barking crazy
he is, wrangling a snootful
of wasps, spilling his
wrong-showing guts
all over the linoleum,
showing his ass
to the children
of the local baboon
and scaring them,
barking crazy gut showing
ass showing man,
all of him hanging out
the window trying to reach
the flowers below,
the bees snarling up onto him,
welts popping up everywhere
there’s a bare inch of skin and
there’s so much skin showing,
even with his guts and ass showing he’s
half noble in his undignified reach
toward the flowers, the tulips and
lilacs, the weeds attempting
to become our joy, and the man,
the barking crazy man with visible stains
and sore hands, the naked dear man falling
just now from the window, he is pointing
at the dandelions and crying as he falls
toward them — not from fear for himself,
but for fear
of crushing them
before we understand.
Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
Jim At Home (one of a series)
Excellent night at the reading
A great night at Gotpoetry Live. Karen and Teresa were wonderful and the open was pretty scrumptious (love the dildo poem, Sasha).
I think this one’s gonna take off — some tweaks to timing and structure are in order, but overall, pretty pleased with it.
Tomorrow: SPEAK. And that’s going to be very different, I think…
Just on LJ for the first time today:
Y’all write a lot.
Come to Providence tonight, see nerak_g and sistaseuss (aka Karen Garrabrant and Teresa Davis of Atlanta) rip up our stage. If you saw the Sunday night performance at the Asylum, you know you’re in for sharp and smart political poetry (with the emphasis on poetry). 3.00 cover, good coffee and food, great room. Please come or I will be sad.
Spiritual
In a dark room a poet
stands at a microphone
and pins a melody
onto the front end of a slogan.
We all know the tune.
We stir vaguely at the sound.
We remember being told
that this was the sound
of the door slamming shut on this side
of the Middle Passage. We remember
being told to care.
We know we should want
to cross over Jordan, long for the chariot,
strain to hear Gabriel’s horn.
We feel embarrassed
that we don’t,
so we applaud to cover it up.
Far away in a South Carolina swamp
a ghost joins in on the song
and hums the North Star
into the sky.
The ghost knows
we do not understand how that happens —
oh, believe me, he has always known —
and he sings it with or without us.
You do not know
what will stir
when you take a spiritual
for your own.
If you sing one, if you
hear one, be prepared
to greet the ghost.
Superfly
God, I love Curtis Mayfield. Somewhere in storage I have his Greatest Hits — gotta dig it out.
By the way — giving away at the Asylum tonight:
bigass rainstick
Also: oni_express, I have a special present for you…
Music
I picked up a cheap compilation of soul tracks from the early/mid 70s today.
I really think there’s been no better time and genre for socially conscious music than that period. And that includes the punk era.
Why is it that the commercials on TV for those body sprays (Axe, Tag, whatever) never show the guy being attacked by horny men in addition to horny women?
(Of course, I know the answer is institutional homophobia. I’m looking for funnier, more ridiculous stuff.)
Spring Reverie
It’s his second cigarette of the day
and the man is thinking of how his body’s flaws
are starting to link up — the strep swollen throat
aggravating the apnea and disturbing sleep enough
to make him fearful of a depressive outbreak to follow —
watching the kids out of school strut the street
hand in hand saying fuck this and fuck that
every three steps and he’s thinking now of how green
the new leaves are and saying to himself that
fuck this ought to be his new motto:
his body is falling apart slowly, gracelessly, while his center
firms up sweetly into melon balls, cantaloupe, honeydew;
why tell the world there’s a pain in you when there’s so much more to see
of the good? These kids don’t know shit, he decides;
only an old man can say fuck this with the proper inflection.
So he does — whispering it into the twin ribbon that rises
from the end of the cigarette. He practices with a smile on his face.
He says it out loud a dozen times, and his eyes become wet from the pleasure,
he can taste how sweet with defiance he has become, and the kids don’t come
to mind at all as he scrubs out the butt and goes smiling back to work.
finally
close to feeling back to normal.
What’s up? Plenty.
1. Patricia Smith KILLED last night at the Cantab. Killed. Highlights — the Katrina poem, the Lysol poem…damnation and hell fire!
2. I’m in final negotiations to join the faculty at the Online School of Poetry ( http://www.onlineschoolofpoetry.com ), teaching a workshop I’m calling “To Voice Through Craft.” The class will be focused on moving from straight, raw emotion on the page — be it personal or political — to a more skilled and ultimately more powerful expression of voice. I’m actively soliciting 6-8 students at 200 dollars for a six week session. (Yes, that means you.)
3. Still working on a couple of major breakthroughs on the consulting front. There’s a great opportunity to join a consulting practice of executive coaches; that may go down sometime over the next two weeks or so, which is very exciting.
4. Gotpoetry Live in Providence continues to do well. The feature this past Tuesday, Teresa Noelle Roberts, was quiet and intensely imagist. I really enjoyed her set. I do wish more people would come out for features they don’t know…
5. Ken Hunt Prize news to follow shortly.
6. New poems a-brewin’ which is nice indeed.
How are you all?
two words for amazing:
Patricia Smith.
Wow. Again, as always. But double wow tonight.
Welcome back to the Cantab, Ms. P.
ups and downs
up — pretty decent gotpoetry feature tonight
down — lightish attendance
up — i’m feeling better
down — not yet feeling well
up — i’m going to go to bed and get up in the AM and get organized
down — i’ve got so much to do to get organized i know i’ll have trouble sleeping
up — i’m not dead
down —
stitching pain
my grandmother taught me how to do it:
to see the headache
as a ball of blue light
to see a needle and slim
but strong thread
to thread the needle and begin to stitch
around the edge of the pain
to draw the string tight until
the pain shrinks and then
to take the ball and throw it away
and that’s what it took to get rid of hurt, she said back then,
and sometimes it works, i say now
i don’t know how well it works for other things —
history, accumulation, regret — my grandmother
hated my father for example
and he never disappeared —
but she made the most elegant lace
and her pillowcases were beyond compare
so something besides the headache indeed yielded to her needle
i am trying to forget that now
sitting here holding my head to one side
and thinking of the last conversation i had with you
the father i would never have had if it had been up to her
the redskin who soiled her baby girl
i was always her perplexing favorite
“i don’t like the indian peoples why you dress up like
the indian peoples”
i couldn’t tell her why it felt more right and i still don’t really know
but i never got any closer with you either, dad
and you’d drop gems like “this headache
would kill a white man” and you’d brush me off
when i tried to teach you how to stitch it away
i wish we’d had a sensible story
i wish we’d had a stitchable life
and we don’t talk much anymore, i know
when we do i end up with a headache, don’t you
but i’m not stitching you away
i cannot do that
there’s been too much of that here already
and we need each other undiminished
by embroidery
and remote viewing
notes from austin
well, I’m killing my last hour or two here before hitting the airport for home.
this was my first time in austin. i like it here. even bought myself a “keep austin weird” hat because the concept appeals to me.
food discoveries: ruta maya coffee. the black bean / cornbread pancake combo at magnolia cafe. the sublime ‘cue of the whoopiecat.
i wish i’d felt well enough to prowl the city more, but i’ll save that till august.
slammasters’ meeting: was pretty much a carbon copy of all non-profit organizational meetings i’ve been in. anyone who thinks slammasters, psi, ec, etc. are especially dysfunctional hasn’t been in enough non-profit arts organizations. certainly we have our quirks and stuff, but it wasn’t that out of the norm.
that said, the organizational development consultant in me was screaming for release at various points. and that’s all i’m gonna say; decisions and meeting details aren’t mine to divulge, as i’m not a slammaster and was a barely conscious attendee for a lot of it.
the ken hunt prize is a go for nps 2006. i’ll be tweaking a couple of logistical points in the next week or so, getting the info to the slammasters, and then all will become public. i’m pumped.
i realized i’ve been slam-groupie lately, boy; ABQ/Charlotte/Austin and Austin again real soon. i think that’s the most intense slam travel itinerary i’ve ever pursued in all my years of this.
time to shower and saddle up. i’m sure i’ll have more from the airport, and certainly more tomorrow.
be well, and be safe.
note to self:
Next time I’m in Austin (which willl be in August), I need to hang out more with ohiojake. Especially since I’ll be able to speak coherently by then.
I’ll do a full SlamMasters’ social roundup (not the decisions, of course; not mine to comment) sometime tomorrow while I’m at the airport somewhere, k? For now, it’s nighty night from Austin.
Dark Matter 