Category Archives: poetry

January 17, 2024

Rainbowed Rainbroken

By Tony Brown

startled by
what’s come into view
sprouting from the road
in front of me

it doesn’t make sense
but I surely drove through it
a curtain in the road
a rainbow sheet uprisen

from wet-black pavement
no illusion I swear
felt it on the car
felt it in my eyes

am I the same jerk
who drove into it
or am I now
completely changed

by an illusion
after all — it has happened before
it used to be called
childhood and then it was

over and
then it was love 
and then it was 
service and family

growing into 
your true colors
must mean something
if the illusion is to count

I made it this far after all
with my own two faces
my own weakening hands
they say get a grip on yourself

which one should I hold
I respond 
they are confused
as am I 

but not for
the same reason
I promise you
with one wet voice

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January 16, 2024

The Simple Brutality Of Aging

By Tony Brown

In awe of the simple brutality
of aging:

not that
it’s without beauty,

or that joy is not
present, even in the moment

when you know
your true age at last

and it’s exactly right
as it is, even

as it assumes the mantle
of finality; when it settles upon you

that you are exactly
the right age, soaking

up that brief moment
becomes the work of a lifetime.

The simple brutality 
of it: the casual swift recognition

that while this may not be the end,
it surely is trending.  It surely

has a feel to it, 
and this is how it feels. 

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January 15, 2024

Tick

By Tony Brown

Now and then
there is a moment marked
by a single tick
from an old schoolroom clock

that hangs on the basement wall;
relic taken from a modernizing classroom,
covered in plain dust and 
no small amount of soot put there

after a backed-up chimney
filled the room with smoke —
it happened seldom but
often enough to be 

an unremarkable event on its own.
A single tick for no reason.
No one cares if that clock works
so it’s possibly reminding us that it could

if we cared to clean it up a bit.
One tick in a room
where no one sees it moving.
“Here I am,”

it says in a room where no one
spends much time. Randomly.
Desperately,just in case
someone is listening. 

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January 13, 2024

The Floor Is Always Lava

By Tony Brown

The floor is always lava.  My feet are always burning. No one ever knows what’s happening. No one else feels the heated floor, the measured melting steps I have to take.

I’m going to tell of what that’s like, but not today.  Today I have no choice but to keep it to myself because to explain it I’d have to open up and let the flames out of my lungs to which they’ve risen — up my legs the fire goes and there is a burning within.

It’s clear to me that some people like to read about the burning. It’s clear to me that I’m their choice to feed them the fire. It’s clear to me that they think my fire can counter theirs. It’s clear to me they are wrong.

The floor beneath me is always lava, and with that awareness as public knowledge now, I will keep my mouth as closed as I can until I can no more. 

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January 11, 2024

This Is How We Do It

By Tony Brown

I finished my term today and when I stepped out the door afterward I looked up at the sky and thought about that being a form of graduation.  Reflected on what I’d learned.  Tried to choose a life’s work. Tried to think about who I wanted to be.

I finished my term today and the final grades are in.  I seem to have passed all the critical tests, the crucial exams, 
the certifications for the New Life. I looked up at the sky and reflected on what I was supposed to do — what shone upon me now, what I attracted unto my self under the grand roof of Heaven.

I finished my term today and realized I had no idea what to do next. Reflected on direction, considered standing still for all the rest of time.  Instead I looked up and began to rise.  Ceremonial to the end. The writer of ritual endings. The knife wielder, my hands moving above my head. The only tassel to toss is the one on the scabbard of the athame.

This is how a long semester ends — uncertainty and a fall back into superstition. 
This is how I discuss my lost youth. This is how the aged degenerate.
This is how it’s done. This is how we do it.

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January 9, 2024

Beyond Rain

By Tony Brown

I like these high waters,
their roar a herald of once-lost causes;
love the way clear eyes
can look through the lashing rain
to see the dry light of tomorrow beyond.

Even drowning would be better
than turning to each other
and saying, “We’d better go inside.
Better wait out the storms
and let them wash themselves out.”

So…Here is the rain;  beyond it,
the new day. For now I’ll stand
cold and wait for a moment,
let the rain let up a bit. Beyond
that is all I have to live for.

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January 7, 2024

Listing

By Tony Brown

The first step is to take the list out of its resting place in an old fashioned desktop tray of dark wood which sits to one side of where one would normally place what they were writing. Writing comes second. Comes after the list. Lists of any sort must come first. 

As one goes over the list, checking off (with small relief) boxes of those items which are complete and fretting over incompletions and forgotten or delayed or avoided ones, one begins to think of what should be next on the desktop; what should be centered after the work of checking items on the list and becoming desperate over that which is left unchecked is complete. 

One begins to make another list of writing needed for one’s ultimate completion. One then goes back and adds the monitoring of this list to the first list. One must be sure to add the second list to the inbox. And now there are two — the list of things to do before writing, and the list of things to write once you begin to write. 

One’s pen has become now empty of ink. One should add getting ink, or choosing new pens, or thinking about pencils over pens (one now needs a new list of pros and cons) and what of using a typewriter versus a computer? Making a new list now: writing instruments, technology…the lists must have formal titles.  One needs the skill of titling to become a writer. Are there tools, are there workshops, are there blog posts and opinions — fountain pen or ball point, Mac or PC? What of using a gerund in the title? What of the capitalization and punctuation wars? 

The second step is to die with lists upon lists to be shoveled into one’s grave. One will lie upon them for eternity. One will be so comfortable at that point. One will sleep very well on the pile of intention — so soft, like feather snow, like words one never pronounced but only dreamed of inventing for others to marvel over and snuggle with.

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January 6, 2024

Toy Chest

By Tony Brown

Whatever I lose today
will likely end up in my toy chest
from childhood. I don’t know
where that is, either.

It was built like
a bench with a back
so perhaps someone’s sitting on it
and that’s why I can’t find it. 

It was built to be subsequent furniture
so you could stuff it
with items other than toys
when childhood ended.

But I never took the toys out of it
and I suspect that it has been overfilled
with later playthings over time.
Not even a majority

of what’s in my missing toy chest
was put there by me. It was
a vacuum sucking up what I thought I loved,
or should at least cling to for life. 

Whatever I lose or have lost
from words to sensations
to longings will be there. If I find it
I’ll spend some time rummaging through

to see what I want
to keep or can recall
how to play with them, remember
why I wanted to hold onto them.

To see if I recognize them,
can call them by name,
still care for them
if I ever truly did. 

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January 5, 2024

Missing the Funeral

By Tony Brown

There are cuffs sticking too far out of suit jackets, muted floral print dresses that have not been worn in a short while, and murmuring about causes and effects. Now and then, an out of place laugh.

Someone steps up and speaks to the now-seated mourners. All the well-styled messages, all the bowed heads; then the getting up to go home or to the reception hall to set up the ham sandwiches and coffee, while others go on to the cemetery to check off that detail of obligation.

Somewhere else is someone else who, still ignorant of the event, is working, sleeping, fucking, fighting, or flying home to where they’ll get the news of the Passing once they’ve landed.

They will tell everyone they wish they could have been there.  

In private, once they are alone or flying back, they will be glad they were not. They no longer have the right clothes for that kind of event. The right taste in catering, or in God-talk.

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January 4, 2024

Tunnel Vision

By Tony Brown

What I see ahead is condensed to a pinpoint. Tunnel vision, but so much more narrow. Bright all around except at the end of the tunnel and there at the end, a massive darkness. Not that I would call what’s all around me now as I head into it is fully lit. More like a haze from a fire. All around the dark point at the end is dim light that is only bright by comparison.  

“Everyone is fighting a battle you cannot see,” says a poster quoting fifteen different people. Everyone’s battle is out there in the haze you cannot penetrate. Light’s useless. Sound matters and everyone’s battle sounds like bad pop music from this end of the tunnel. 

What I see ahead is a gun barrel in the guerrilla night. I’m traveling down through it. Looking forward to roar upon exit, and then silence. Looking forward to full light. The tunnel expanding in a rush to a landscape. Everyone at war but for a few.

I go into the unblinding as if I’m now a stone tumbling in rapids along a hard bed. Who can say how smooth this will make me?  All the polishing, the wearing down until I myself become a point.

A light at a tunnel’s end. Now-brilliant haze all around.

Sounds of battle becoming dance. 

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January 3, 2024

Immigrants

By Tony Brown

It took them a long hard time
to get from elsewhere to here.
It could have been from anywhere

but you should ask them 
where it was and
what it was like there.

You should know; 
you should not negate it, diminish it,
or assume they want to forget.

There are differences
between Montevideo, Tegucigalpa,
Talinn, Lviv.

Do not assume
they are interchangeable.
Do not assume they forget

once they arrive. Forgetting 
is up to them, their children,
their grandchildren. 

Look at the state of
the country. You
haven’t forgotten;

your people 
didn’t forget. Haven’t yet.
Built a new world based on

their old world. Now
it’s their turn to do the same,
and all the whining

and gunfire
you can muster
won’t make it stop.

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December 31, 2023

Happy New Year

By Tony Brown

Once more
around the sun;
please keep
your windows open
to hear
all the shouting.

I promise,
there will be
as much
as last year.

In fact
there will be 
more. If only
you’d stopped
to hear it
even once
this last year,
it might
have been different:
too late now.
This year
might already be
too late. 
We shall see.

So: go
with open windows
into it,
and listen for
the wailing,
the crying out.
Maybe even
commit to getting
out of
the car and
helping once
in a while?

It couldn’t hurt
to step into it
now and again 
and try to help.
To at least
act like we care,

to at least
do something different, anything
other than driving by 
with the windows up
like it doesn’t matter.
to us — 
as we did last year.
As we do.

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December 29, 2023

There’s No Jesus Here, I Swear

By Tony Brown

Think there’s any Jesus
in the poem? Trust me:
there’s not.

Jesus is staying away from this
the way that once upon a time the fish 
on either side of the Red Sea learned to avoid 

their former space in the divided waters,
no matter how they longed to be
with their loved ones on the other side.

The dry land between them,
the lane of separation and escape,
offered them nothing while it offered others 

everything. But don’t assume
there’s any Moses
in this or any of my poems.

Deliverance is for the future
and this poem
is in the moment.

No Jesus, no Moses.
Just you and the fish
wondering what’s happening.

Me too, friend.  Me too.
All this Biblical stuff,
the walls of water on either side.

Whose poem do you want it to be?
It won’t be the one I wrote.
Whoever you find there sneaked in

when I wasn’t looking, I swear.
You know how water distorts.
Those fish could be anyone.  

Don’t be fooled. 
That’s how I wrote it.
Anyone could be in here.

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December 26, 2023

Clumsy Blues

By Tony Brown

When the cat
at last stepped out from under
the bed covers,
she came first
to the dry food dishes
in the border land between
pantry and kitchen,

then into the living room
with half-lidded eyes;
sat down smack in the middle
of the grey rug
looking for all the world
like a reluctant barroom audience

as I picked with
recovering skills 
at the Telecaster
not long ago set aside
for my illness,
my wrecked ability;
only recently taken up again
to bat around
as a cat might play with 
doomed prey.

Unimpressed,
she turned back
to the bedcovers to dream
of blues I’ll never play again —

not in this, the eighth
of my alleged nine lives
that is also the sixth
of hers, that is the last one
of someone else’s allotted haul.

All of this is to say
that when I sit back now,
I sit at my leisure
knowing I’ve not much longer to play.
This cat who will outlast
my last poor song 
can stay under the blanket.
I’ll be there as well before too long,
thinking:

Let me sleep for now.
I’ll be satisfied one day soon.
I’ll have had enough of these clumsy blues.
I’ll set the guitar down for good.

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December 26, 2023

Let’s Pretend

By Tony Brown

Pretend to that caution
you’ve rarely practiced
when deep in your longing
for love or for comfort in the cold.

As you stare at the sunrise
of one of the last days
of a calendar year,
you imagine the release

waiting ahead of you
some hours from now
after sunset;  instead
of rushing head first toward it

as you once would have done
when seeking what you
had always considered
your birthright, this time

you fall to your knees,
stopping
well before
the sun is gone;

for once grabbing
for the last light instead of
falling for the darkness
you always found more amenable. 

Pretend to caution
you have never felt 
before letting yourself fall
into forever. You have never known

such a pull on your back.
You have never known what it is
to hold yourself from a free fall.
You do not know this person you’ve become:

have never
felt the desire
to remain alive, to see
what happens next. 

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