August 10, 2021

Self-Care

By Tony Brown

How much there is still held inside me
after all these decades of allowing
my supposed best and worst out to be 
criticized and praised out loud.

People say self-care
is more important 
than the Work. Rest and be well, 
they say. What you’ve done,

what you could do, matter less
than the resistance you offer
by being healthy and secure. 
Teach the demons, inner and outer,

that they cannot win. Somehow
they ignore the fact
that any battle has casualties.
If I do not survive in body and spirit

because I’ve put body and spirit
into the Work, who dares to say I was wrong?
Even if no one knows who I am
a year after I’m gone, I will have done my part,

and the part I leave behind
ought to be enough for all who remain here
to say I did what I had no choice but to do,
and that is how I will be fulfilled.

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August 8, 2021

Baseball Ghazal

By Tony Brown

Watching the Red Sox at the Blue Jays on a Saturday night,
although I don’t care much for baseball.

That’s not true: I enjoy games, not fandom.
I have never cared much about who wins in baseball.

Just now Hernandez stretched full out, leaping from the warning track
to rob Guerrero of the walk off run; the crowd groans. That’s baseball.

Earlier, the crowd cheered bonehead base running as the Sox gave away
an easy win. I saw it as hysterical, not criminal. That’s baseball.

Any good play’s a triumph, any bad one’s a tragedy.
Any underdog rising, any big dog falling: that’s why I watch baseball.

I care for the story of the game, not for the score. I loathe the blowout,
adore the nailbiter and the unexpected win: that’s my baseball.

I watch this one to the end, first time in a while, then go to bed; like not wanting 
a book to end, then forgetting it once the cover’s closed. For me, that’s baseball.

Another game tomorrow, another winner, another loser.
Another story to watch and then forget. That’s baseball. 

 

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August 5, 2021

Only A Minor Threat

By Tony Brown

Revised, from 1999.

he died silent on a Monday
looking into that last camera
without a smile

eyes rolling up
like a tail gunner
during a spiral
still doing his job

the reporters on hand 
either saw him blink
or didn’t see him blink
said he was either resigned
or defiant
confident
or arrogant

not one said remorseful
not one said scared

the Friday after he died 

a jogger in Kansas City
found a 4 year old girl 

another one found
her head a day later

when several days had passed 
and no one had reported 
a four year old girl missing

a local church group
began going door to door
to identify her

refusing to call her
by the police procedural name
of baby jane doe
they renamed her “precious”
because “someone must have known her 
someone must have thought her precious”

last night

for the first time in years
I recalled the night I sang with Minor Threat
flying on crystal
maintaining barely well enough 
to pass for straight edge 
in a crowd militant for sobriety

the night irony was invented

when MacKaye handed off the mike
to what must have looked like 
just another shaven runt in the crowd

I was so thrilled to be just straight enough 
to remember the words

and that was the first one I remember
the first of those all-American moments

when 
faced with something dangerous
and contradictory

I lunged for a safety net and tried to

simplify
to boil it all down 
to a head shake 
and a slogan

simplify

to stick a fist in the air
and shout along
with the long national hunger
for swift closure 

simplify

because

if we can find a way to call her precious and insist
that she must have been beloved

if we can forget that in spite of that
no one seems to have missed her

if we can forget that it is likely
that her killer knew (or even gave her) her real name 

if we can find a way to call the truck bomber
a madman and insist that he is an aberration

if we can forget that he cried
when he saw children burned in Waco

if we can forget that he nonetheless
meant to burn the kids he burned 

if we can forget that they are not just any monsters
but our very own

looking for their own versions
of the easy answers

if we can get by those sticking points fast enough
we can return to the luxury of certainty

simplify

safely tuck it all away

and say

only a minor threat
only a minor threat

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August 4, 2021

Remarkable

By Tony Brown

Remarkable —
the sunflower leaf 
holding water
after a night
without rain.

Remarkable — 
all I need to do
is describe it this simply

and someone
will call this description
art, someone
who never notices
remarkable things
happening so routinely,

who might have been
profoundly changed
if they had just looked up
from a book
and seen it for themselves.

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August 2, 2021

New eBook on Patreon

By Tony Brown

I’ve compiled and posted a new eBook, “The Old Poet’s Handbook,” for my $15/month patrons on my Patreon site.

Just in case you were, y’know, interested….

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August 1, 2021

An Old Poet Admits It’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

By Tony Brown

up by five am daily unless there’s
illness or rare refusal. the Work begins 
before coffee, breakfast, or inspiration.

first it’s just me and a shimmer, a pang.
then it’s just me, my pang and/or shimmer,
and blank space, waiting.

inspiration is for amateurs.
the pang is the pain of not writing,
the shimmer? anticipation, joy.

then the poem comes up out of the Work.
no effort is needed until it shows up.
our work only begins after the words punch in.

we wrestle and chip. we form and reform,
seeking the poem the poem insists
on becoming. seeking the writer the poem demands.

do this long enough, often enough, and you become 
immeasurable to others unless you are measured
against your last poem. it has not been long enough

for me. tomorrow it’s back to sunrise
and no inspiration; just
shimmer, pang, and blank space. 

as for satisfaction in the Work? an artist’s statement?
ask me later. ask me later tomorrow, in fact.
prepare yourself for a lie. assume everything said

that is not in the Work
is somehow a lie, just one of those things
left behind after the Work is done.

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July 31, 2021

An Old Poet Rides The Hurricane Toward Death

By Tony Brown

When I was young, ascending,
high on this Work,
I believed I would one day
be old and still flying. 

This deep into
my aging, though,
I am dismayed
and earthbound,

tethered to the heavy stone
of Work Already Done
because living’s become a windstorm
and I am lightweight and weak.

Here I am full of folly,
thinking the Work So Far
no doubt will save me; 
robbed of the foresight to see the paradox:

how much
still within me
could die with me
if I do not let go.

Something new in the Work
is screaming for birth,
but I dare not let it out.
I do not know how

to let it break it free
of my decay
without dying myself
when it escapes.

Then again, maybe
the moment of my death,
when the Work bursts free
of my shell-shocked, brittle frame,

will be the first moment
the Work will exist on its own.
Isn’t that enough,
you ask?

I whisper,“no, it is not,”
but if I have this right,
no one will hear that over 
the roar of the Work’s ascent.

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July 30, 2021

Morning Mirror

By Tony Brown

When you see your ghost
behind your eyes,

it is only right 
to offer it flowers, wine,
sacrifices;

offer it your apologies
for keeping it imprisoned
for so long,

then set it free.

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July 30, 2021

A Tangle Of Pulse

By Tony Brown

Today I watched sparrows
in my yard leaving when I opened
the window above them.

An unfamiliar dog on a leash
on the sidewalk stopped short and stared at me
without moving his tail.

A new-to-the-neighborhood cat
crouched in my yard well away from me
and then fled when I tried to get near.

All this happened
because I am human;
the creatures saw me and knew

what I was capable of; although 
I was personally no threat to them,
they took no chances. 

Tonight I shall tie myself into a knot in a vein
in my forever aching dreamtime head
and become a tangle of pulse

thinking of how we all 
have become monsters in other beings’
sight, how we’ve come to that place 

by the efforts of an entire history
of sometimes casual
and sometimes times earnest cruelty and 

indifference, and how tantalizing
it is to consider moving to the next world,
where we might reconcile with these others;

where if we do not, at least we may receive there
some grace for trying to ease the terror
we create by being in this world.

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July 28, 2021

Pop Culture

By Tony Brown

I can’t keep up. I can’t keep up. I can’t 
keep up. I’m losing the ability to talk to anyone else.
There’s too much to navigate. Too much to 
know. I dare not get it wrong for fear of being
laughed at, ostracized.  I can’t keep up. I can’t
breathe in that atmosphere. I’m suffocating under
the movie talk. Who are all these characters? How does
a franchise differ from a series? Is this the one
with the dog or the one with the Sword Eagle, or
are those the same thing? I can’t keep up or 
even try. There are bands playing songs 
that sound old and new at once and I can’t decide
if I should like them out loud or keep silent. None of this
was designed for me. I’m not supposed to know it exists.
I’m supposed to have a bitter vocabulary about all of it.
I’m supposed to have a lawn all are supposed to avoid. 
I’m supposed to love or hate but I can’t even recognize. I can’t keep 
up with any of you. You are so far into the deeps of it 
I’m afraid to follow. I can’t hold a narrative thread longer
than a minute these days and couldn’t hold onto a lifeline
thrown to me if I was drowning in all this. I am drowning in all this.
I can’t tell who I am out here without a reference point and there are none here
that you don’t already hold like a stronghold. Like a home base
in tag. Like a ball in a game of keep away. I can’t keep up,
I’m stupid. I can’t keep up, I’m lazy. I can’t keep up, I’m old
and it all reminds me of how little substance there is to me now
for so many people to hang onto. Everything I’ve lost is out there somewhere. 
It’s been swept out of my hands and I can’t keep up the search.

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July 27, 2021

Conflagration

By Tony Brown

In my daily news, in my inbox,
a headline: “Smoky Haze? Blame 
the West Coast Wildfires,” so I do.
I stop coughing at once and can see
so much better than before I read it.

The small screen in my pocket
is a blame machine. It points at things
and shakes its finger and I go where it points;
down South where I can sneer at the rubes,
or to the Capitol to wave a treason flag.

The darkness out there is real.
Who am I to dispute darkness?
I’m an average bewildered American,
picking and choosing targets
in the land where blame is the lubricant 

that keeps things moving. In the darkness
it’s easy to slip. We need light to see a path;
whether it’s right or wrong hardly matters
as long as we know where to go and who to blame
for a rough road. Any light will do:

screen light; flashlight; torch light; conflagration.

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July 25, 2021

Effloresence

By Tony Brown 
complications in the country 
my blood and the nerves of the hand
have led me

to distrust my senses
and be flush with anger
perpetually

others think I should
let this flow into
my art and thus be cured

jackass thoughts
if my poems were ever therapeutic
I’d have never gotten to this point

think of them instead
as efflorescence on the hide
of a flimsy house of rotten brick

that I have shaken off
and let fall outside the house
you think it’s beautiful there on the ground

but the house is still
rotten and I am still
sick in this country

where I am trying to nurse
my syrupy blood and my dead nerves
to something like an ending all can stomach

I gave up on storybook happy
a long time ago and nothing I write
could change that

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July 23, 2021

An Old Poet Counts To One Hundred Percent

By Tony Brown

You miss one hundred percent
of the shots you don’t take,
read the poster
on my former manager’s wall.

It should have read, “You miss
one hundred percent of the shots
I forbid you to take,
and one hundred percent of the shots
you take without asking me first.
Then again, it’s better to ask for forgiveness
than permission — but do both
at once one hundred percent of the time.”

Fifty percent of the reason
I quit that damn job was
that damn poster, and the other
fifty percent was how sick I was 
of the damn cafeteria. How I could never
eat my lunch in peace. How no lunch
was ever one hundred percent 
free of work, network, busy work…

no matter. I do not miss
one hundred percent
of what I stepped away from. I take
one hundred percent of the shots now.
I miss a less than exact percentage.

Let’s not, in fact, admit to there being
percentages at all for missing and taking now.
I take a tree, I miss a stone.
I miss falling, I take flight.

I took my shot. I took 
my missing it as an immeasurable ocean
upon which to set sail.

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July 22, 2021

Two Birds

By Tony Brown

Two birds, Avoidance and Dismissal,
have come to roost in the rafters of the palace. 

The beat of their wings deafens the pragmatists
who snap their heads back and forth between them.

They choose which bird offers more to them right now,
no longer hearing anything beyond these walls.

The birds sit, stir, and raise and lower their feathers
in time, waiting to feed.

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July 20, 2021

The Pattern Song/America’s Shoes

By Tony Brown

Everything has a political component 
If you learn to see 
you’ll surely agree

Everything has a political component
If you think it though
You’ll see it’s true

Walking in America
wearing its mandatory shoes
hurts.

They don’t fit
but because they are superficially pretty
and match the rest of your outfit

people try to tell you
your feet are the problem. Don’t worry.
It’s fixable, they say. 

Having tried on and taken home 
dozens of the annual versions
of America’s shoes, you disagree

but go on walking
in shoes full of blood,
shoes lined with gun metal.

Everything has a political component
It’s a fact of life
we tuck out of sight

Everything has a political component
We don’t like to say
how it got this way

Trying to find others
whose walk hurts
in the same way yours does

is always hard
and even tragic
on some days.

Finding a place
where others have stopped
to kick them off,

to stand together,
stand barefoot and bruised
but more at ease,

even briefly
for a quick respite, 
is its own kind of ache.

Everything has a political component
The slant hits you 
as you think it through

Everything has a political component
Every gear that turns
Every tree that burns

The problem, you say,
is the shoes, not the feet,
but even some

of your fellow striders
who’ve stopped beside you
on the street

to pull the cursed shoes off and rest
insist the next version will fit at last.
They’re finally getting it right. Look at

how much progress we’ve made, how
far we’ve come. The walk ahead may be
daunting, but we’ve certainly left

all the bloody footprints
we need
to show the way.

Everything has a political component
Don’t say that too loud
You’ll attract a crowd

Everything has a political component
It’s not always clear
But it’s always there

If you refuse to tie the shoes back on,
they’ll be the first 
to stomp your bare feet

until you are dead or
so crushed you might
as well be.

Stop trying, drag yourself
to the nearest funeral home
(because you can’t even limp there)

where they’ll box you up, hide your feet,
burn or bury you and call you a martyr
long before you are in fact dead,

when all you ever wanted was to get home
without screaming inside
at every step.

Everything has a political component 
If you learn to see 
you’ll surely agree

Everything has a political component
If you think it through
You’ll see it’s true

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