I’ll post pictures of him as soon as he comes out from under the couch.
He was out for about two hours this early AM, yowling and nervous…but then he went back under the couch and went back to sleep.
He did eat a little, I think…hard to tell.
Category Archives: uncategorized
I hereby promise
to have at least one picture of my lovely cat Icchus posted here, if he ever comes out from under the couch.
I’m feeling ok this morning.
Why?
Because I’m going to go get my CAT!
He’s joining the household today. I have missed him. YAY!
Photos later…
Believe it or not, a new Zero Point Zero column…
Yup — hard to believe, but there it is:
http://www.gotpoetry.com/News/article/sid=5401.html
If you read it and feel moved to comment, please comment there on the column, ok?
After watching Bush’s speech this PM
Utne Reader last month had a couple of thought provoking articles that I think the Left ought to be tuning into right now.
One details the steady decrease in the importance and impact of demonstrations and public protests as tools for change.
The other (written by an organizer of Food Not Bombs) deals with the myth of the success of non violent protest (yes, including Gandhi) and how violence has actually been the deciding force in most instances of social change where nonviolence is celebrated.
Food for thought, o peaceful ones.
Two-Fisted Hating on Poetry
1.
Death’s poor cousin Poetry
comes begging.
“Loan me a line.”
Death says,
“I can’t believe we’re
even related, you shameless
bastard — all the material
available to you if you’ll just work for it
and you gotta pull this.”
Poetry
responds, “It’s not like you can’t
spare it…endless last words
in your ears all the time and
you can’t toss me a bone?”
2,
Moonrise-faced gray cat
in a dark window across the street:
instant poem.
No need now
to meet the neighbor
or get to know the cat at all.
Instead, cut up the moment, butcher
your life for the meat of it, break it down
to parcel and parse, wipe the blood off your hands
onto your lips when you’re done. Such perfect things
come from your perfect lips. Anyone hearing you speak
would think
the cat was real.
Truth I won’t admit
ocvictor has a regular column at Gotpoetry.com that keeps me thinking every time I read and re-read the work.
This caught me today:
… It didn’t much matter to me what happened to my poems. Light them on fire, for all I cared. Sell a few chapbooks to make some spending cash and supplement the retail book-sales job, get the ego boost from the crowd, flirt with girls and take a perverse sort of satisfaction from being outside the poetry establishment. Who cared if I wasn’t getting published in any of the big journals or didn’t have an MFA? I was rock ‘n’ roll, man. I was the fringe of the fringe. It was fun for a while.
I was also lying to myself. Little bit, anyway. Because underneath the bravado, I find I cared very dearly that someone was listening, that someone was reading. Underneath it all, I had some dim, subconscious impulse telling me that the only way these poems mattered is if they reach someone else’s ear.
Good reading. Good point. Crisis inducing for me, as always…
When I was young, I figured I was, if not immortal, then at least consequential; that I would be missed if I was gone. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to believe that isn’t true. I’ll be personally missed for a while, and then I’ll fade as the lives I’ve touched move on and find new things and people to move them.
But a poem may last. I keep hoping for something, anything I’ve written to be among the poems that last. I’m less sure than ever, but I can’t help but try for that.
I want to be remembered, if not known now; I’ve almost given up on that. But if I am remembered, let what lasts be something that transcends me and my name and my miserable life. I’ve stopped caring about Tony Brown; all that seems worth saving from this life is the work Tony Brown did. Even if I end up as “Anonymous” somewhere, in some table of poems, that will be enough.
Read more of Victor’s work here:
How to Succeed as a Failing Writer!
It’s better than success!
Classic Rock
1.
Outside the tavern
a brokedown cowboy’s giving
bad life lessons
to a high school couple
sitting on the step
after finishing their restaurant shift.
His friend’s drunker than he is
and he calls Cowboy a “whiny bitch.”
He tells the kids, “Don’t listen to him.
He’s wearing a Yankees shirt
which means two things:
one, he’s retahded,
two, he’s a common slut,
three, he’s a weasel — know why
he’s a weasel? Because
he can suck the ass out of a chicken
and keep running.”
Then they go back inside
where the band’s playing
“Strange Brew.” The kids
get up laughing
and walk away hand in hand,
two hoodies heading for their car.
2.
Cowboy
does the airplane slide across the floor,
ends up standing next to a woman
in a slick gray dress who turns her back on him
to face the band, swaying to Janis Joplin.
Cowboy
throws his hands up and goes over to a pole
where he stands with
his head down as if he’d become
one of those silhouettes they use to sell
cigarettes to wannabes.
3.
Turn the radio on
in any city you can name
and it’ll pour out over you
like a big Western storm: Beatles,
Stones, Zep and the Eagles.
That humid sound,
flash flood that it was back then,
carved a channel that led
to tonight, soaking everything
in a bath that still feels
both familiar and fresh.
The whole of your life
may be circling the drain
but one twist of the dial
and you’ll find that water
has bubbled up again,
and what else is there to do
except dive in?
4.
Cowboy’s buddy
is face down on his table
when Cowboy comes alive
as the bass bubbles up
into “Brown Eyed Girl”
and he’s on again,
this time not caring about who’s
on the floor as he floats
out there alone, thrilled
that no one’s noticed his T-shirt
for an hour or so, and no one
thinks he’s anything except
a guy like them,
lost in a song
everyone’s been lost in
at least once in their lives.
Upcoming Duende shows…
Faro and I will be working the poetry/music tip at the following events…love to see you there.
July 21st at the Middleborough MA Public Library (benefit for agency for the homeless)
National Poetry Slam, Austin TX, sometime during the week — details TBA
September 19 at the Cantab Lounge, Cambridge, MA — feature at the weekly slam
More details will be posted at the Myspace: http://myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
See you…
Summer Nationals
Every year, Worcester hosts the Summer Nationals — a four-day cruise night, so to speak, where muscle cahs, hot rods and motorcycles and their fans gather from all up and down the East Coast and beyond to celebrate the joy of burnouts, loud pipes, beer, fried street foods, and rock ‘n’ roll of the blooz rock/classic rock/rockabilly ilk.
I’ve always at least tried to catch at least part of the day events, especially the set ups at Green Hill Park where you can just check out thousands of amazing cars on display.
But until last night, I’d never been to the burnouts.
At one end of Main Street, down by the court house and the art museum and the police station, there’s a short tunnel where the street dives down under Lincoln Square. At the tunnel’s exit, the road is lined for a fairly good distance with stone walls on either side.
Here is where it happens, and what happens is this: for magical hours upon end, folks line up along those walls to see other folks bring their cars and pickups and motorcycles and ATVs to a plywood pad in that tunnel and take their turn to see how much smoke and noise they can make while spinning their wheels on the wet plywood (Worcester FD keeps the pad wet and the burned rubber washed off with firehoses), with the desired aim of eventually blowing out a tire if they’ve got the torque — all this to the cheers of the crowd.
At times, the smoke from a given car will be so thick that no one can see two feet in front of them for a couple of blocks around. (That’s not an exaggeration — Missy went into the Crowne Plaza to use the bathroom at one point and the hotel was kinda hazy inside.) Burned rubber is everywhere. It stinks, it’s dirty…and it ROCKS.
Understand, we’re not talking about the done up cars for the most part — these are the cars people use every day. They line up for hours and hours to take their shot — the last cars got through at around 1 AM.
Vehicles we witnessed burning out last night:
— wide variety of tuners and such
— big ass 4×4 trucks
— motorcycles from street racers to custom choppers and dirt bikes
— a Lincoln Town Car
— a Crown Victoria
— two ATVs set up head to head so they couldn’t go anywhere
— a motorized wheelchair (the guy had it tricked out to look like a Harley trike)
— a mid Eighties Mercedes 560 sedan (surprisingly good smoke)
— an old BMW 535 (not so good)
When it was done, we looked at each other and we were black head to toe like a couple of coal miners. That’s what we get for standing down wind and not too far behind the pad…
Prior to all that, we’d seen Jason James and the Houserockers, a local rockabilly band, playing in the courtyard of the hotel right next to the tunnel (which is why we actually went down there in the first place — hadn’t planned on getting so involved in the burnouts). Jason, a flash guitar player, played a great short set full of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, and some other rockabilly standard issue stuff — I know their longer shows contain more originals and such, but it was crowd pleasing time so no worries.
Next year, I’m taking the Accord into the tunnel. (Yeah, right…)
Burnouts continue tonight, if anyone wants to head down…I’m gonna be elsewhere, but you should go if this thing appeals to you. I hear Paul LeMat and Cindy Williams (from American Graffitti) will be there tonight.
Hot guitars, stinking and choking smoke and dirt, and loud engine noises with a couple of beers…yeah. A good release after a not so hot week.
Dark Matter 