Dark Matter

January 5, 2017

The Task At Hand

By Tony Brown

You thought it was going to be
slow blues from here to death,

but here you are, fist up
at the edge of the pit again.

You thought these days would be lyric
and pastoral, and instead

you’re back in the narrative,
hoping surreal hopes.

Upon consideration
you surrender to it and see

that you’ve always been
at the mercy of surprise

whenever you thought
things were settled once

and for all. No matter how you try to be
for you, you always let yourself be drawn

back for all and as much as you know
you can’t do otherwise, as much as you know

you’ve never done otherwise,
you wish it had not fallen to you

to be here one last time —
fist in the air

at the edge of the pit,
shouting the story of

the dissolved timepieces, the bruised
American hearts you thought you could count on,

because this is such an American tale, isn’t it —
this fable of reinvention, this constant

faux-noble bewilderment at the rush
of circumstance through

your remaining time here. You’re
no hero, you know — just another

aged-out scene kid praying it makes
a difference when you put your body

and voice into one more time
on one more front line. Understanding at last

you’d do it with no hope at all
because you couldn’t do otherwise

and look at yourself
ever again. So: fist in the air,

waiting to die, hoping there’s one last
twelve-bar respite ahead of you,

you plunge into chaos
shouting against a bitter end.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, music, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

January 4, 2017

This bar band amps
“Little Wing” into an anthem,
and right away it is clear
no one on stage gets it or
ever did — some songs
derive their power from
the silences they carry; witness
the space around the opening
notes Hendrix played, the stand out
“ting” in the first phrase
that highlights it and sets the stage
for what follows. There is something
to be said for unleashed covers of
such songs but one must
understand them first to begin such
delicate rework; here we have
nothing like that.

I am no critic.
I am instead a lonely lover
who wishes only
to hear Jimi sing about her
walking the clouds as I imagine
my distant former love may now be,

so I can only sit here and stare
into the last ring of head
on this sad beer and wish
for a simple jukebox with
only the exact versions of songs
I want to hear, much as I wish
only for my former lover —
no new version, no cover —
I will not tilt my head back
and sing along.

3 Comments | tags: meditations, music, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

January 3, 2017

For My Friends

By Tony Brown

Oh, my friends,

I have been reading your poems
and can see

how little water I have to add
to this sea. I pick up one of

your books, read a page,
put it down. There is no

story I can tell, no insight
I have to offer that is not

trumped by two hundred
of your own. This is not

complaint but acknowledgment
of how much of my time

has been wasted in
contemplation of my own

need to communicate
private messages that in fact

are no more than common
firecrackers — loud, each mildly effective

on its own, terrible when taken
in their entirety;

all you do is so much more
than what I do and now all I have

is this one story of how I personally
must pass from consideration

now that I have made this
connection. Oh, my friends,

you have done
all I thought I might do

when I started — yet
I am not envious. It has

been done and for that reason
I am satisfied to write

that last tale of how
I am preparing to pass on —

the only one only I can tell,
the only one that rocks only me

upon its slight waves.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

January 2, 2017

Perfect World

By Tony Brown

in the perfect world
there is a king
whose breath smells
like John Wayne’s
plague sweat

in the perfect world
there is a queen
who has moved
mountains to make
grand graves

in the perfect world
their armies carry
guns of gold and
can stab you with
a sharp flag

in the perfect world
you are a creamy poster or
a near-white song of victory
a mascot on the sideline
a horse to carry their spoils

in the perfect world
the things they’ve stolen
back them up or lead them
like suicides
off your cliffs

in their perfect world
you are the Elder Race
they call upon to charge
their teams and weapons
with magic

in their perfect world
they don’t exist
any more than you do
as they are individually lessened
to increase larger perfection

Leave a comment | tags: poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

January 2, 2017

To Love

By Tony Brown

To love
is to follow darkness
within you toward
its source, is to learn to see it
as shadow caused by light
and not as a scattering
of huge gray boulders
and smaller stones
impeding you. To love

is to see those shadows as
signposts on your way
to Light, as shapes to be
learned and appreciated
for what they are; not
to remove them, as they give
you context and heft,

but to step over and around them
or scale them as needed;
to use them as platforms
from which to view Light
within you. To love, then,

is to journey across. To
work a path toward. To keep
a blank map within, and then
to fill it in.

2 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

December 31, 2016

How To Be Done With It

By Tony Brown

Shout “good riddance”
when lightbulbs burn out,
when discarding
envelopes that won’t adhere,
when contemplating
the bitter end of the bank account.

When the television
goes off for non-payment,
when the phone
goes off for non-payment,
when the heat and the lights
go off for non-payment
and the landlord has ominously
mentioned
“proceedings,”
sit there with either a sneer
or a triumphant,
head-lowered demeanor.

Don’t kill anyone
too much, except in your mind (admit
at least that you feel up for it though
before you shake that thought
out of your hands
and back into the steel trap you keep inside
to hold such wickedness).

Tell them
to bring it on,
whatever it is.
It’s time for it,
whatever it is.

It’s not like it’s been
sustainable for a while now.

It’s not like it’s been
a society for a while —
more of a cautionary tale
or a bucket list
getting checked off
more and more
aggressively,

so tell them
you’ve got plenty of pens
and all the time in the remaining
world.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

December 29, 2016

How Are You Doing?

By Tony Brown

How are you doing
with today’s harsh light?

Is there an obvious point
to be made of it, or is this day

like all others recently:
a mystery drag that becomes a shrug

as we shake our heads and say,
“Well, what did you expect?”

Not that every day or even every
moment of every day must have a point,

of course; mostly we’re clueless
and happy enough just getting by.

Now and then, though, the light
picks up an epiphany, a shadow

glooms a space, a breeze configures
a curtain’s shape against a piece of furniture,

and this day to which we’d been oblivious
blooms with meaning and purpose

and we agree that of all we expected of the day,
this was the least probable outcome.

Any day could hold such moments,
so again, I say, with the hard light around us

illuminating all in a stabbing flash,
how are you doing?

What has become clear
since yesterday, since ten minutes gone by,

since the day
you were born?

1 Comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

December 29, 2016

That Bo Diddley Beat

By Tony Brown

Oh, that Bo Diddley beat.
When describing it
people say, always, “shave and a haircut,
two bits” as if people still knew
“two bits” used to mean a quarter,

as if you could still get a shave
and a haircut for a quarter; I am
showing my age knowing that,
showing my age even writing about
Bo Diddley, or Buddy Holly, or

Johnny Otis, who chose to claim early on
that he was Black though he was not
and stuck with it back when that was
at least a little bit of dangerous thing to do —
though enough did it because it seemed to offer

a door to the same Promised Land
Chuck Berry had talked about — “shave and a haircut,
two bits,” and they would be in, except
they could get out again if necessary
and take that crazy hand jive with them on the way out.

It falls into place under my hands
easily enough after 57 years
of hearing it — my mother must have heard it
at least a few times
while I was in her womb.

It takes a bit of coordination
to get it just right —
it’s not just a matter
of how I strum, but of how I
hammer on the chord

in conjunction with the strum. You don’t need
to understand it to get it close to right — the animal muscle
of repetition can get you there, and then it’s just a matter
of letting it carry you, the way it carries anyone
who lets it fall into place under their hands

and understands that it isn’t really theirs.
That it wasn’t Johnny Otis’s beat. Not Buddy Holly’s
beat. That Bo got it from John Lee, John Lee
got it from his stepdad William, and who knows
where he got it? Some diddley bow player,

some hambone man, some juba dancer
somewhere in Mississippi, in Shreveport —
somewhere I never have been and can’t go
and won’t claim to go. I did not build that house
by the roadside. It doesn’t matter how many miles

of barbed wire I walk. It doesn’t matter
who I love. I pay a lot more than two bits
for my haircuts and shaves. I have never
paid enough for how that beat falls
just right under my hands.

4 Comments | tags: Bo Diddley, music, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

December 27, 2016

Ready

By Tony Brown

That creaking
is coming from
your childhood,
a tomb long
left open far behind you
that is now slowly closing
with all your beloved spirits
caught inside.
From now on
you are going to have to
move forward
with silence
at your back and
noise ahead
waiting for you
to arrive and make
sense of it without
their voices
to assist you.
It is as if
they expected you
to have learned
something from all
that whispering,
as if they knew
all along
that childhood
is a tomb and that
its door would close
on them someday,
startling you,
leaving you grieving
and dimmed
but ready.

Leave a comment | tags: aging, meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

December 23, 2016

Hungry For Light

By Tony Brown

Hunched before my keyboard, trying.

This is how I live: waking up
hungry for light after swimming
all night through healing dark,
then trying to explain to you
how that hunger keeps me alive.

When I say “trying to explain
to you…” I am not speaking to “you”
of course, but to a “you” beyond
any of us. You are welcome
to the conversation, but it is not
meant for you specifically…so…

unless I have erred, and you were
there in the dark stream of my night
without my knowing? If it is you
the work is meant for, speak up:
I will raise my eyes from this work
and look to you directly as you
know my core and the words
will likely just obscure it.

We who wake up hungry for light
understand this: that the words,
the long strings of words we troll out
from our lonely rooms, are just
invitations to a table
that is set for a feast.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poems about poetry, poetry | posted in poetry

December 22, 2016

The Story Of A Painting

By Tony Brown

Once upon a time

a painter stole a canvas
from some people he met
and painted over their work
in flat white.

Forced some other people
to help paint over it,
painted some parts
himself…and here it is.

It’s not all terrible. Some parts
are sublime in fact. But a lot of it is dreck and
some parts are just OK. How you feel about it
depends on how far back you stand.

Inadvertently, it’s high concept
and interesting. Execution is
imperfect and inconsistent. It’s
insistent and overdrawn and

it’s all compounded by having
a terrible frame. Currently it hangs
on a wall that’s on fire. Flames loud
as a band — some say it sounds like

NWA, some say it sounds like
Lee Greenwood. It just sounds like
fire to most who see it, though some
just like closing their ears

and warming their hands before it
while staring at their favorite parts —
this perfect flower, that lovely flag —
while thinking about

happily ever after.

Leave a comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

December 22, 2016

An Explanation

By Tony Brown

Whiny
you say
They’re whiny
Sore losers
They should stop whining
They lost

You are mistaken
No one’s whining

You don’t understand the difference
because
your own voice
is all you are used to hearing
and you do
a butt-load of whining
about how precious you are
and about being told you
no longer should be
so precious considering
your pedestal
rests unsteadily on
bones

What you are hearing
is not whining

Is keening for
what has died and
for what may yet die

followed by
a war cry

1 Comment | tags: meditations, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

December 21, 2016

The Blessing, The Way

By Tony Brown

Pain and Despair
stand face to face
cradling you
between them

until you slip
from their arms
to the earth
at their feet
and shed their
embrace.

This is a blessing:
letting go and falling
into the Way, removing
oneself from them,
even as they try
to hold you harder.

The Way is to
drop away from
their hard faces.
Never let them
hold you in their gaze.
Never let them
stare you down.
Instead, close your eyes —

land soft, feel
the beating heart
of your Mother.

3 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poetry | posted in poetry

December 21, 2016

Stop Talking

By Tony Brown

We kept saying, “Speak
truth to power,”
and eventually they said,
“Truth doesn’t matter.”

We kept saying, “Money
can’t buy happiness,”
and eventually they said,
“You’re right,” and simply took ours.

We kept saying, “Not
special rights, but equal rights,”
and eventually they laughed
all rights into a bucket and kicked it.

When will we see
all the problems that come
from talking to them
in the first place?

Leave a comment | tags: poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

December 20, 2016

Slowly Lying Down

By Tony Brown

Slowly
lying down as if there were
long unconscious hours ahead and
not such short time
before necessary waking.

Head
upon pillow as if nothing
has changed at all and
daybreak will bring just another
round of work and play.

Heavy
eyelids closing as if there were
no fires burning and no one
screaming for rescue as their roof
tumbles in upon them.

You don’t recognize
this slothful self.
You don’t recognize
this frightened, frozen
self who hears and sees
all this yet decides
to crawl into bed
and fall into such
an evil sleep