A Quiz

1.
Go to where you keep silverware
and pull out all your forks.  Which
was the last one you used
before hearing Michael Brown
had been shot?

2.
How many times
have you washed your sheets
since you first heard the words,
“drone strike?”

3.
True or False:
you have showered
with greater frequency
since September 11, 2001.

4.
a.
How many times
has a single tear
rolled down your cheek
as if in homage to
those icons of your childhood films
who were depicted as
stoic but for that one
brief moment of humanity?
b.
Which eye has served you best
in this regard?
c.
If this has never happened to you,
is it because
you cry such plentiful tears
that there has never been just one?
d.
If this hasn’t happened to you,
is it because you remain
unmoved, even now?

2001 CR-V

grime on my bumper, and so what.
it’s not like it hides a beautiful body.

enough rust and holes
to make next inspection a worry.

enough grunts and clicks and creaks
to make driving anywhere a symphony.

it still runs well enough
to make me mostly unafraid to go anywhere.

it’s got lots of room and red sass to spare.
above all it’s got a banging sound system.

sometimes I joke and say I’m going out
to drive the stereo around my city.

it’s no joke to do it the way I do it, though.
they hear me coming long before they see me.

#4 – Cryptozoology – Tony Brown

On February 6, DMC celebrates its TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Holy mackerel, time flies. It’s been a great year. We’ve published hundreds of pieces this year that we feel proud and honored to share, and we also put out our first book! This week we will be counting down the Top Ten Most Read posts from our second year of existence, and will present #2 and #1 on Saturday, February 6. Thanks for being part of a wild and excellent two years.

So, there's this website where you click to spin a wheel 
and it tells you how to make a life decision 
based on you doing what a unicorn would do
if a unicorn was in the same situation you're facing.
I spun the wheel this morning 
and it said I should 
"whinny and rear." 
Well, I do this all the time so it didn't seem to be a huge stretch. 
I was glad I was not advised to nuzzle a newborn or frolic in a meadow.
I was hoping that I'd be told to impale evil things 
but I confess I'm not really in shape for that.
(Good call, wheel.) 

				

Places To Stand: Thoughts On David Bowie’s Passing

My first college roommate was pure evil.

It was during my first freshman semester that I suffered my first significant breakdown/depressive episode, and he spent a great deal of time encouraging me to kill myself and thin the herd, as I was obviously weak and needed to die. (Not exaggerating. I still recall his thin blond smile and his laughing at my tears.)

He was also obsessed with David Bowie, looked superficially like him, and played his albums constantly.

My first experience of Bowie’s music was, therefore, that it was the soundtrack of betrayal — I knew the guy from high school and thought of him as a friend.

Man, I really hated that music.

My “friend” didn’t come back for the second semester, and I ended up with a single room.

Spring of 78, I discovered that I missed Bowie’s music and started buying the albums; I then got into punk and found a partner in listening to it with a floor mate who later became a bit of a rockstar herself and was also a Bowie fan.

Slowly, I became a fan myself, although not a fan the way some folks are…

Three Poems (#2) – Tony Brown

Praise Song For The End

Praise today for the pancreas 
that’s killing me, for the blood
unbalanced, for the ache
in my right knee that thwarts
me, for the hair that won’t stay
in my head — the individual 
hairs leaping out like rats 
who know the score; 
praise them all for doing 
exactly what they should be doing
in my disrepair; there’s nothing wrong here
that a good old grave won’t cure
and really there’s no other cure
for what drives it all; I can manage
and maintain and stave off and 
fleetingly deny, but in the end 
there is only the End, so praises
for the End, here’s to settling in for it,
here’s to how I am now slowed 
to think and feel differently
as this body slows and shifts;  

Whiteness

I've taken to calling it
"Whiteness," that 

low hum,
that cloud of unknowing.

It just keeps running.
I don't know how to turn it off.

It's caused amnesia 
at a cellular level.

Try to put a finger on Whiteness
and it slides away

like mercury:
liquid, metal, baffling. 

				

Cryptozoology

So, there's this website where you click to spin a wheel 
and it tells you how to make a life decision 
based on you doing what a unicorn would do
if a unicorn was in the same situation you're facing.
I spun the wheel this morning 
and it said I should 
"whinny and rear." 
Well, I do this all the time so it didn't seem to be a huge stretch. 
I was glad I was not advised to nuzzle a newborn or frolic in a meadow.
I was hoping that I'd be told to impale evil things 
but I confess I'm not really in shape for that.
(Good call, wheel.) 

Gunstock

The word “gunstock” 
sends the listener into a maze, 
evoking as it does 
everything
from the anticipation of a fast run 
down the New Hampshire mountain which bears that name, 
powder surging around the tips of your skis,
to the feel of oiled walnut against your shoulder. 

				

THIS PACKING CRATE, ALSO A HOME, CRADLES A VISION

Let me introduce myself: 
cigarette jump pulse back digger,
game pack smoke rider,
riding my warp plane; you can
call me Knife Wheel Gyroscope.
This packing crate, also my home,
cradles my vision
while I'm stretched on
my musical daybed,
on my hard head spin journey,
flash memoried
with past and potential mates,
crystal mythology partners; 
I am a priest of the church
of the hole in the pocket,
an elder of the problematic filth;
to you, of course,
I'm something else: reminder, 
caution, guardian bad faithless stinker,
your nearly forgotten uncle -- 

				

Three Poems – Tony Brown

Healing Is Sometimes A Victimless Crime

It is nothing to the radio
that you have wept 
whenever it played
a certain song,
that this went on for weeks
and the only reason you stopped
is that you were caught weeping
and then sent away to be healed.

It is nothing to the radio
that when you returned
you did not turn it on
for a long time.

The radio is neither
friend nor foe
and has
no feelings for you.
In this way it resembles
the One you call
the cause
of your weeping.

One night
not long after your return,
you reach out and slay your radio
by hurling it against
the impassive wall.

Once enveloped
in silence you want to weep
but hold back, for you can hear 
a certain song
in the silence, 

and crying
would drown it.