Honest

Honest

I imagine you, alone in my house

For a day, without binding you to a promise

Not to search through angles and nooks, and

Other concrete memories filed away in haphazard places.

I imagine coming home to you

A pile of my past on the kitchen table

As you hold up each item and wordlessly

Ask me for a more explained honesty.

You ask of letters old and grey

Bound with a soft cord and a gentle knot.

You ask of pictures of me with her

And others implied by time and space.

You ask of official documents of a younger man,

Those things held for required years and more

In powered fear and presence--

Those years that ground the wild from me.

You stop me, you hold me

Comforted that all I am is now in you.

We read in quiet and look up at times

To bind with sight the closeness.

And as I fall asleep at night,

With your head on my chest and an arm around you,

I think of that kitchen table and recall the other

Unremembered thing from the dimness of my shadow.

In the darkness of a corner behind the basement stairs,

Crouches a pale and toothless unlit face

Seen only by an indirect gaze off the shine of a window

A bastard of a lonely thing sits, waiting for the dawn to come.

You have taken from me all my honesty,

And nothing of worth from the rest of me…

Mike Brady

December 2004/2008/2010

Low Sparked Tone

Tone

Shaken words that paint as sound on fire

A willful brush, shaped by lips and tongue.

You pause to listen to an echoed something

Still seeking in the rushing of the noise

To see the scree of tones shorn rough and ugly

To count the colored parts and name each one.

As the rush of anger starts to fold around you

Its plastic rubber blowback burns your ears

Those ears that pin against the rail in waiting

Are still waiting there to lose the pain in time.

And time is only there to be remembered

And remembering is the pain you want the least.

Fear and faith can hold a shape forever

Till twisted by the arms of no one cares

And you sit alone and blind in pounded rubble

Seeking only more of dimness from the gloom.

Mike Brady 2010

A New York Poem

A New York Poem

I see the fad is putting something

Here

To move the eyes and function as a

Pause

Though I wonder if the concepts kind of

Queer,

And I fear I’ll start to do it just

Because.

It’s not enough to pause with just a

Stop

You have to break the line a bit in

Show

So no loose crap is gumming up the

Thought,

It's all to wrap the view of words in

Gauze.

Mike

         Brady

2010

The Edge

The Edge


At night on longish sweeps of coastal road,
As fog and dampness coat the graveled path
And ocean winds caress the broken shore
In summer mists that wash the evening clean.

The engine roar ablates an icy steam
As man and bike now drift to catch an edge
The drop-off deep, its concrete railings worn
The centerline now vague and mostly gone
The engine redlines, clutching up a gear,
As silence screams the loss of grip beneath.

On meaty beast of iron polished bright
Soft helmet flapping loose against the wind
Hunched in flex to seat him for the slide
His fears a focused symmetry of time
As hours tick the seconds yet to ride.

With speed, the secret gift that god allows --
It bites in chattered twisting as it pulls,
And hops, and jerks, and burns the ground in touch --
As wheels begin to catch the angered thrust.

It snaps upright and scatters broken rock
And leaves the point of an edged razor cut.

As he rolls his chair through stagnant kitchen heat
The wordy bastard stops and lifts his gun
To turn the engine's key to off he shoots
And picks the spot he slides from road to death.

The edge a place we seek to measure self,
To seize the flame in dance before it’s out
The way to fight the coming of our end
The way we carve our names among the dead.

Mike Brady 2005/2010

There is No Plural for Pajama

There is No Plural for Pajama

Your pajamas want you back,

They miss you, (not in words,

They are not capable of speech.)

As they fold under your pillow,

Poking out; an inanimate lament.

I think...

Your shampoo is starting to leak

Thickly teared bubbles…

And your soap!

Don’t get me started on your soap!

I don't think your soap will make it.

Your coffee is getting cold

And I don't think that cream was a good idea

I already see a milky film

And it may go the way of the soap,

Maybe even sooner.

When you get back, it might just be me

Waiting with arms open

Holding a cold pajama

For you to warm.

Mike Brady 2005/10

                                

                                    

The Cow

The Cow

My broad back bent

From years of carrying

The type of weight

Fat people take for granted.

Strong as an ox

Bones compressed

Teeth ground to stubs

Acres to go before I sleep.

Dependable, steady

Rocky constant.

I live without understanding

How substantial I am.

Moving with a slow lumber,

Mincing in careful step,

I pause the methodical of my life

To ruminate.

Things change

And the sun rises.

I do what’s in front of me to do

Until they eat me.

                                    Mike Brady

                                    December 2004

Things Said

Things said

When I was young, my father said:

That words come with the craft

That poetry was metalwork,

A shaping and

A learned trade

That time gave skill to the hand.

He told me

To look for metal on the ground as I walked

To stop at fire sales

And flea markets

For the undervalued.

To see the

Done in the undone

To force a fit if needed

To take dominion

And make over

In my image.

To make the should

From what would.

When my father was old, he said:

That words could only be found and uncovered

And lightly polished.

That the finding was the craft

And a different strength was needed to see.

That truly skilled hands

Were only to let go with.

That words look best

In the places where you found them.

Mike Brady 2005

Then and Again, the dance mix

Then and Again

I’ve been out where the big ships float,

Both the container and the car.

I’ve met men at spots not marked on maps

On cold nights without clouds to cover.

I’ve sailed without the safety of an engine

In a quarter moon of light.

Helm steadied by a simple compass,

No promise of mercy

If found by the storm.

From this, I have borne away treasure and feasted.

I've seen the green flash off the still of the sea.

I've bled on stained carpet in the dark of a morning

And still looked for more in a fire of need.

And even dead of desire,

I still ask for more --  

To come back as an image

On the face of a stone.

There is the true and the false in everything,

All is measured by the weight of your bones.

Mike Brady 2010

Then and Again

I’ve been out to where the big ships float -- both the container and the car. I’ve met men at spots not marked on maps, on cold nights without clouds to cover. I’ve sailed without the safety of an engine and without shipboard lights to guide me. And I traveled by a simple compass, without the promise of mercy if found by the storm.

From this, I have borne away treasure and feasted. I've seen the green flash off the still of the sea. I've bled on stained carpet in the dark of a morning and still looked for more in a fire of need.

And even dead of desire, I'd still ask for more --  To come back as an image, on the face of a stone.

So don’t ask if I know it, or question my sense. I’ve been there and back, with the fear in my body, both imagined and arranged. In this I’ve lost more than most'ed choose to chance, and I did not dream it.

No, I did not, it was what it is – and I’m still here for the telling; for the telling to you of the things I have seen. 

When you touch what you seek at the end of your travels, it’s the ocean you'll choose to accept your release. Either by grace or by pity -- nothing cheapened or damaged will  touch you again or try change where you stand.

There will remain the true and the false in everything, but you will now know the difference by the weight of your bones.

Mike Brady 2010

Its

Its

In cold and heat waits the breaking point,

Just ask the butterfly

As it winters in Mexico

Surrounded by adoring paparazzi,

All taking cuts from its paper-thin beauty.

Or the fly, in its many forms:

The shit, the dead,

And the little ones,

That circle and square,

The centers of wintered rooms.

But save pity for the summer moth

Finding, as it springs from its casing

It will leave most of its beauty behind,

In the softness and warmth of a dying husk,

And worse, the ugly that's left of it,

Goes on only to kiss a flame.

Mike Brady 2010

The Poet Test

How to become a poet

Answer these questions:

1. What are the four standard feet in an English prosody?
2. What is an implied metaphor? Give two examples, don't be specific.
3. What is the best rhyme for orange? (Hint – it’s not door hinge.)
4. Why was Robert Frost so grouchy?
5. What is the best time of day to rummage through Arby’s for old sandwiches?
6. What kind of line is it when you, and this must be exact; combine a dactyl and a trochee – in that order?
7. Why is an English sonnet easier to write for a white person than an Italian sonnet?
8. Why did your mother dress you up as a girl until you were in grade school, and then, as a boy?
9. How long does it take, on average, for people to wean themselves off Paxil without crying?
10. In what way is the word scuttle not like a crab?

That’s almost it!

Please send your correct answers to me, as well as three examples of your best work, (along with a check or money order for twenty dollars (American) for my administrative costs.)

Congratulations!

(After your check clears, you will receive a license to practice Poetry that is valid in all States, and most Countries.)

IF

If I were born to be an astronaut and offered the moon, I’d take it. At the end my days, I’d spend summers in a slow madness, getting lost in all the rust and the reclaimed jungle of the cape, trying to bring the moon back to me with remembered chants.

If I had carried the bags of Ponce De Leon, I would have urged him to turn away at Tampa, after the noise of thunder and the rush of rain, but before the storm arrived. I would tremble at the calmness of his dream and the lack of one in mine.

If I found the face of god neglected in a burnt ruin, I would rub the ash from its eyes for luck, then leave it unburied, for others to see or not. I would not look down for footprints to follow, but only remind myself, softly, to walk into the wind.


Mike Brady 2010

On the Naming of a Child

On the Naming of a Child

(Poem under reconstruction -- the bones that hold it together came bent from the factory.) 

Still, Some Kind of Fierce

Acting must be hard

Porn stars can’t do it 

And they seem perfect.

In this, the age of Steven Jobs,

I’m saddled with a vision

From a thought, imagined in a dreamtime:

“Like a needle’s eye

The bar's set low,

But narrow.”

Mike Brady 2010

"The Pitcher" by Robert Francis

With the baseball season coming up I think it's time to have a poem that's really dedicated to the art of the whole thing. In my baseball dreams, I am always a left handed relief pitcher, waiting patiently in the wings of the ballpark for my big chance.

I'm not left handed, and can't pitch -- but I really love the baseball that plays in my head when the weather gets warm and the bat's crack.



 "The Pitcher" by Robert Francis

His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.

The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.

Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

More On Writing

"I don't know if your dead or not, if you're anyone." Broken Bells

I need to develop a theory of punctuation and the will to stick with it when faced with doubts.

Since I believe people hear what they hear, and that this hearing is independent of what I say, I’ve always thought that punctuation should be thought of as more a guideline than a rule.


Writing should leave you with an image, not words. It should allow for that image to be seen by others as their own, sounded out by their own understanding, in their own way. It needs to have the strength of flex and the ability to surrender itself to other visions. It should crowd itself in and snuggle up comfortably, then clean like gasoline until it burns, leaving an after image like the dead of Hiroshima left on sidewalks.

I write exactly what I see – you see exactly what you bring to the table to look with. I write a specific, in the way that makes sense and order for my world as a way of structuring my senses. You take what I say, filter it with what you think, then summarize my specific with your own, for good or evil, as you are.

In school they teach this – how to find the meaning of a thing – and all the things mean different things to each and  all the people. I write apple, thinking green and made for cooking. You see red, and crunch the sweetness in almost taste. That’s not what I meant at all – not at all.

I see that a comma gives pause, and breaks the speech and cadence. What I meant was a beat and a half – more reflective and deliberate. There is no mark for that and no way of knowing unless you are me – or unless you get it like an obscure art piece left dangling for generations covered in dust and discovered by a special you, alone in wonder at a lost thing now found.

Many things are not great until people say they are great, and then they are, but really, they always were – time meant nothing, but timing was everything. Doing things the way they are and not the way you see them gets you nothing in any length of run that matters. A theory of dots and dashes has to found that works for the way you see it, otherwise, what's the point of saying anything?

When I use a semicolon instead of a period, it’s because I don’t want to interrupt a flow of related ideas by making two sentences from one. It might be because I’m lazy, it might be a comma in disguise, or it might just be an affect I want to lay on the reader. My motivations are never clean with this – and I would really prefer to leave it all more open and imprecise by slapping a dash in place and moving on. You the reader have to guess, but it’s an educated guess that allows for freedom of thought that the structure of a semicolon doesn’t.

In poetry it’s a challenge. Because there is an almost pathological attention to each word and how they flow in a herd, (or pride?) the stop and start and emphasis needs to be almost mathematical… I think.

But it’s the image the words leave without the exact meaning of words interfering that makes the poem. It’s the singsong, dancing meter that makes you remember, not the math. The words mean what they mean – to both you and to your knowledge of me.

I think that I need enough of a theory to be consistent. Enough to show I know the rules and I am not ignorant or ill cultured – that I know that the extra fork of language is used for the salad, not the meat.

Why We Fight

For my own protection I've cultivated a vague fuzziness in my manner and style. This cloud of indeterminacy makes it hard for others to get a good clean shot at me -- my version  of a quantum rope a dope. When I write I stand in sharp relief, and trust my punch will overcome a tendency to lead with a weak chin.

I say that I write for myself. When I finish something, the glory of it’s something that makes a part of me vibrate. When asked by others what makes me happy, the only thing that comes to mind is writing.

I fight writing. Because it seems predetermined and inevitable that I write, I rage against it. When I finish something and know it’s good, I wonder where it came from – what beast inside me used me. In daylight I don’t see anything that makes me capable of what I see written in front of me.

And I know that some of what I write is good – especially the poetry.  When I focus on the words – their order, sound and place, I seem capable of nailing what’s in my head to the door of art.

It’s a strange kind of vision that I’ve always had in me. The stuff I want to say with words has always been internally consistent, even though I wasn’t. What I see in my head as a theme of who I am and what I’m supposed to do is ice cold clear. When I hit it, I know, when I miss, I know that too.

What I mean when I say that I write for myself is not that I don’t think other people will understand of see my vision, but that the vision is for me alone. Even if no other person sees the things I write, I know they have to be born. They are like my kids – belonging to god in the sense of source, but gifted to me for cheap thrills and responsibility.

I worked on a sonnet yesterday. I woke up at dawn and worked until well after dark. 14 lines, 10 syllables in each line. The work was intense, full of pacing and the active staring at walls. The sonnet is not yet perfect, but it’s good and needed to be. Only I could have written it. That’s why I write.

Sonnet II

This is more structured than usual for me. Hint -- the turn is in the rime. Purists may note the rhyme scheme does not follow Spencer, but since I live in California I'm special. Mike (a-a,b-b v. a-b,a-b)

Her singing voice was lush, yet spare and haunting,

Though talk of Jesus left me strangely wanting

A crutch is fine, but few enjoy the crippled

And yet she speaks of life as very simple.
Her raft of  faith  tied safely to the shore

From a bride of Christ the art expects much more.

Her wish to find with song life everlasting

In haunted gods and other things pre-casted

From simple clay  transformed by other hands 

In crippling haste to show god's law to man.

Go step from shore and leave the sure of light

Forget the more of god and face your life.

To take and seize the power that’s inside you;

To dance upon the dust that will become you.

Mike Brady 2010

Show or Tell

As a rule, it's best to show not tell.

But I don’t paint with air and light,

It’s not my medium,
Nor does it play to any strength.

I want to hammer one word at a time,

Pound the truth in every different way,

Like weighted splinters cleaved from acrid smoke.

And when it’s over, and the sharp and heavy

Lay on you like the bricks of life and death,

I want you to see the grain of each rock,

And the age and the violence it came from.

So no.

I don’t want to show you puppies abused by the mill

Or the horror of children at play with sticks.

I want you slowly buried neck deep in sand,

Knowing in your heart the tables of the tide.

Mike Brady 2010

Critical Thinking in a Poet

I have had a bunch on off centered compliments in my life, most of them I’ve assumed to be positive. In moments of clarity I think that maybe some of these compliments are just requests to change from people that care about me.

I left some of my poems with a Poet I respect (Dan Langton) back in 2005. Dan read my poems, made comments on most of them with suggestions and warnings. He also sent me a personal letter, a piece of it in the following quote:

“Everyone trusts one sense above the others. In 80% of us (and thus poets) it is sight. But there is the other 20%. In Keats it is touch. In you it is smell. Be aware of that.”

I read the letter and the suggestions and put the bunch of it away. I don’t think I thought about it at the time, but after discovering the letter in a recent move, have had it sitting on my table, taunting me, for the last week.

Years of smoking, snorting and cleaning poop off dirty people in hospitals seemed to have dulled my sense of smell. Was it possible that in me this sense was so strong that I had subconsciously found ways to diminish it so that I could live among regular people?

That seemed kind of stupid.

Was my talent being ghettoized? Was I being put into the poetry world’s sub-basement next to the tasters? Was his last line to me, “Be aware of that,” a warning? Was I being damned with faint praise?

Even if true, especially if true – these thoughts seemed too paranoid to believe, but something to keep in mind for later, when alone…

Did I confuse him with too many smelly words in my poetry? Did the sprinkle of scents and flavor throw him off his game? I noted that I did use vanilla more than once, but I was in love and if that doesn’t excuse things I plead guilty. This seemed a small thing for a poet to note – more of a mathematics kind of observation.

There is certain fuzziness about the sense of smell. It’s the bad boy of the senses. Other than sight, it’s the only sense that’s hardwired to the brain. Instead of the eyeballs Ethernet like cord that plunges directly, smell works by stuff hitting a bone plate with holes poked in it. It's low tech, like a can with nail holes and dirt clods getting kick down a street, puffing out smoke. When smelling, the brain gets direct information much like a cheese grater get a pile of cheese underneath it. It’s the only sense that gets rubbed into the brain.

Now I may just be guilding the Lily on this, but I think this is what he was trying to tell me. Or, I could just call him and ask.