Tag Archives: poems

February 16, 2023

That’s A Shame

Think about
all the bodies you’ve seen,
human
and otherwise.

Think beyond the human bodies
in funeral homes
or hospitals, perhaps
on battlefields or in

car wrecks or other accidental carnage;
maybe in family homes if you grew up
in the right part of the world for folks
to die in their homes at peace or in war.

If that’s hard to grasp consider
that you must have seen
hundreds of flies and wasps on windowsills;
chickens laid out in stores;

roadkill of all species;
the neighbor’s cat
upon a sparrow
under your feeder;

your own cat
upon a mouse
under your
kitchen table.

Have you fished?
Have you hunted?
Those are lovely shoes you are wearing —
isn’t that fine Italian leather?

Isn’t this lovely, understanding at last
how death has surrounded you and kept you?
All life is sacred, some say.
Few of us say all death is too. It’s a shame;

we love to demonize it, saying we give
our killers the ultimate punishment
when we sentence them to the inevitable,
then sit down to a steak after the deed is done.

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

February 15, 2023

Regrets, I Have A Slew

By Tony Brown

come so far so hard upon
the trail of where
I went once without
care for how it would look
to others

damn it was easy
when I was young and
all I had for care was
residual longing
to belong

now that’s gone
to regret and guilt
but on the poor corner
I look like a king
to everyone but me

if I had a dollar for
every dollar I didn’t keep
when it was in my hand
I’d still be one broke bastard
looking for my confident used to be

with the take for granted hair
and the body that didn’t look like
this betrayal of a Creator’s fabled image
I used to be just beautiful enough
to believe in God

and now there’s a mistake in every pore
and the distance to travel has wrinkles
and mountains and mutant caverns
I wish I could catch up to the youth I was
spin him around kiss him and say don’t be a fool

you are going to die too soon
and it’s going to be your own fault
and people are going to wail over you
and dogs are gonna fight over your bones
and this is how will be forever

look me in the eye
and tell me
you are glad I exist
that I caught up to you
and you are fine with having made me

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

February 13, 2023

The Mad King

By Tony Brown

There are very few clues to find
when exploring how
he became this narrow.

His permanent record
barely explains anything
as no one ever felt much need

to put notes in there.
His employment file
describes his mild job history,

annual satisfactory reviews,
merely adequate
bumps in pay year upon year.

Tax returns tell nothing
and there’s nothing of note
in the newspapers of record.

So how he got to
hollering about the “woke mob”
that’s killing him, is a puzzle

when there’s no sign of damage
from anyone in his history.
It all looks pretty clean.

Except for the bullshit
on his tongue, he could be anyone.
That may be the problem: perhaps

he thought he should be exalted
for being so much like
what he’d been told he should be

that when being ordinary and
bland and safe-pale was not enough
by itself to make him king,

he drew a sword on his face
and stepped up and out screaming
for his kingdom.

He makes it up
as he marches along
behind the bulls, feeding.

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

February 13, 2023

A performance online!

By Tony Brown

On February 23 at 7:30 PM EST I’ll be doing a live via Zoom reading (tomorrow night) of a special set of poems. No one has seen them; they will be printed, read once, and destroyed after the reading. Literally, a one time only event.

I’d planned this to be a Patrons-only event but am opening it to the general public on a pay per view basis.

It will be $10 USD for the performance, payable through either PayPal or Venmo. Message me here and we can work through the details. I’d love to have some of you attend.

Thanks,
T

Leave a comment | tags: Patreon news, poems, poetry | posted in Patreon, poetry

February 12, 2023

East Palatine Newspaper Poem

By Tony Brown

It’s not Chernobyl.
What it is
is East Palatine,
Ohio and it’s big,
it’s as big as miles around.

It’s not nuclear but
it is a big-ass gas burst
with a lot of dead chickens
underneath and maybe dogs
and maybe people but

we don’t know because
what it is,
is embarrassingly
lethal. There’s a lot of
mouths to be sewn shut,

but it is not as silent as capitalism
which right now is busy
selling gas masks and
burial plots and refusing
to look anyone in the eye —

after all it’s not Fukushima;
what it is won’t be washed away
with the next tsunami or
“natural disaster.” As it is
it’s not all that famous yet

and we really don’t know enough
to do anything but ignore it.
It’s not a spy balloon, not a UFO
falling from on high. Just a train
off the rails and a death plume.

Not anything
like a football game.
It won’t be in the headlines
tomorrow. Cross your fingers
and hope it isn’t what it is.

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

February 11, 2023

The Mythology Of Scorched Earth

By Tony Brown

Last night
I dreamed
that there
in my hand
I had conjured
a gnome
in a red hat,
something
from a book
I’d read long ago.
He began to spin
there on my palm
and when he at last
spun away it was as
a dervish born
in a handful
of fire.

Last night
I remembered writing
this poem once before
when I was no more than
18. Back then I thought
I was something,
didn’t I — back then I thought
I too had been
formed in a hand
to be a dervish
in a handful
of fire and that I had
a fire hand of my own making
and I spawned poems in it,
fast red, and long burning hot,
and I spun them into the world
to ignite anything
other than myself, but still
I burned, almost, to ash.

I soak my wounds these days
in any running stream
I find
and think of how
I am no longer what I was,
am I — no dervish,
no wick, no kindling
in this poor hand,
and I am grateful
for how final and good
it feels to stop short of a full life
of poems romancing the mythology
of scorched earth.

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

February 9, 2023

Blessing/Fatigue

By Tony Brown

It’s a blessing,
this fatigue
that has come so easily
after a day of twisting
in hard country wind.
Soon enough I hope
I’ll drop into sleep
and settle myself below
the hammering gusts
of day to day
and minute to minute,
hoping that when I rise
I’ll be rested and ready
for tomorrow’s buffeting.

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

February 8, 2023

Trash Day

By Tony Brown

First I take out the trash
and then I sit down to write.

I hold off on coffee until after
I’ve done something poetic.

I have friends who swear
the coffee must come first

but the coffee comes second around here,
or even third on a Wednesday trash day.

My friends understand why
the trash comes first, but how is poetry

something to get past and not
at least in part something I owe

to downing at least one delicious cup?
They don’t understand: I have to have

something to look forward to
so I hold the first cup in reserve. It’s

the Blue Mountain on the end
of the stick before me. Writing the poem,

on the other hand, is less a pleasure
than a — not a pain, no; more

of a requirement. More of a
“take your pills” practice, a glucose test

of what pushes your blood through you.
Not so much medically required as

now so much a part of the rituals
that to do so on some days hurts, on others

sings within, but is each day ignored at my peril.
So first the trash on Wednesdays, then

the poem, then the coffee. Today
it’s all tasting pretty much OK:

trash out half an hour early, and listen
to this — not great, not terrible, but when the body

holds it up for inspection, it says
all is in balance for now; I pour a cup

with a splash of milk and nothing else.
I don’t know what else I’ll be doing today

but at least I’ve done this and if today I pass away,
when they find me they can say they found me at rest.

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

February 6, 2023

Lifelong Learning

By Tony Brown

Mom asks,
who is Beyonce?

She’s a singer,
I tell her.

Would I
know anything she sings?

No, I don’t
think so.

Oh, okay then.
Goes back to dozing

in front of the game show
where she heard the name.

Beyonce was the answer to
a question. That was

all she needed to know.
All is well. Enough.

Do you think you will ever
know when to say Enough?

To look out the window
and say Enough. To see the news

and say Enough.
To close your eyes

and say Oh, okay then,
plunging deeper into Enough.

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

February 5, 2023

Bring Us The Flood

By Tony Brown

In some part of The Land
there’s been more rain
than they can handle

but not here, where we long
for rain and pray for The Land
to come back into Balance.

What if this is Balance?
Some say it is and the Land
is behaving as it should.

We are the Fulcrum
upon which the Balance
has come to rest.

Some say, it is what it is. Some say
those words are themselves
the blunt tip upon which

the Fulcrum has come to rest
and the reason the Balance
wobbles like a weak priest

in a confessional, shaking
as he listens to sins in a voice
he knows so well.Too well.

All I know is that the rain
is elsewhere, not here. We
do what we can to maintain

Balance. We shiver or we burn
and tell each other to take hold
and hang on. It is what it is:

the Balance is not in our favor
and unlikely to come to us now.
That’s the nature of Balance:

it settles, eventually, come rain
or come shine. There’s a reason
some say it that way: it is

what it is,
come rain or come shine,
easy come, easy go.

It’s been years now since
we’ve seen rain. Listen to
The Land. Bring us now the Flood.

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

February 4, 2023

Fumbling Before A Mirror, I Forget My Name

By Tony Brown

That must be my body
in that mirror, that nest
of misdirections;

here, what looks like
a too-short
bindle of twigs;

there, something more like
a poorly daubed
mud cluster.

Hard to apprehend the whole
when such fragments
compel so strongly.

There in the mirror
what I think is a reflection of me
stares back piecemeal.

Then again? This is not my mirror.
My own’s covered up
behind my bedroom door.

I don’t look at it much.
I only see mirrors in
the homes of others.

If a mirror’s accuracy
is changed
by its provenance,

how am I changed
in relation to wherever
I happen to find myself?

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

February 2, 2023

Preacher Song

By Tony Brown

At the crossroads now, moonlight
drenched, soaked in all its storied
charm and hazard.

I’ve stopped here
on my way West
after long years in the East.

I never much thought about getting
proper directions before I left;
simply got up and headed toward

what I thought
would feel like home.
Kept sunset ahead to guide me.

Ending up here seems now
preordained if you can say that
while observing that preacher-ish figure

approaching from the south.
Long way off. Moving faster
than seems possible. Can’t tell

if I know them, if it’s someone
I’ve met in passing, on more
intimate turf, or never before.

The air smells like I’ve been here
before this. As if
someone like myself

had been here decades
or more ago. Old music slips
toward me up the wind:

a song of my fathers, a song
of lost brothers, a song of ruptured love
and sold out family.

How long until midnight?
It’s a mystery. How long have we both
been walking? It’s a mystery too.

I just know I’ve been trying
to put words
to those songs for too long

and to find them here means
I’ve somehow
come home again,

and as I’ve always known home
is not, has never been safe.
But I’m here.

It’s nearly time
to shake hands
with that preacher

and find out what will be
beyond tomorrow’s sunset
when I get there.

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

February 1, 2023

Diamonds And Rust At Three AM

By Tony Brown

At three AM
“Diamonds and Rust”
won’t leave my head
or hands. Sitting in
the far room
on a desk chair
that makes more noise
than an unplugged
Telecaster can.
Fingerpicking
my way through,
not singing as it’s
three AM and
the dog won’t bother
to come in if I
can keep it down.
My love in the next room
won’t be disturbed if I
can keep it down.
I try not to move
so the chair won’t squeak.
I try not to sing
so my eyes don’t leak.
I concentrate
so I do not fail
the near silent notes;
so my hands don’t feel
the pain they do
when I am simply
walking around
through daylight chores:
stiffened; full of rust and
broken nerves while
the sharp diamonds
of my past
are carving me within.

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

January 31, 2023

To Be Treated As A Mockery

By Tony Brown

The seagull
on the parking lot fence:
laughing, angry, or neither;
commenting on your face,
stature, speech; or worse
on none of that; on
something unseen in the air
around you. As if
air around you is the problem;
as if you are the air’s problem.
You feel you’re suddenly
an exposed shipwreck:
treated as a mockery
not a tragedy;
opened to scrutiny
by the scouring
of a storm; the seagull,
laughing over
your once waterlogged bones,
knows more than you want to
acknowledge, is
threatening to tell,
is perching on you,
refusing to leave.