Tag Archives: poetry

August 5, 2009

American History

By Tony Brown

Let us now praise
the Cherokee grandmothers
who apparently worked overtime breeding
so that white people I meet
can claim just enough kinship with me
to feel less guilty.

(Or not. Maybe they don’t
feel guilty. Maybe it just makes it
easier to say something to an Indian.)

I am certain
that most of them
believe it’s true; the fact that it’s always
a grandmother and always Cherokee
makes me certain that it almost
never is.

Somewhere out there
in the red backlog of time
somebody started telling their children
and their neighbors and the townsfolk
that the Cherokee princess fell in love
with a stalwart pioneer and crossed
their tribes’ taboos to marry and bear
them, the true fruit of the new continent,
the darlings who capture the Natives’ plight
and hold it up for everyone to see, that touch of dusk
in the skin, that not-so-white
cast in the eyes.

I will not disabuse them of the notion,
they seem to need it.

But over their shoulders
I can see a black woman hiding
from a shadow in the doorway,
and I wonder what these eager people
would have to say to her
if they ever came face to face.

And while we’re on the subject:

When we take a drink, it’s just like you
taking a drink.  Most of our tobacco use
is like your own,

but the sweat lodge? That’s still ours.
You enter as naked tourists,
and leave the same way.

And when you
place a bet…
you know, we really wanna thank you for that…

Long hair and leather look lovely
on some people,
childish on others.

Everyone comes to their own place
eventually, it’s true;
but owning a dreamcatcher

doesn’t mean
you’re entitled
to our dreams.

~~~ Repost of an old piece, in response to Jessica Simpson revealing that she is 1/16 Indian after being called out on using the phrase “Indian Giver”

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August 5, 2009

Short Hearted Hank

By Tony Brown

Short-hearted Hank
broke his ankle last week.

No one in the neighborhood
stopped in to see him
though he laid up on his porch at first
with his big bound leg up on a milk crate
for everyone to see.

There were too many days this past winter
when he’d refused
to move his car to help our snowbound cars
get out of their narrow dugouts
while struggling not to slide into his bumper.
“Ya shouldn’t a parked so damn close,”
he’d bark from his warm window.

Hank’s just inside, almost out of sight right now,
his big-band music blaring
through that same window
while next door the Vietnamese guy’s eldest son
tunes up his Honda, gets that engine roaring
while his girlfriend polishes the shining rims.
When they’re done they’ll drown out Artie Shaw
with hip hop before they take off for parts unknown
as they always do, coming back long after midnight
if at all.

Hank may be the oldest resident here —
sixty-eight years in the same apartment,
says his sister who lives downstairs —
but that respect he insists none of us have for him
hasn’t been earned.  Bastard —

but I saw the Vietnamese guy
and his eldest son
cutting Hank’s hedges this morning
before the street got busy
and all of us could feel ashamed by the gesture.

Short-hearted Hank must have seen it
but I don’t know if he said a word

to the interlopers, the neighbors
who will come and go in their time
like all of us around here do:

the forms must be observed, after all.

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August 4, 2009

The Madman, The Artist, The Discrete Separations

By Tony Brown

Thinking hard
about how best to remove
my memory of my face.

Is there a miracle cream?
A scalpel?  Chip at it
with a mason’s hammer?

No.

Find a camera, preferably
an old Polaroid
and an endless stack of film.

Take shot after shot, from all angles,
of myself,
by myself in an empty room.

Or, if possible,
find someone who loves me
to do it for me —

then ask them to leave.
Hang the pictures up
in neat rows on the blank walls
and study them

until the “self” disappears.
Only see then the bones, the pores,
the tiny blemishes, the leftward bend to the nose.
Drowning in reflection, I’ll soon forget

that this is a “man”
I know, and become lost in the flow
of errors and mistakes, of the ugliness
once so easily subsumed in a glib blur
I have called “my self.”  Thus

compartmentalized,
the wear and tear
will be all I see when I look in the mirror.

Just another batch of ruins in the crowd.
Another answer to my ego:

look, look, at the failure of coherence!
Imagine the freedom that will come
once I see only the pieces
and stop believing I am any one thing.

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August 4, 2009

Apology

By Tony Brown

I close the book now
thinking of pages unmarked
by words, bearing only fingerprints

to be found by others, brushing
dust over the surface,
trying to recreate what happened here.

It has not ever been enough
to write and read.  It was always
the only way I ever had

to try and make a stand
against the storm inside.
The evidence of the life I led

is not in the words:
you will need to see the blank pages
I fingered while thinking

of what I should have said
versus what I did say.
That’s where the truth sits.

I lied more than I wanted to.
I said the wrong things the right way.
I did as little as I could to survive.

To learn me
learn this: the work
was all a cloud of red.

The blue behind the cloud
was where I lived.  I close the book now
after sunset and sit back

praying that someone will see
the black dust on my oily traces and say:
here, here he was, and he was so much less than we knew.

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August 3, 2009

At The Party Before The Crash

By Tony Brown

people talked about

health care
the zombie apocalypse
the difference between Irish whiskey
and Scotch whisky

someone drunk dialed a friend
to tell her she had a great ass

a monkey was mentioned

two guys expressed admiration
for the closeness they shared
one time in a rainstorm
no physical contact happened, y’know
but they understood each other
as co-combatants in a struggle

great wings beating
against the kitchen window
went virtually unnoticed for a time

but eventually someone asked

who heard that?

is that an angel or a bat?
or perhaps a flying monkey?

someone cued up
the Wizard of Oz
to try and settle the argument

then it was back to the zombies
and their dead eyes
someone said they’d starve here
everyone laughed

leaving the question of what was hovering
above the house
unanswered

till the next morning
the shocked phone calls
the denial
the newspaper article
the radio report
the burst heads cradled
in unbelieving hands

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August 2, 2009

fragment: room at night

By Tony Brown

in a darkened room
the landscape of familiar things
shifts:
skyline of bottles, antenna
of the router, snowglobes
(ironic in the light now taking on
luminescence of eyes staring back)

the room full of the day’s voices
captured in these shadows

so little was said
so little to be heard

abandoned city
more real than daylight allows

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July 30, 2009

Detour

By Tony Brown

Avoiding the traffic ahead
I turned down a road
I knew I’d traveled before

and soon recognized landmarks
and even individual trees,
was able to anticipate curves

and frost heaves, knew I’d chosen
a direction that would lead me
to where I was originally going.

All that said, I was still unsure
of exactly where I would come out
and was thus amazed when I found myself

facing a crossroad I had left
fifteen minutes before I deviated
from my appointed path to try this route —

and so I began again, resolving never again
to make another unexpected choice in response
to traffic jams, accidents, road work, or delays.

It did not matter what I had learned
on the path through the detour,
I told myself.  It does not matter what we learn

on a journey if it takes us back to the beginning.
Progress is measured in efficiency and time saved,
I tell myself as I fume in the car

in the sunlight,
in the summer,
with the radio playing a once-forgotten song I love.

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July 29, 2009

How Sondra Dies

By Tony Brown

Sondra, you don’t know it
but you’re now officially dead.
You could have avoided it, but now
it’s too late.  You just ate the egg

containing the specific cholesterol
that will break free from an artery,
block your heart and kill you
a couple of years from now.

None of us avoids the end, and none of us
really knows which of our many decisions
get us there long before the moment itself.
Even the gun toters, the leapers, the razor children

get there long before they choose their weapons
for the duel they are going to lose.  It’s the way
of things: every choice a final choice, no matter
what we actually choose.

Whether your Eventual Stairway
leads up or down,
you’re on the approach now, Sondra,
walking briskly toward a handrail not yet in sight.

Don’t strain yourself, not that it matters really,
certain consequences are certain now
and while you don’t know exactly
when they’ll be felt, they will be, and it won’t be good,

Sondra, it won’t be good…but lucky for you,
you don’t have a clue.  You can’t hear me.
I can only watch tenderly and never let on.  If you knew,
you would call it cruel. Imagine how I feel before you judge…

but that’s unimportant.  Anyway, I will one day let you know
that it wasn’t all for naught…see,
earlier today,
when you sang “Hotel California”

in the shower for the third-to-the-last time? 
Next time, I promise you’ll be in tune.  And the time after that,
you’ll be even better.  And when you sing it
for the last time I will make you feel better

than you ever have felt.  You’ll step out wet
and reach for the towel.
You’ll dry yourself off
and turn toward the sun-filled window.

What happens after that, I cannot say. 

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July 29, 2009

Life Of The Party

By Tony Brown

This party’s a bore.

Slink away unnoticed.
That’s the plan.

Sneak away from the bonfire
past groping lovers,
across slimy rocks
toward your car.

You slip.
Rings of ripples spread out
from where you fall in.

Everyone’s running,
pointing and laughing.
No one tries to help
as you duck below. 

For the last time
you lament
that all the good stuff happens
after you split.  You drown
thinking you should have done this
long ago.  No one will ever forget it.

You’re a star at last. 

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July 25, 2009

On Your Skin, It Shines

By Tony Brown


— for Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley

It’s an oil,
a white oil,
that gets on everything.
It clumps in dark corners
where if you put a light on it
it’s obvious
but
spread it around enough
and it becomes invisible,
almost intangible
until you try to grip something.

If you’re born coated with it
you forget it’s there.
They — the ones who came before
and know the stuff —
teach you how
to work it, how to make it your friend,
how to hold things.
You don’t even remember it’s there
once you get the knack. 

It’s no wonder
that you’re insulted when someone
calls you “slick” as they try to seize you
and make you see how on your skin,
it shines so evenly and on theirs,
it’s a pattern of smears and blotches.
No wonder that when you try to touch
those exposed patches,
it comes between you. 

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—

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July 20, 2009

The Desert Island Question

By Tony Brown

I’d take no vocals with me
to the desert island
and no music of the moment:

just water sounds looped endlessly,
birdcalls,
heartbeats recorded at various times —
in utero,
at moments of stress and serenity,
on the occasion of slowing down and ceasing at death.

And movies?  Why bother?
With all that sky above and
a global ocean before me,
I might learn something at last.

As for books:
well, there’s one cliche
that makes sense: I’d bring
ten thick blank books —
but just one ultra-fine point pen.
The ink might run out
long before the pages did,

or perhaps not. Perhaps
I could devote the time
to conservation: placing one
small, perfectly printed word
in the center of each creamy leaf.

When they come for my bones
they will puzzle over them —
why they are the words they are,
why the last word of all
on the final page of the book
is “saved.”

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July 19, 2009

Half-Breed/Half-Awake

By Tony Brown

A lovely
and gently dotty man
with long hair and longer memory
is trying to break into my house
to steal my money
or to maybe to burn sweetgrass at my feet
while I am sleeping.

I’ve got
a Louisville Slugger
behind the door,
a Bowie knife
in the nightstand drawer.

I hear him trying the locks
and murmuring to himself.
It’s not a language I understand
but I recognize it, something I hear
every time
I go around pontificating
on my nature
versus my nurture.

One move,
and I can pull that knife.
Two steps,
and I can have
that bat in my hand.
Two more and I can be
waiting behind the cabinet
where he won’t see me
as he enters,

but I’m still lying here
with choices hovering above me.

I can easily snatch the right one
out of the dawn
at any time.

There’s still time to choose.

I’ll give it another few seconds
and then I’ll decide…

oh, hell:

Grandfather or Stranger,
please come in, I’ve got coffee
and tobacco.  I don’t need to be
a warrior of any kind
right now.  The morning smells
too good to care this much
about which one you are.

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July 16, 2009

Everything Is Being Repaved

By Tony Brown

— for Gary

Everything is being repaved.
There’s no easy way to get anywhere.
They promise it will be easier when it is all done.
They promise a smoother ride.

While you’re waiting, your hair will grow back.
You’ll take a lot of bubble baths.
Apples will bloom, lose face, harden into fruit.
Countries will go through changes.
Jobs will be lost and found and cursed and ignored.
Traffic will wax and wane like a moon full of cars.
You’ll spend more time at home.
Music will be eagerly sought and soon forgotten.
The radio will explode from the weight it is holding one Sunday morning.
You will neglect the clean up in favor of painting with the splatter.
You will throw a party so everyone can help.
Everyone will figure out a way to attend in spite of the repaving.
It will be loud and go on into the night.
The police will be called.
The party animals will scatter.
The cops will knock on your door and ask if you saw
where everyone went.

You will cross your fingers
and say yes
but because everything is being repaved
the roads are shut down
and it’s pointless to chase them.
Besides,
you could not be disloyal to the road crew
who have worked so hard
to ensure that no one gets through.

They will shake their heads and let you off with a warning.
You’ll go back to touching up your walls.

Everything is being repaved.
There’s no easy way to get anywhere
until you make one. 

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July 15, 2009

Two Bluebirds

By Tony Brown

Two bluebirds,
male and female, settled next to me
on the walkway rail of my father’s house
tonight, just before sunset.

These were the first bluebirds I’d seen
since I was young and looked for them
in every open pasture, never seeing them, thinking them
elusive and rare.  Now, here they were

perched beside me, regarding me calmly.
If this had happened back when I lived here,
when I hated it here, when I cared so much
about finding them, I might have called it a sign,

and where would I be now?

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July 15, 2009

Dream A Little Dream Of Me

By Tony Brown

The car veers left,
hits the curb, ascends,
arcs down heavily into mud.

I sway out from the wreck
across the small street
into a gold house. (The car
is also golden, from the heyday
of muscle cars, once blocky-build solid, now
a folded mess behind me.)

There’s an engagement party going on —

and I am incoherent, my speech
broken into honest chunks
that do not connect to each other
once they’re out of my mouth.

Solicitous at first, the staid white people
soon shuffle me outside and sit me down
outside on the step. 

Suddenly, the police
are all around.
They want to know my name,
look at my license,
call me a liar.

I try to explain — look at the car!
Look at how messed up it is, look at
my sloppy feet, my speech full of holes,
how hard this all is for me.  Can’t you see
the wreckage?  I’m not myself, no wonder
you don’t believe me.  Call a doctor, an ambulance,
I have to get home…

The bride to be watching
from her fiance’s arms
is shaking
more than I am.  The whole family
is frowning, uncertain, terrorized.

All the cops want to know
is why there’s a knife in my pocket.
What am I doing here?  Why so far
from home?  What’s my intent?

No one’s shut the music off, and the soundtrack
for all of this is Mama Cass crooning
as I slowly move from anger to fear
in time with my clearing head…I don’t know
the answers, why I was driving so fast
in such a torrential rain, why this road,
how I know these people I’ve never seen before…

they’re twisting my arm as they lift me
from the step…

And I am awake.  In my own bed,
my name in my billfold beside me on the table.
I look at it to be sure.

I get up, go to the couch.
I’ll make coffee a few minutes from now
and then get ready for work,
once I figure out

why there is always a knife in my pocket,
who these people around me are,
what I am doing so far from home
and why I drove so fast to get here
to a place I do not recognize
only to end up wrecked
in a cold and steady rain.

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