Tag Archives: humor

October 19, 2013

God In The Ginger Ale

By Tony Brown

God is everywhere,
even in this ginger ale.

If an atheist
swallows God up
through a straw
without noticing,
what will end first —
the universe, God,
the atheist, or our sense
of absurdity?

The atheist will say
nothing will end,
because there was
no God in the ginger ale.
He will say this
while glowing
righteously.  

If an artist creates
great art inspired by 
what she calls “God,”
shouldn’t we burn it
or her, once God 
no longer exists?

The atheist, levitating
over the pyre
of the Sistine Chapel,
Notre Dame, the ghosts
of Baniyan’s Buddhas, 
Angkor Wat, and Rapa Nui,
chooses a Titian altar piece
to toss on the fire.  Meanwhile

God sits by — warming up,
drying up, laughing loudly.
This happens all the time.
It’s not like it changes anything.

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September 25, 2013

Bo Diddley Halleujah

By Tony Brown

My beaver heart
drums and pumps as I 
tear up and reform
my environment.

All I want 
is to leave a mark.
Something to say
something, anything

about anything.
I don’t care if
that urge makes my 
ass look big or 

my name look small,
so small it’s not
remembered — although
to have been Bo Diddley

and have left a rhythm
behind me that conjures my name
whenever it’s played?  
Praise, hallelujah — two bits.

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September 25, 2013

The Proper Perspective

By Tony Brown

Love’s not much
to worry about: you either
have it or don’t, are loved or
are not.  Simple

and devastating.
You can’t worry about such things
to the point of no return; instead,
worry till just before that point.

Say there’s a pair of brown eyes
that wreck you often.
Why worry
about wrecking — you will

or will not crash,
they’ll turn your way
or stay fixed
elsewhere,

and there’s nothing you can do
except think about them until
just before you see
the bridge abutment looming.

Love’s neither voluntary
nor subject to reason, so
to sit with your head in your hands,
utterly controlled by love, is foolish.

Just rest your head
directly on your desk
and save your arms from fatigue.
Rest it there repeatedly, in fact,

several times a minute.
It will hurt less than worrying
about love.  You’ll see — eventually
you’ll pass out and love

will fall into its proper perspective
of blackout and pain
and the dazed look on your face
upon revival, at which point

you may still be worried about love
but no one will be the wiser —
and maybe, just maybe,
you’ll have amnesia.

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September 1, 2013

This poem is a test of a new blogging app

By Tony Brown

Had it been an actual poem, it might have had content and form and meter.  
You might have been moved to action or reflection.
You might have been angered or stirred in some unfamiliar way.
The poem might have revolutionized some aspect of reality —

but instead, as with most poems (and certainly as with most poems from this author)

there is
far less here
than meets the eye
on first glance.

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August 29, 2013

H. P. In Love

By Tony Brown

Providence, his dark bayside muse,
lent itself well to his humors.
He saw potential lovers everywhere,
in the same dank nooks and holes
where potential horrors would be found.

He did not in real life love much or well.
In the long run he did not scare
much either, or trust the devotion
of his monsters to their creator;
in the long run, he only kept the city

as full companion and partner. He was born
here, left and returned, eventually died
muttering about the pain in his gut and
the Elder Race in his dreams, settling at last
on one phrase to capture all his attention:

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
Think of it: a man so in love with darkness he had to create
new words to chant it free of the depths it occupied
within him, the depths he sensed were present in traces

in the alleys behind the grand homes
of Angell Street, Waterman Street, Benefit Street;
in the drowned eyes that sought him out when he stared into
the rivers that emptied black here from the New England hills.
New words for something at once terrible and inescapable —

something like love, at least to him.

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August 8, 2013

Mr. Bad Idea

By Tony Brown

Oh, Mr. Bad Idea!
Favorite cousin 
in my extended family,
come up and hug my neck
with your icy meat paws,
smear me with one evil kiss
from your greasepaint devil’s face!  

Take me out, get me drunk
and let me slip, in disguise and unnoticed,
to the floor of a convenient dive!
I’ve been such a good sweet piece
of lard for too long; elevate me
by bringing me low then work me till 
I stink like old yogurt,
you bastard, you brother!

Then, Mr. Bad Idea,
what I really want is to adopt
one of your little bad ideas.
I think
I could make it happy, fatten it up,
make it sleek.  I think it’ll work out,
but then again

if metaphor were a firecracker, 
I’d have handled it badly
and likely wound up without
an eye, thumb, or testicle years ago.  
Mr. Bad Idea,
how is it you’re always intact enough
when you are around me
that I forget this and all the rest
of my years of sense?
They call this forgetting  
something else 
in my support group, a name
I can never remember in time
to keep it from happening.

Mr. Bad Idea, you think
we’d be past this.  You’d think
we would be so intimately acquainted
by now that we’d be on more normal terms;
I’d merely entertain you now and then
and hold you at bay the rest of the time.
But you old wolverine!  You badger full
of flammable cotton!  How you do
tear your way in where it’s least wanted — 
in the face of the Queen, in the dark crook
of my left throat.  

I’m telling everyone:
you see me bloated with a Bad Idea,
you better be a friend
and kill that out of me.

 

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July 28, 2013

NSA

By Tony Brown

Let’s just hand over the water coolers
to the spies.  Let’s see them
try to process all the loose words.

In a place born for free speech
why are we all so terrified that someone
might be listening to it?

Let’s get over it.  Let’s
talk louder.  Let’s not relent
at all; talk about everything

at once.  Mention your
bowel movements in the same breath
as your passionate defense

of the right to violate a law
in pursuit of justice beyond it.
Give breakfast cereals credit

for insider trading.  Describe your car
as the perfect example of style so wild
it terrorizes the road under it.  

Don’t capitulate: overwhelm.
They won’t know what to do
with a firehose narrative.  If by chance

they come for you, laugh at them.
We’ll laugh with you, all of us.  Laughter
is the war they’ll never win. 

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July 27, 2013

The Sensational Excuse

By Tony Brown

What, were you
sensational and I
missed it? Apologies
from my bottom core — I was
elsewhere, captive
to smoke and some
shackling dream of
complicated motives.
I was enslaved and
I don’t use that term
lightly –it’s too heavy
a word for that.  I didn’t
like my master and
hated my chains.  I
lay there wishing I was
with you, really,
it’s not an excuse but
truly all the forces
that held me were stronger than
my desire to be there.
And you were of course
sensational! Of course
it would be the night
I was laden with blue
stone, held down to the earth 
by its very bedrock, unable
to rise for you or me or anyone,
it’s purest coincidence that
I’m up and about now, a freak
emancipation raised me up 
and I know it’s no excuse but
that freedom came too late
to let me get to you, and
there you were being sensational,
as I was being crushed, as I am
crushed now, figuratively
but still I’m crushed, it’s no excuse
but crushed really is the word
to define the blue granite basalt marble
nature of what kept me from you,
you being the sensational you you are
or so I hear, it’s not an excuse
I know, it’s not an excuse, it’s
really not about you,
you were I’m told and I’m sure
sensational and it’s
not an excuse, not about you,
it’s about me. 

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July 19, 2013

Concert

By Tony Brown

The classic rock band
on the concert stage
looks down upon you
holding up their one great album
in the front row
for an entire hour and a half
and says

it’s like the old days
but nothing like the old days

(or two of them do,
the two original members, 
the rest being hired guns
who look at you and say

shame i’m not getting royalties from this gig

and proceed to rock out
with the clock out
figuring dollars earned 
by notes played)

And what do you say?
You say

EEEEEYEAH!!!!!

and 

WOOOOOOOOOO!

and are thus
entertained
well and fully
and are convinced
and are sated
and can go home
rejuvenated

well

a little

 

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June 26, 2013

Ridiculous Man

By Tony Brown

In stone,
find castles;
in wood find
cottages; in river
find ocean, in ocean
find the moon.

In you? Find
search, explore,
discover, build…
find atmosphere.
Find breathing.

Find, of course,
me…not mystic
location, not 
“inner me” but
ordinary face,
mirror, 
self-portrait…

Ridiculous man!

All of you in there
before me
and all I see
is me!  

 

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June 21, 2013

Muse

By Tony Brown

Go,
lie down.  

I turn it
into a chant: go lie down
go lie down go lie down.

It’s a prayer of course:
for the love of God,
go lie down.  

It’s a hit song
in this house:
go lie down
go lie down
go lie down and
go to sleep —

cat,
wild lady,
dark storm,
PLEASE
go lie down,
you must be tired after chasing
this ghost prey you’ve been seeking
since 3:30 AM 
that has flown from window to window
ahead of you, that has demanded of you
total attention, that has caused you to hang
from the breaking blinds, that has made you
oblivious to threats and the squirt gun, 
that has evoked from you a litany of squeaks
and small cries, that has at last led you
to leap onto the bed and rouse me
for good at dawn —

go lie down go lie down go lie down
GO LIE DOWN!  If you dream,
continue this there; if you don’t
there’s no problem, of course.

If I have to I’ll try
and find what it is
and take it down myself —

just 
go lie down, please;
what you want is your business,
stop making it mine.

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May 31, 2013

Clint Eastwood’s Birthday

By Tony Brown

Clint Eastwood
noted his birthday in passing by

shoooting it
as he waggled the cigar in his mouth then

sitting down
at the piano to riff on T. Monk who

also wore
a variety of hats and was enigmatic and

said little
but still was bad-ass like our boy Clint who

upon reflection
got up and went for the cake without a word

 

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May 29, 2013

Go In

By Tony Brown

You exhort the poet on stage
to “go in.”  As in, dive deep,

into the darkness, while remaining
onstage and in the spotlight.

Welcome to the American expectation.
It doesn’t matter how divorced you feel

from the rest of society —
you are waving a fat and greasy flag

full of Freud, Oprah, Facebook,
and the red white and blue

at someone who might be an artist
or might not, but who you certainly want to be

your pet goat, your truth teller,
your beard, your hide-behind.

Stay home and try it next time with a TV
and a boatload of reality shows.

You’ll save money
and when you implore

whoever’s on the screen to “go in,”
the only downside will be

that it may be a hoarder you’re talking to
and there may be more in there than you wish.

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May 9, 2013

Spirit Animal Husbandry

By Tony Brown

They don’t choose us
any more;
not now, not in the land of
free will.

When I choose the Alligator
he roars, 
“Son, your bloodlines are desert
on one side
and mountain on the other.
Not a bayou in sight so
how the hell did I become
your idea of a spirit animal?”  

I reply,
“Television, man.
It fucks up 
your locality,
morality, and
spirituality.  

But consider: as an Amurrican,
I bite on whatever’s 
offered
so it seemed
appropriate…”

Tail thrash, jaw snap.
Over his shoulder:

“C’mon, then…”

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April 22, 2013

The Whale

By Tony Brown

I am abandoned:
no one reads
my poems anymore.

In a frantic bid
to have them read again

I have sworn on the grave of
all my past poems
that every poem I write
from this moment on
will conform and be about
injustice,
fucking,
or both — except for this one

about last Friday when
far off
the New Hampshire coast,

cold under bright sky
and on top
of joint rattling seas,
I saw a humpback whale

as I had never seen one before:
by itself, apparently
not a part of any group.

It paralleled our small boat
for a few minutes
then raised its flukes one last time
and surged down
into diamond tipped
dark waves.

No way to say if that whale
was hungry, horny, lonely, lost, ostracized,
or none of the above.
Surely it seemed at peace,
but there’s no way
to be sure of anything about it
other than its sine-wave course
beside us.

I’m changed now:
I swear to spend more time
humbly observing and pondering
the quests of solo whales,

and thus the world shall be improved:

perhaps less injustice;
perhaps more fucking;
surely, fewer poems.

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