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Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
Thomas the Rhymer
If I spend enough hours
playing guitar under this tree
I’ll meet a woman
who will take me away.
Given enough time in the wilderness
every troubador imagines her.
Old tales tell of her: she’s the queen
of some fool place and can be
alternately ugly and gorgeous
like pretty much everyone else.
Rumor has it that if she chooses you
you’ve got to stay with her until
you learn her lessons — again,
pretty much like anything else.
In fact, everything about the story
sounds like an everyday life,
which makes sense if you think
myths are all about explanation
and not magic. In the story, the singer
comes back and can see the future,
but I suspect the truth is
that the singer comes back
and so much time has passed
that everyday things look so new
that he understands
what’s in front of him better
than the rest of us can who have been buried
in the details for all our lives.
So: a woman comes
and holds you just long enough
to make it seem that time stands still
and you can take advantage of that
to reinvent the way you are in the world.
It doesn’t sound odd to me. It has happened to me
a dozen times or more. It’s why I’m still sitting
under this tree.
pills
every pill, no matter how
familiar, is a mystery until it is
consumed. i live within
a fence of such mysteries.
things change
often enough that surprises
still occur.
take tonight
when you were leaving
and i became sad. i never expected
a pill to make it all better, but still
there was a deluge in me
when your car pulled
away. i went back upstairs
and decided not to take another pill
until morning, letting the natural sadness
wash me.
it will be no surprise
in the morning when i wake up alone.
the next pill may ease that,
or it may not. i’ll only exhale again
when you return, either way.
jim thinks about his suburban childhood
back then, whenever i could
i’d run to the woods
and pretend i was homeless.
as long as i wasn’t within sight
of ranches, raised ranches, bungalows,
and cape cod cottages, i knew something
like calm.
it was like my guts were saying,
“gimme a .22 and a morning off of school.
i wanna kill pigeons, i wanna kill squirrels,
but most of all, i wanna kill these houses
as if they were wounded racehorses
that never got anywhere and spent their last moments
looking at the finish line from far far away.”
if i have learned anything from my childhood
it is to trust my guts and
keep a .22 handy. some day i may see
the perfect house for me and mine, something
with closet space and a clear message of what i’ve become,
and i’ll want to shoot something or someone, i’m sure.
Thinking about us
We have been fighting WWII since 1939.
The roles have shifted, the enemies have changed names, but the same conflict has been playing out for all this time: the clash of civilizations. Not political theories, but the clash of global omnipotence — how it shall be managed and to whom it is allocated.
Since the dropping of the bombs on Japan in 1945, it has been played out against the backdrop of the growing probability of worldwide destruction. When you have seen the shadows burned into the concrete, it becomes nearly impossible not to embrace your own darkness.
In Africa children have been raped to avoid death by AIDS. In the Balkans villages become rape camps and graveyards. In the Middle East men and women turn themselves into Death itself in the attempt to create life for those left behind and to find their own immortality. In China gorges are drowned in the hope of creating a monument to guaranteed power. In Russia theater-goers and school children become fodder for the vision of freedom. In Western Europe and America riots and individual acts of violence are the paroxysm of individuals crying out for their own importance.
Is it any wonder that our most watched shows are shows of the Survivor archetype? The lone survivors walk away from their individual battlegrounds after seeing the elimination of all who came before and struggled with them. Rewards await them and yet they weep for those who’ve gone before, and for their own relief at having survived.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I don’t really know where to go.
Hannah made me do it
From the lovely diva_dot. A five question interview.
1. You have one night and an endless supply of hot rock-n-roll chicks, and you must pick one for some good sex, plus two runners up…in case the first one has a headache or something. Who’s it going to be?
I’ll go with Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, followed by Brody Dalle/Armstrong and Jada Pinkett-Smith. (She’s fronting a heavy metal band these days, so I feel justified in that one.)
2. You can only pick 3 foods to eat for the rest of your life. What are they?
Fresh, authentic Mozzarella cheese, sun-warm vine ripe tomatoes, and extra-virgin olive oil.
3. You and I somehow get the opportunity to hang out for an entire day. What are we going to do?
Girl watching, baby!
4. Godspeed You Black Emperor wants to take you on tour with them so you can do your poetry with their music. There is one condition: they want you to appear at all shows either naked (if the venue allows it) or wearing a housedress made out of black garbage bags. What do you do?
Considering they are pretty much an instrumental band, to turn this down would be a great dishonor. I’m there. Just gimme a couple months to recover from the tummy tuck.
5. You are given yet another golden opportunity: you must put one celebrity that you hate out of his (or her) misery. Who’s going to kick the bucket in the end?
Adios, Joan Rivers! And if I can use explosives, then Melissa Rivers is gone too.
Man-ku
Hey babe, I’m horny.
Wanna fuck? I promise I’ll
last longer than — oops.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yeah, it’s short, but I
swear there are enough
syllables in it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Uh, uh, uh , uh, yes,
yes, yes, uh, oh, yes, yes, yes,
now! Now! NOW! Ah…zzzz.
ever notice
that the people who are most worried about online theft and unfair use of their work are usually the ones who have the least to worry about?
spoooky
The sound of footsteps in the kitchen just woke me up. It wasn’t Gary, and Isaac is out of town. It was in this apartment (the linoleum creaked) and not up or down stairs.
I heard it AFTER I woke up and was sitting up as well. An investigation revealed nothing.
I’ve suspected a presence in the apartment for a while — weird issues with lights being turned on and off, etc. — but this was the first thing I’ve noticed that sounded distinctly human.
Ghosts — if you want to call them that — don’t bother me in the least. I find them oddly comforting, to tell you the truth. I have no idea what they are (that whole “lingering departed spirits” thing doesn’t ring true to me) but the idea that we might share space with others is intriguing. It makes me hopeful for the other wonders that may be out there still.
Jim Loses His Grip
Walking around the block,
I get a whiff of my cigarette-tainted
fingers, and once again the phrase
“the left hand of God”
appears before me.
God’s left hand
doesn’t smell of anything.
It’s as if all traces of creation
had been deodorized in the eons since.
And when I’m in something
that feels like God’s grasp
I squirm pleasantly the way I squirm
before I come: something transcendent
is on the way.
I think of music as God’s finger
tracing the pulse in my neck
long enough to stop my heart
in time with a larger orchestra.
I do not understand
why I am obsessed
with God’s hands. I do not think of God
as man, woman, animal, anything
with hands really. I am not even sure
if God is sentient as we understand that;
still, the ideas of grip and touch
bring God to me the way a stream
unsteadily carries the leaf to its resting place.
I prepare to toss a cigarette into the street
after the last drag and I can smell
it on my hands as I draw the smoke into me.
This is divine if anything is: the power
to use, eliminate, discard. If it leaves a touch
of itself on me, it is by design. God’s hands
know the difference between me
and the evidence of my acts.
I do not see God’s body or face
in these moments. Hands, gnarled and
calloused, appear in the grey sky
or come out of the stars. If God has arms
they are not the extensions of these hands.
If God sees and directs these hands then God
does it without the use of sinew and nerve.
God may be hands alone.
God the utility.
God the tool.
God the fingerprints of faith.
The thumbs, the pointers, the middle fingers,
the rings, the humble pinkies. The palms cupped to carry
with the meat of the heels buffering the contents.
Whose hands are these I see before me?
I do not know what it is that I am feeling.
Plug
I want to put in another plug for the Online School of Poetry, and specifically for the course I’ll be teaching there starting on June 11.
I’ll be teaching a course on taking personal and political work to the next level. I’m really excited about this.
In order to run this course, I’ve got to recruit at least six students. I know that 200 bucks seems like a lot of money for a course, especially to the world of impecunious poets, but in truth I think that’s pretty reasonable for an eight week online workshop.
The school in general is a cool idea — it’s got a great faculty (and I’m not just saying that because I’m on it) including Tom Daley, Patricia Smith, Regie Gibson, and Quincy Troupe.
Please go check out the course descriptions and if you can’t do it yourself, pass it on to anyone you think might be interested.
Thanks in advance.
Jim Talks About Diversity
Ask us about heroes
and you may see us smile
a bit differently than you do.
Your drinks are just drinks.
Your bets are just bets, at least
if they make us happy.
When we smoke now
it’s no more a ritual
than when you do.
A sweat lodge
is still our place. You come in
as naked tourists.
Long hair and leather
is lovely on some people,
childish on others.
Your spirit animals
live in a zoo, and ours
watch them from outside the bars.
There’s a gap
between a dream
and a dreamcatcher.
Owning a dreamcatcher
does not mean
you have a dream.
some days
some days are better than others
some days are better than others
some days are better than other guys’ — and some days aren’t.
this is one
i am so tired, even though these days come less frequently than they used to…
the car cost how much????
1787.38. Suspension issues, brakes, valves, etc. About what I expected, within about 200 bucks.
Isn’t that special?
Of course, it was all compensated for by the lovely travel mug they gave me.
______________________________________________________
I also picked up a cable for the guitar. They gave me a 50% discount cause they like me. I think.
Power chords are in my future…no delicate jazz tonight.
Dark Matter 