Tag Archives: poems

July 12, 2015

Ego, Shush

It is unimportant
that I am ripped within
by doubt. All are.

It is unimportant
that these hands are not
what I once imagined.
That thought
is the same among us all.

It is unimportant that
I can see so many
already farther along
than I am. They have
the same view as I, see
others even farther ahead.

What is important:
the music being made.
That there is music being made
at all. That there are musicians
is unimportant except as music
comes from them as from one body —

one must hear all
to hear all of it
or else spend time
wasting away
for want of connection
to the Great Road
As Walked By All.

That I think this, and
that I think this is true,
are unimportant.

Shush, ego;
ego, shush;
listen, ego;
listen, be still.

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

July 9, 2015

Forecast

By Tony Brown

A pink mist puffs out
from the splash
of a bullet into
the corporal’s gut;

a mutt tugs on
a naked, swollen leg lying
on the shoulder
of the ragged, blasted
road, and

all I seem
to be able
to think about is
what it’s going to be like
to go home.

As for the way
the corporal fell, the way
the dog squealed and ran
when we spanked him with
a thrown rock —

I suspect I won’t recall those
until I am home.

Then,
I suspect,
they will be the only things
I can think of.

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

July 9, 2015

A True Story

By Tony Brown

Originally posted 2010; revised again in 2012.

Let us start by saying
that it may not be true

that a famous poet
once committed
psychological torture
upon a graduate student
in order to observe her behavior
and derive content
for a book of poems.

It may not be true
that he was not alone in his effort,
having enlisted other graduate students
to assist him and observe and report
on their comrade.

But it is true
that as an undergrad
I once sat in a dorm room
hearing this story
from the woman
who had been abused
or claimed
to have been abused,
and I believed it,

and in outrage
I told this story
to many people
for many years
as if it were certainly true,

naming all the names as I did.

When the book in question
was published to no acclaim
and general bewilderment (what had
happened? where had
the famous poet’s talent gone?)

I kept telling the story; then

the famous poet
redeemed himself
with better books,
I began to be noticed myself,

and I began to choose my listeners
and hedge the details
and withhold names,

and soon I stopped telling the story.

What I tell you now is also true:
I have read the work of the famous poet
and wondered,
and thought about it,
and looked for clues,

and I have written a lot of poems since then
and wondered,
and looked for clues,

and thought about truth
and redemption
through poems,

though I am too often
amazed and ashamed
of what poets will do
in the pursuit of poems,
truth,
redemption;

for instance,

I wrote
this.

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

July 7, 2015

Damselflies

By Tony Brown

Originally posted on 7/24/2013.

My favorite loving to watch
is that of damselflies:

him arcing back,
her looping forward;

lighting on the edge of marsh grass,
then breaking free of the spell

to fly off separately, not to meet again,
all having been fulfilled.

I could look up formal names, describe this in
minute words, kill it as biology lesson

or treatise on the aerodynamics of mating,
write an essay on metaphorical imagery, but honestly

I’d much rather lie here in sunlight
with you, practicing such poses,

delighting in
the sensation of flight.

2 Comments | tags: love poems, poems, poetry, revisions | posted in poetry

July 7, 2015

Sales

By Tony Brown

Selling you the dream car
that all the kids love,
that makes you big and potent,
that opens all the warm garage doors,
that sniffs out the best parking spots,
that finds the unexpired and broken meters,
that speeds without consequence,
that stops with each front wheel centered on a bison-headed nickel,
that eats nothing but air and good intentions;

selling you the best house
in the best neighborhood,
in the right zip code,
in a grove of window-shading trees,
in a street of charm and comfort,
in a color mixed from eagle’s tears,
in a weather pattern best described as personalized,
in a storm of good and distant thunder,
in a rainbow promise of yours forever;

selling you the joyous reincarnation
of your grandparents’ hard and fast belief in a just world,
of their stubborn faces bent over task and faith,
of their bank-backed presence as good citizens,
of their trust in the handshake,
of their unshakable duty to the flag-donning boys of summer,
of their simple vision of resting under a willow at the close of day;

selling you on it
as a mythology, a set of stories
that gives shaded meaning
though a different one is glaring;

as a cover up for the human-selling
that made it all happen;
as a screen before the bloody grounds
of human villages burned;
as a way to sate a gnawing truth
before it wakes you up starving
in the night:

that what’s being sold
is stolen property and labor
from the back of a rickety truck
in the dark,

and the whole thing’s
built on a slim prayer
that we will never stop buying.

2 Comments | tags: meditations, poems, poems from prompts, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

July 4, 2015

Tom Sawyer On The Fence

By Tony Brown

You ask me
what I would write in a message
to be placed in a bottle
and sent to sea: what would I say,
to whom would I want it said?

I say to you:
content here
will be governed by
process. To answer that
I must know

the bottle’s color, heft,
its material,
its origin.
I must know how it will be
stoppered against filling

and sinking,
its message
dissolving into the ocean
long before reaching
its addressee. I must know

on what kind of paper
I am to write,
with what I am to write —
and where am I to be
when I toss the bottle to sea

in an act
of desperation
or hope or pure
ridiculous artistry, which
can be all of the above

if need be. Tell me enough
to go on if you can’t say it all
or if you don’t know it all and I
will write it all down, every word of it

for as long as it takes to tell.
I’ll sit here with the pen and the paper.
I’ll fold and roll the pages when done.
I’ll answer your question then, hand you the
pages, hold the bottle

as it dawns on you what has just happened.
Will you laugh or will you cry? I don’t care.
Content is determined by process,
after all, and process is my job, my only job.
I think sometimes it is the only job there is.

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

July 1, 2015

Seagulls

By Tony Brown

When the seagull
grew bored with my
randomly tossed French fires
it went back to the trusted surf
and walked figure eights
in the incoming tide,
head darting into the water
and coming up
with something
almost every time.

Now and then
it would look at me
as if to say,

here’s another way,

but I then would toss
a French fry
and another gull would dive
and take it.

I don’t know
that there’s a moral here
except that once I was out of fries
all the birds took to the surf
and left me to listen to their calls,
straining to hear
one note of regret there
about the fact,
sad to me and apparently me alone,
that I was no longer relevant to them.

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

June 29, 2015

Worse

By Tony Brown

they burn down
your ancestral dances
and languages

or worse,

call you
by their own names for you
and then ask you
to teach them those dances
so they may dance them badly
in a movie

or worse,

get rich-busy with
your ceremonies,
put them out on the street
half-assed to pull
some commercial duty

or worse,

take it all away
only to flush back upon you
mostly dead pieces
of what you once had and tell you
to make a home there

so you do,

and there are moments of
drum-happy and meth-sad, time’s as mixed
as the dogs who cur and mutt
your dirt streets and you say
it could be better

or worse:

you could choke in that miasma
between their better and your worse,
you could disappear

or worse,

you could forget all of it
and burn your dances down yourself
in a moment of surrender

or worse,

you could let them choose your definition,
let them give you their blood banner to follow,
let them claim they’re your ultra,
let them stifle your last whimper,
let them take your children because
it’s all for the better —

and worse,

you could realize that where they are,
where they want you to be,
there’s no better at all
for the likes of you and yours —

and worse even than that,

you could realize
you have no choice but
to be there anyway.

2 Comments | tags: heritage, poems, poetry, political poems | posted in poetry

June 25, 2015

Exiles

By Tony Brown

A wild guitar sings
from a dark corner
of a deep porch.

A defiant song shifts gears,
gathers voices, challenges
for primacy

as my neighborhood
offers a show
of slow rebellion.

To stay alive for long here
is to be in full revolt
simply by existing.

To stay alive here
is to have hard, hard work
always in progress.

The ones who do live here?
I don’t know if they would say
they are thriving, though

in the midst of despair,
they do not despair. They
don’t know how to despair.

A wild guitar sings of this,
ringing from a dark corner
of a deep, crowded porch —

I don’t know the song.

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

June 24, 2015

Without Reins

By Tony Brown

Originally posted 11/8/2013.

Abandon and joy
have pulled the bit
from your mouth;
you’ve begun to dream without reins.

The broken bell of your body chimes.
Sing to us of the failing ring of its last note
and of the ear cupped to catch it
before it’s gone forever.

Then sing the return, the rebirth,
the orbit swinging ’round.
Sing the bloom gone to seed,
the seed gone to fire.

Sing us a blue-throated love song,
a dense jewel in full sun glinting;
a dark-tattooed work song, gospel
of opening, echo of pure belonging.

Sing the emblem
of circularity, the zero;
sing its completion
of the eternal round.

Your mouth is free of its bit.
Your song is free of your knotted tongue.
Sing. Sing of horses running,
manes and tails, summer’s winds.

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

June 22, 2015

The Cold

By Tony Brown

My raw throat converts
breath to fire: no, not with poems —
I’m sick tonight and

it burns to inhale.
Every third breath
draws a cough

that carves me
up. I’m not ready to
die from a cold, of course,

but at my age
every illness feels like
a flag for a caution lap;

you can’t shake off
what you used to. Slow down, take
as many laps as needed

before coming back
to the line at full speed.
Where’s that green flag

when you want it? No, not for
poems, not tonight. I’ll settle
for sleeping then waking up tomorrow

and then we’ll see about changing
the fire in my throat
from breath to words.

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June 19, 2015

Meanwhile (In America)

By Tony Brown

In America

In America we get
mud wrestling and drive through liquor stores
In America we don’t get
many reasons not to leer or drink

In America we get
bales of weed washing up everywhere
In America we don’t get
enough drugs to kill all the people we put on Death Row

(I’m sure we’ll figure it out)

In America we get
a good feeling about this next scratch ticket
In America we don’t get
enough cash for water or even enough water to buy

Meanwhile, I’m thinking…

In America

In America we know
exactly how much our dream costs
In America we don’t know
exactly where to find that dream

In America we know
how many malls it takes to bury all the dead Indians
In America we don’t know
how to talk about a live Indian or even where to find one

In America we know
every mass shooting is inexplicable
In America we don’t know
how many shootings it will take before we figure it out

In America

In America there’s

enough hate
to fill one million boxcars
Enough weight in them
to break one hundred thousand crumbling bridges
Enough broken bridges
to fail under ten thousand marches for cause
Enough causes
to spark a thousand arguments
Enough arguments
to sunder one hundred dreams
Enough dreamers
to dream up maybe ten full nights of safety in a year
Enough years…
have there been enough years
to look at it all and say
this year will be the last year?

In America

In America we do
whatever we need in order to buy
In America we don’t
agree on what our best words mean

In America we do
the worst to the least and call it the most
In America we don’t
hear the least say the worst or ignore it at most

In America we do
what we want and say it’s borne upon God’s breath
In America we don’t
admit that the one true religion
our own true religion
our loss leader religion is

evangelical
ecumenical
fundamentalist
capitalism

There’s fire on the altar
Fire on the altar
Fire in the church
Bullets in the church
Bullets

in America

In America

and meanwhile, I’m still thinking…

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

June 17, 2015

This Moment

By Tony Brown

this moment, whether seized or released,
is all that matters.

the sun on the shore, the sun silvering surf,
the sun on your skin, the sun on your mind;

that bouquet, that kick of fruit and wine
 mingled with dark smoke;

this one brief pause
 in a long climb toward a summit; the

pleasure snatched
from pain’s arms.

this moment is yours. this moment is you,
is all there is:

a moment of quickened light 
where you get to choose

to either forego regret
or let it inform your next breath

and all the ones
after that;

this moment knows you,
 knows your answer

before you can
 breathe a word.

— for Betsy, 6/17/2015

Click to hear a recording of this poem with music

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

June 17, 2015

A Noise Inside Me

By Tony Brown

A noise inside me seems
to be my natural tongue
struggling to be understood
through my fog of upbringing
and schooled-in language.

I don’t know what to think,
who to thank or blame. All I hear
when I try to tune in to it is
a nagging rattle. I can’t turn it off,
like hail on a tin roof

going on all day and night.
(Hail never lasts that long in real life,
though. It’s more like a storm
of lost marbles falling from charcoal clouds,
slowly wrecking my home.)

Exhausted from trying
first to understand it and then
to block it out, I seek the aid
of anyone who might speak this
natural tongue, translate it for me,

teach me how to respond. Is it you,
is it you, is it you? I ask everyone
I let get close enough
to hear it echoing from within.
Most look at me

as if every word from my mouth
was hail on their own roofs,
or a storm
of lost marbles tearing
their own safety down.

The few who stay
don’t understand it either,
but they understand the nature
of shelter: how temporary any of it
really is, how much we need

to hold onto each other
when we find ourselves together
under those crumbling eaves.
We pull close and speculate
on what it all might mean.

It helps. Sometimes,
when I am not alone with it,
the noise inside me even begins
to sound like music. Together we try,
raggedly, to sing.

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

June 16, 2015

Pockets

By Tony Brown

Your hate’s
come awake: such
an unreal charmer, such
a hot squirmer writhing
in a breast pocket
you forgot about;
a pocket you now fear
is thinned enough
to be soon torn open.
If the hole happens,
you just know hate will
stick in you, hanging
off your chest by its fangs,
sucking you out of your shell,
envenoming you, making you
up again in its image
as a venal god blooding up
ahead of a long sporting night.

Your hate’s
come awake: a once-small,
once-secret character
in someone else’s fiction
of what’s normal,
squeaking damaged calls
to whatever passes
for your remaining
morality. It calls to
the hand, calls it
to weaponize. It calls to
the eyes to see through
red mist. It calls to
the upper gut and the lower
gut and finally to
the genital center of
your worst. Your hate’s
pretending
to be your lover tonight:
a seduction, a coarse driven
caress of sweat and fear.

Your hate’s come awake
like a rattlesnake wintering
under a hearthstone, roused
by unanticipated fire.
It happens, it does
happen, it will
happen.

Meanwhile, love,
secure in another pocket,
has been awake this whole time —
it tires, though not easily
or deeply enough to ever be
absent completely.
All you need do
is look its way
and it will come to you