On a Sunday night long ago
while I was supposed to be doing homework
I stuck the point
of a cheap school compass
into a page, labeled the hole
my art and then swung
the flaking chrome arm
with its crunch-clamped pencil around
and around, calling everything inside
the circle Tony.

Years have passed and I have kept that Sabbath
holy.

It’s true that I know
there’s space outside
my limit. It’s also true
that I still don’t know what name to give
that line except that
the word for it has more
than two syllables and can’t
be pronounced more than once
in a lifetime.

Geometers
tell us that any circle that can be drawn
is only an approximation of a true circle,
which has no real dimension.
I could choose to believe them
and just erase the line,
but I’d still be stuck
with that cursed old hole.

So I tell them,

dare me
to step across that ancient and still unnamed line,
turning back to point and say
That’s been my work
and this has been my life.
Dare me to set a new point on the page
and charm myself a new circle.
The new hole will remain unnamed
because it’s only a means to an end,
Area will become my name
because it means nothing beyond cold description,
and if once before I die
I am brave enough
to call that new limit
Circumference
it will be because
at the last
I found that such simple answers
granted me the peace
to say just that
and nothing more.

War is bad. Sexism
is bad. Racism, homo-
phobia, classism, ageism,
meatism, donutism, boozism,
druggism…

there’s a poem behind this wall
somewhere, a lasting poem
smaller than a roach, big as
fun, charming as hip-hop or
blue suited SHARP, dogged
eared waiting for the next line…

chumpism, snarkism, lift every voice-
ism, jism’s too easy to use here
so it fits perfectly-ism, no more silence
in the face of anything difficultism…

someone has to say it: no more
evidence needed, give us instead word arrow, star finger
pointer, rumbledigger going deeper than
tactical, ditching up strategic faster than
imago can fly…

unitism, we ought to sing alike-ism,
comparisonism…

is anyone an individual anymore? drop
a pop reference like an ID card. let me
show you my space. no different face worth
bothering with…

let it bobism, cunnilinguism, narrowism, buy
your way to godism, growthism, wombism…

Christ, it’s always been so:
everything bad stands up against poetry…so,
fight back: do you know how to fire a poem
that shows me
you?

First, the water
was cold, then
so, so warm.

Afterwards, I
sat at the old kitchen table
soaking the carpet — baggage
heavier than ever with the wet
and still tied to my knees.

You offered me a piece of cake.
I shivered even as I took it
and tried to wash it down
with milk, beer, anything
but water.

Mind you don’t
stain things, you said.
I minded because
mind is all I can do.

I think about the cold
and the cake, the water
and the lovely old silt on the bottom
of the sound, the chafing of the ropes
and the things I carry when I walk,
anywhere I walk.

If I could feel instead of think
I’d still be feeling the warm. I’d be feeling it
in my stomach, my arms, in the rush
of it coming inside when I finally let go
and breathed.

Instead, I will take another piece of cake.
I think you’ve got the recipe down at last
but telling you that wouldn’t be me.
Instead, I will stain whatever there is.

Instead. Instead —
there’s a dry, cold world
on this side
of that sound.

years of watching
nature shows
and I can’t answer this question:

given the opportunity
will a predator
kill two at once?

imagine: somewhere
in central america
a jaguar is striving for a personal best

and prays (in whatever way
that big cats pray) that the kinkajous
fooling about on the forest floor

will stay still long enough
for him to take both with one
velvet razor swipe

but he is thwarted when
one sees him waiting and lets out
a quavering cry

(this is why they call the kinkajou
la llorona
the weeping woman)

and when the two
scratch their way up a tree
leaving the jaguar behind to curse

(in whatever way jaguars curse)
they weep with joy and perhaps
snicker at the loser below

imagine at night that las lloronas
the weeping women
honey bears of the canopy

tell stories to each other
of all the death they’ve avoided
at the jaws and paws of would-be overachievers

pausing now and then to whisper
of the ones who fell alone
and unwarned

there is strength in numbers
they tell each other
the jaguars can only kill us when we forget that

so can a predator
kill more than one at one time?
I expect they can

but only
if the prey
allow

Celia
on the microphone
you tell everyone your pain
hoping the truth
will set you down and keep you
well footed on the planet

Celia
put that thing back on its stand
and breathe a bit
that immense truth of yours is a mountain
and a mountain could care less
about the intonation
you use
when you describe it

Celia
we can hear it
every hair in your lungs
is a whip driving you
to let it out
but that truth you’ve just got to shout
is just another exhalation
waste pushing itself back to be reborn
once you’ve finished your say

Celia
your words are fingers
and you’re face down
on a massage table
staring into the floor
through a comfortable hole
feeling what they’ve got to tell you
but truth is
those words you’re feeling
will stop in a short time and
someone’s going to demand you pay up

Celia
put away the key
and stop tugging on the shut door
that holds back everything you’ve got inside
the truth is
blood’s thicker than a sentence
dancing tongues step soft and wet where they step
and nothing you have to say
will last longer than it needs to

Celia
truth is no God
poetry no savior
while your voice is a pretty thing
a potent thing for as long as it holds up
you’ve got those whips inside you lying about the cure
you’ve got those whips inside you telling you speech is as good as a leech
what you bleed pools in a cup
and it’s no good once it’s gone cold

Celia
you know what’s true?
your truth is bigger than any poem
your truth demands utterance because that’s the first step
but the microphone only looks like an incense burner
the stand only seems a shadow of the True Cross
your truth spoken is not your chains broken
come down off the stage
give a moment to silence
let the poem be and stop imagining you’re free
just because the whips have slowed
and the cracks have temporarily stopped
when the words are done
you’ve only just begun

Limo on the corner
and no one in back. Maybe
there are passengers coming out
of the grey house to get on board
amd go somewhere dreamy

but right now it’s just another car
with a tired driver at the wheel,
working a second job or even a third,
filling in for a drunk cousin
and hating the damn suit and tie.

Casino, strip club, romantic rendezvous for some
means hours of boredom and long chats
on the prepaid cell for another, smoking with another driver
just met as they cool their shiny heels
in the parking lot.

When the privacy screen goes up
and the folks in the back get down to
celebrating, he’ll be all alone up front
and that’s just fine with him: no need to watch
or share or even scold.

After hours
it’s curve upon straightaway as the big ride tools toward
the livery yard; then it’s the Toyota and a blunt
to crush the night into one more
bad tipped, red eyed check mark against the future.

An Angus steer
swung its head around the corner
of the door into the bedroom.
It stared at me, black glass eyes
catching spots of tiny white from the window.

I got out of bed and patted it, it
seemed so calm, smooth hide rippling
under my hand.

I could have slaughtered it and eaten like a king
for months but
when it turned and went out into the yard
through a door I’d obviously
forgotten to lock last night, I followed as far as the porch

and from there
watched it join its herdmates grazing
on the meager back lawn.

I’m no cowboy, I decided then and there,
I’ve got no reason to try and control
such a thing as a herd of cattle that know enough
to visit me when I am at my least warlike.

If I had woken up at some point and realized
that a piece of a dream was presenting itself to me, its neck
and veins exposed, I do not know what might have been:

I might have lived longer and fatter on the leavings,
the marbled flesh, the creamy waxen lines in the red muscle;

but I would never have seen where this came from:
the lawn I had neglected allowing sustenance for mouths
I couldn’t understand except as fodder.

The cattle moved off down the driveway into the street, and all I could do
was wave my hat at them. Git along, I said,
git along, it’s all misfortune here,
and none of your own. Go find another lawn to graze.
I’ll keep the door open for you.

it’s been like rooming
with a centipede.

hearing all those shoes drop.
wondering how many are left to go.

stepping out of bed
in bare feet.

measuring the odds
of feeling the whisper of thin legs

crossing in waves
over my charged skin.

I do not think I’ll be taking Ambien again…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waking up talking —

EVERYTHING IS DISAPPEARING

re-
call

the morning glories
climbing the chain-link fence
and one tendril scaling the face
of the arborvitae in the neighbor’s yard

the monster heat of the bonfire
on Fourth of July
in the sandpit

what it was like to breathe and taste
before cigarettes

the leftover vinyl of artie shaw
discovered in best friend’s barn
scratched to fusstone but still
revelatory

orchards in abandoned farms
gone back to poplar and scrub ferns
timid among the rotten fruit

lying awake at night
with nothing but dark and not
caring that there was no sound

EVERYTHING IS DISAPPEARING —

names and dimlit backyards
names on shallowcarved school desks
names and names and blame and fervent
hope of notice and friendship

stumbling fingers on the first joint
rolled with single wide papers
praying it wouldn’t fall apart before
the watchful gods of freakdom

re-
call

birds and cars and barking sandstone
far from famous bands gone to accountancy and parenthood
slinky patch jeans and embroidered Big Daddy Roth army coats

the first switchblade
hash pipe
condom stolen from the drawer before
the first
kiss

recall hopeful waking up talking
blue in the face from Fresca and vodka

re-
call
sweating in the middle of a broke-ass broken sleep

waking up tonight talking VERY LOUD
EVERYTHING IS DISAPPEARING
everything inside is solving itself for zero
cutting larger and deeper holes in this being
with its comfortable shoes and sensible coat
with skin and graying hair gone to pot
battling hydra refusing suddenly to grow back

everything
yes
everything

— T Brown, 5/23/07

After the Syracuse reading, Jane and crew run a workshop. We were unable to attend (got home at 4AM) but I did take on the challenge…

Challenge: First word of first line “Glass”
Last word of poem “Marshmallow”

Syracuse to Worcester, May 21-22, 2006

1.
Glass Head Tony one hour from Syracuse — half-full, half-empty? I lean forward and back and the contents
slop all over the car. Damn near empty now, and four hours to go.

2.
Sunspots or the mountains keep breaking the satellite’s warm hold on the radio, so I’ve got fragments of Satriani and Shankar all over the car now, sloshing on the floor boards. What will happen when I draw it all back up tomorrow in full daylight?

3.
“You stoned, son?” “Nah, officer-sister, I’m just wet with a road buzz and I’m two miles from home with a car full of sleep and unloved music. Cut me a break, let me get there, and I promise I’ll never drive happy again.”

4.
The sides of the dry glass on my head reflects the best thing ever I could see now as it starts to dawn outside — the pillow, that welcome marshmallow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the unappealing character
smokes as he walks away
from the wasted son he’s brought here;
he saunters off to start a new life.

i can be anything now,
he tells himself. he pats his chest
to be sure he has enough cigarettes
for the journey.

meanwhile, the boy assembles his tools.
what will he be when he adjusts
to the scentless air?
he tells himself it doesn’t matter,

that this is his father’s life and he needn’t
live it if he doesn’t understand it,
but he knows he’s going to try.
he knows he’s honor-bound to it.

the smoking man is long gone
when the boy sits down on the curb and imagines
the smell of marlboros on the breeze.
it’ll be dark a long time. it’ll be good to have a compass like that.

Turn away from it all —
the television, the race, the war,
the idiocy of leaders, the sweetness
of sex, the blue gloss of the false tongue.

Decide that only you know what to do next.

Take a gun to the walls of the city,
or climb a tower to spot your target with a razor in your teeth.
Staighten your hair and remember your true name,
the one that you were given at birth
by the grandmother you never knew, the one
whispered to you when you were five hours old.

Stare down at the people, the ants and ant-cars, booths
of shopping mothers, arguing merchants, cash tendered
for tender moments, small gifts bought on impulse
to soothe tension among children.

If there’s an instance of death you can feel —
recalling the wake where a body no longer
heated the air around it, the smiles of the unfamiliar
relatives — hold that moment close. Pretend it’s happening
all over again, right now.

Steel yourself. Draw a bead
on the underlife.

Isn’t this enough? The knowledge of
what you think is in your power?
Your urge to kill and drop yourself
after the killing, the desire to fall
all burning and thunderbolt upon the masses —
why? No one will care tomorrow
that you were the angel of justice.
They’ll call you crazy and revile you.
All that down below is what you are, too;
they think of this moment on the tower
from time to time themselves, you know.
Everyone wants to play God. Witness
the television’s frantic screeching, the racial jockeying,
the war begun and ended,
the sex coerced or desired,
the children conceived and abandoned.
Offer a person ten minutes to talk
and they’ll fix the world for you. Offer ten dollars
to a homeless man and watch how both of you
stand a little taller, feel a little better than the other guy.

Nothing you do here makes you better than the other guy.

When you give up the fantasy, toss the gun
over the wall, drop the razor into the AC duct,
and come down, you’re not changed.
They still seem like ants, but so much larger,
and those extra legs you seem to have grown
are just a measure of how strong you think you are.

I looked like my mother
when I was growing up,
curls framing the boisterous
mouth I’d gotten from her Tuscan base.

When I got older I took after my father —
surly and fed up with some
unexplained hole in my center.

It started when I was twelve, walking
an old trail on
an old reservation, the sign out front
proclaiming that “these four and one half acres
have never belonged to the white man, having been
granted to the Nipmuc Tribe by King George the Third…”

and although I wasn’t Nipmuc
and my dad’s reservation
was twenty-five hundred miles away,
the light became as sweet
as cornbread and my eyes grew fat,
clogging so much
they ran over,
and I did what little I could, climbing
a small hill to stand and face south,
singing a song my father had taught me
from an old vinyl record,
a Johnny Cash song
about drums, Indian drums
just on the fringe of hearable sound,
singing softly enough myself so I couldn’t be heard
ten feet from where I stood,
and I stopped crying.

I stopped calling myself “white” that day.
I told myself:
I will not be two at once.
I will choose the song I mean to be.

So for years I worked that way
and I thought I had it all together,

until I walked into the Pequot casino
for the first time
and saw the people spending money
in hordes,
the sound of cash bell and buzzer
playing a crazy dog dance,
saw the exhibits on loan from
the new cultural center and saw
people looking hard at them for once;
then saw the Goliath crystal
Indian
shooting a psychedelic arrow into the atrium
every hour on the hour,

and I knew:

there is a gap I will never learn
to live in, a place
between the anthem I learned
and the dirge I never heard.
The song on the hill,
the private song that made me swell with tears
and feel as though I belonged,
never taught me that being split
could mean
something other than choosing pride
in one side or the other,
could be
harder than simply choosing
to stand on a hill and sing
and decide I’d gotten it right for all time.

I sat down because my head
was cloven
and King George The Third,
disguised as a drunk on a park bench
in the indoor orchard
by the Wampum Rewards booth,
laughed at me and said:

Creating America was a bitch,
but creating you?
That was easy.

I’m thinking that if I scratch the back of my left index finger long enough a genie will pop out. He’ll be fat and awful with three wishes to offer but I’ll turn the first two down flat, holding out for the last one. He’ll shake his head and sigh and when he agrees to roll them all into a single ball of heart’s desire I’ll tell him I’m looking for a cure for the finger itch.

When the finger stops itching I’ll wonder what I’m supposed to do next and regret that I didn’t make the cure the second wish, leaving an answer to my current question for the third wish.

And a few minutes later I’ll think of how I should have asked for clairvoyance right up front and avoided all this.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to scratch that finger now…but ah, if the right one itches…

Do not speak to me
if you’re going to speak of
the way
my aura shines.

Do not say things about
the clan to which my ancestors belonged
or imagine the way my sun sign
could heat you up.

I wasn’t born yesterday,
or even ten thousand years ago
in Atlantis or its suburbs.
I know the score:

you want to and it’s unseemly
to say so, so you invent
a soulmate and make me
stand in for that Angel.

I am my own light, I can see you,
and if you need me to shine hotter
for you, just say so.
I’m no fickle candle. I’ll burn

without resorting to mystic fire.
I’ll just burn the way anyone does
when presented with the here and now
of shared attraction. No need

to gussy it up with some magic
you got from a paperback grimoire.
I’m ok being earth without heaven,
body without familiar.

Throw yourself against me solidly and I’ll
push right back until you push me
some more and we feel each other
without benefit of the Lord and Lady’s

heavy baggage. Want is its own
religion, lust its own spiritual practice.
The Wolf Clan, if it ever existed, won’t howl about
how we tangle each other up.

A hand is all you need, an empty hand. Let the crystal
and the athame fall. I don’t much care for the soul kiss
and the melding of our chi. Just give me your profanity,
and that’ll be Godhead enough.