’d made it and started in to licking upon
his matted white fur. I watched him for a while
before getting out to go inside.
I have been thinking about them for a long time now,
that drunk and that fleeting cat: their quick wet swipes
over their hair, maybe lingering for a moment or more
on some part that feels good, trying to cover up
how frightened they were by the close approach
of what might have been death, might have been scorn,
might have been an assumption that survival
isn’t enough by itself. We’re all animals,
he said. We just do what we do.
city
1.
i’m going to stick a chrome pipe
in my culo
so people will think i’m an escalade
and maybe look at me when i walk by
2.
the stone embedded in the pavement
holds a trace of everyone who’s walked there
my feet have never touched it
i float everywhere and i don’t know
the ground below me
3.
jimmy’s deli
once owned by jimmy nordstrom
now owned by virapa patel
still sells butter for six dollars a pound
but at least his cigarettes are cheap
4.
the neighborhood bar
is a gentleman’s club
aka strip joint
and the entertainers
aka as vicki
alice and
the other vicki
change faces every so often
leaving their names behind
clumped on the floor
who knows what animals they were
in their past lives
perfect in their camouflage
or leaving tails behind them
as they fled
5.
if this city were a banana leaf
i’d cover myself in it
and drowse in the heat
walking down a street past asian markets and
suddenly this city is a banana leaf
but now i don’t believe i could sleep here
something there is here
that doesn’t love
me
i press my hands to the walls
of the thrift store and think
of the worn jeans inside
that hold the forms of past owners
men and women who shucked them off
in familiar places before familiar faces
not everyone gets naked in the city
some of us walk ten inches above the stones
dressed in someone else’s clothes
smoking butt after butt
jealous of the running lights and huge rims
moving obvious and rude
past the nameless in the night
reggaeton (revised)
cracking along
with corduroy rhythm
with lyrics i don’t understand
that nonetheless promise me blue hips and red nights
with danger and regret in equal parts
that sound like guns tucked in a waistband
with smoke and dull stoner haze coupled with rum
that sits on the tongue a reminder of young couplings
with chingaling harmony and urgent slipbeats
that tell me there’s a woman out there for me
if only i get up and move
toward her and away from the couch
from the small room
from the air conditioning
from the peace and quiet
when peace and quiet roar in my ears
when comfort feels this much like fear
man
i gotta go
Paging Orlando poetry types
I’ll be in Orlando on a job on the nights of Sept. 19 and 20th (Tuesday and Wednesday). What’s up?
In a moment of complete silliness
I have decided to go see SoaP a SECOND time in the same weekend.
ocvictor, myainsel and I will be attending the 1:40 show at the Acropolis, AKA the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley.
Please feel free to join ussssssss. (I’ll get tired of the hissing thing eventually, I promise, but bear with me for a bit.)
Florida is TOO FUCKING HOT
For once, I’m getting up at this hour of the morning as opposed to still being up after a night of no sleep. I hit the sack early last night and stayed down for the count.
God, it felt good to be working again! Granted, it’s only one gig, but it’s something. If I can stretch this one out to a couple of more, I might be able to hold off the Return To Full Time Work a bit longer.
Hey, why wasn’t David Huang at Nats this year?
Too much thinking. I’m a go back to bed now for a bit. More later.
PS: No offense to my Floridian readers/friends, but even being in this outrageous place (the Boca Raton Resort and Club) has not made me like this state one bit more. Even when it’s cooler, I don’t like it here, and right now this SOUP they try to pretend is “air” is killing me.
rhode island blues
living with closed eyes
scent of other people’s smoke
water on my tongue
background celebrity chatter
stray pill hits the floor
knuckles cracked so often
they revolt even me
tolerance for the bleak
should be the state motto
just up the road there’s an all night regret
i can visit whenever i want
where the hill is alive with the sound
of the same car passing the old apartment
many times over many hours
praying for the light to stay off
i could be one move from success
if i could move at all
RIP, Bruno Kirby
One of my favorite character actors. I keep thinking of his being repeatedly bumped from “The Larry Sanders Show.”
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/15/kirby.obit.ap/index.html
surprise visit
when you left
and i closed the door behind you,
and settled in to do the paperwork
i’d been putting off all day,
it felt like the lid coming down
on an open manhole
with me inside.
down here
the only thing to do
is mine the dark
and listen for the sound
of metal grinding on metal
which will tell me
you’re up there waiting for me
to climb back into the light.
Off to Florida
for an actual job — getting paid 1k plus expenses to run a two hour training program in Boca Raton tomorrow afternoon.
I’ll be done by around 7:30 at the latest. Any poetry nearby? Anyone got a car who could pick me up to see said poetry?
NPS in more detail
A day or two down the line now, I think I can say a few things.
— I think, in general, I heard better poetry. There was the usual ration of crap, of course; and the evidence of the Ken Hunt Prize submissions would suggest that there still a fair number of poems out there that may work in performance but don’t stand up on the page. Still, I did hear some challenging work that made me hopeful that a groundswell of better writing is coming. It may never dominate, but it’s there.
I again heard better work in side events that I did on stage during the bouts.
— In conversations about what people were reading/listening to, I heard more people mention poets who aren’t slammers.
— Group pieces are still pretty much lost on me, but there were one or two (the Denver immigration piece, for instance) that were tolerable. I saw more duos I liked, reinforcing my view that the signal-to-noise ratio has a lot to do with my antipathy.
— The Legends showcases were a good reminder that good poets have always been present in this field. The glow of “old school” performers seems to be justified, reminding me of Krystal Ashe’s contention that slam is your sophomore year in poetry, and you aren’t a graduate just because you’ve slammed a lot.
— It was nice to be included in the Legends showcase. I’m still not sure I belonged there, but I’ll take the compliment and the attendant honor.
— At the same time, the presence of folks like Buddy Wakefield, Genevieve Van Cleve, Roger Bonair-Agard, Marty McConnell, and RAC indicate that there’s a way to couple poetic growth and opportunities beyond slam with a commitment to the Big Show.
— All that said, I think I still prefer IWPS as an event. I’ve thought this for a couple of years, and I think this year confirmed it. The party may be better at NPS (based on sheer volume), but I think the event lends itself to better and more diverse poems.
There may be more points later, but that’ll hold me for a bit.
recall
this afternoon i thought of you, thinking of the days
we tore the laundry off the line and then ran
to avoid being caught:
the freshening clothes hanging on the line; you,
running into the sheets, hiding between them,
burying your face into the stiff cotton, the air-smell.
it had been a while since i saw sheets on a line
but tonight, right in the backyard of the apartment,
two fitted sheets hung, billowing in the slight breeze,
and i dropped the briefcase and went right up to one
and stuck my face up close and breathed air and sun
and your breath.
you are the bed i lie in.
you’re everything i learned as a kid.
you left before i could tell you so.
i forget that most days, except when
there are sheets on the line that smell
of dried rain in blue percale,
but i can’t sleep when they’re on my bed,
so i throw them in the dryer.
it’s better that way.
Dark Matter 