5.
For a long, long time
Nothing but
That dry dust tone
It only seemed insanity
That you could be there
Moving low in the river bed
You’re a person
Not omnipotent, not even able
People think and speak
In words
And dark, striking, bloody colors
In falsely-remembered Polaroid pictures
So
Individual
Impossible for anyone else
To know
To hear
Opinion
Imagination
Reality
To tell
Talking
From
Truth.
The All-Knowing says Its things
With circumstance
The odd occurrence
When one is
Alone
Watching
Carefully
The slightest sound
A rustle and flow
A cloudburst, a breeze
Sparks
One here
Later
One there
Upon
Request.
I had Him
Or He had me
Hooked
The fish, the Man
Tugging each
At the other
Aware
Related
Undeniably
Because
Human empathy
Did not
Exist
Until
It
Did.
Now the river
Flows full of fishes
Each with a head
And heart
Of its own
And
I can
Hear them all through thick water
I can point at them
Tell them apart
The trout
From the garbage fish
The shiny, the sought-after
From the dull
The fresh-tasting
From the common, the gamey
And not one of them
Anymore
Is God.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Sunday, March 28, 2010
God Poems #4
4.
Sometimes it seems as though
God
Is a slowly moving, steel super-ship
Gliding through thick clouds
Gentle
The gray gospel whale
And we must be
The barnacles
Upon His great
Butt.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Sometimes it seems as though
God
Is a slowly moving, steel super-ship
Gliding through thick clouds
Gentle
The gray gospel whale
And we must be
The barnacles
Upon His great
Butt.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
God Poems #3
3.
Of the sins,
The big ones,
The ones that’ll getcha,
That’ll kill,
One-seventh of them are Godly.
That’s wrath.
Christ killed a fig tree.
It frustrated Him.
He knocked over a table
In a temple
In a tizzy
In His wrath.
Jehovah so loved the world, that
He drowned it all dead
Except for a few folk
And critters and
We’ve been warned:
He’ll do it again.
Watch
Your behavior.
Fear.
If They’re perfect,
Either or Both,
And They act this way,
Raise such a fuss
Over
Us,
Then we must be, too,
Perfect,
Blameless when we’re bitching,
Our animosity all right,
Our drama never to be denounced,
Our fits just and good,
Made
In the image
Of the Hypocrite.
In the undeniable texts
That purport
To know these things,
Wrath seems not at all bad,
Not deadly for its purveyor,
The perfectly acceptable sin of
The Almighty,
Of
You.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Of the sins,
The big ones,
The ones that’ll getcha,
That’ll kill,
One-seventh of them are Godly.
That’s wrath.
Christ killed a fig tree.
It frustrated Him.
He knocked over a table
In a temple
In a tizzy
In His wrath.
Jehovah so loved the world, that
He drowned it all dead
Except for a few folk
And critters and
We’ve been warned:
He’ll do it again.
Watch
Your behavior.
Fear.
If They’re perfect,
Either or Both,
And They act this way,
Raise such a fuss
Over
Us,
Then we must be, too,
Perfect,
Blameless when we’re bitching,
Our animosity all right,
Our drama never to be denounced,
Our fits just and good,
Made
In the image
Of the Hypocrite.
In the undeniable texts
That purport
To know these things,
Wrath seems not at all bad,
Not deadly for its purveyor,
The perfectly acceptable sin of
The Almighty,
Of
You.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
God Poems #2
2.
I want to know
What your thing is.
A man has a yarmulke on his head, and
A woman almost always wears
Her LDS undergarments.
A couple have their direction
And the building where they kneel, in two different rooms,
Facing that way.
A lady has her candle, her cards, and
A man his athame, his lingum, their
Reminders.
My friend said he had nothing, but
He was wrong.
It was in his own head, where he couldn’t see.
Does your maypole remind you?
Does your scarf, or your silence,
That Something is there?
Today I had rain, anticipation,
Carpenter ants and uncertainty,
Peace and fear both,
I had the autonomy, the free will
To remind myself or not to,
To allow myself
To feel or to not
Feel thanks.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
I want to know
What your thing is.
A man has a yarmulke on his head, and
A woman almost always wears
Her LDS undergarments.
A couple have their direction
And the building where they kneel, in two different rooms,
Facing that way.
A lady has her candle, her cards, and
A man his athame, his lingum, their
Reminders.
My friend said he had nothing, but
He was wrong.
It was in his own head, where he couldn’t see.
Does your maypole remind you?
Does your scarf, or your silence,
That Something is there?
Today I had rain, anticipation,
Carpenter ants and uncertainty,
Peace and fear both,
I had the autonomy, the free will
To remind myself or not to,
To allow myself
To feel or to not
Feel thanks.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
God Poems #1
1.
The real first question might be
Like this:
If you,
You, just in passing,
You smile upon a woman
In a burka, in a dark veil,
Black-covered
Will you,
You,
You ever know, certainly,
If she returns a smile?
Then
Will it be wrong of her
Somehow
Or of you,
You,
You to have smiled?
Will it be
More wrong
To have been
Frowned upon, plainly,
To have returned that,
To have that returned,
Undercover,
At you,
To you,
You
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
The real first question might be
Like this:
If you,
You, just in passing,
You smile upon a woman
In a burka, in a dark veil,
Black-covered
Will you,
You,
You ever know, certainly,
If she returns a smile?
Then
Will it be wrong of her
Somehow
Or of you,
You,
You to have smiled?
Will it be
More wrong
To have been
Frowned upon, plainly,
To have returned that,
To have that returned,
Undercover,
At you,
To you,
You
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Credit
Credit
They claim no power, their misfortunes always faults of others, grace only ever granted by the fates. It wouldn't be seen by them as mercy on my part, but as weakness, as simple acceding to inevitable moral defeat and the perpetual balance, the order of things, if I was to make this legal action stop. Even so very obvious an act of doubled generosity would not be met with gratitude by its objects, but with the relaxed expulsion of a pent-up, undeserved self-righteousness, appropriately uncertain for so long and held sickeningly at bay, now released with the relish that one must feel when letting loose expensive hounds on unjustifiable prey, always afterward with the maintenance of a full lack of awareness of the extent to which their self-imposed pain had been prevented for them by me, by the absence of justice.
They’d sneer at me, smile at one another, and gather their purloined goods around them, proclaiming, incredibly, their grand theft to have been based in kindness and equity, never their eyes to see their own greed and unreasoning, forever falsely remembering my gallant permission for them to commit high crime as nothing more chivalrous or personal than due course, than the vast, unquestionable waters seeking their level, nothing more complex than sweet, common Nature balancing her own ledgers by turning their ink into a fine mist, into evaporate, and then again,
by turning it
into
rain.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
They claim no power, their misfortunes always faults of others, grace only ever granted by the fates. It wouldn't be seen by them as mercy on my part, but as weakness, as simple acceding to inevitable moral defeat and the perpetual balance, the order of things, if I was to make this legal action stop. Even so very obvious an act of doubled generosity would not be met with gratitude by its objects, but with the relaxed expulsion of a pent-up, undeserved self-righteousness, appropriately uncertain for so long and held sickeningly at bay, now released with the relish that one must feel when letting loose expensive hounds on unjustifiable prey, always afterward with the maintenance of a full lack of awareness of the extent to which their self-imposed pain had been prevented for them by me, by the absence of justice.
They’d sneer at me, smile at one another, and gather their purloined goods around them, proclaiming, incredibly, their grand theft to have been based in kindness and equity, never their eyes to see their own greed and unreasoning, forever falsely remembering my gallant permission for them to commit high crime as nothing more chivalrous or personal than due course, than the vast, unquestionable waters seeking their level, nothing more complex than sweet, common Nature balancing her own ledgers by turning their ink into a fine mist, into evaporate, and then again,
by turning it
into
rain.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
My Core Belief Was in You
My Core Belief Was in You
You encouraged me
To walk into the ocean
I knew
That I'd come back to shore
Later, still wet, I walked
The Main Street median
In my short, blue swimsuit
Sleeveless T
Flip
Flops
Beer
Blasted
Horns
Blasting
Open
Container
And knew
Exactly
Nothing.
I allowed you to be
My lifeguard
My
Taxi
My bankroll
My backup plan
My designated, my trusted
Friend
My lack
Of responsibility
Of
Worrying
For a
Goddamned second
But
No.
You had just said that
Folk don't give up
Important ideals
After age twenty-five
Or
Something
But now
After being there
And being abandoned
Never having done it
To
You
You
Asleep
In the
Passenger seat
Not even drunk
Just
Without any
Willpower
To remain
Awake
For yourself
Certainly
For
Me
My belief
In humankind
Wavering
Again
It can't be
Relied upon
To ever do
The right thing
I might never again be
A happy spectacle
Might never
Relax
Trust
Or remember
That someone
Can care that much
Because no one can
But me
I will only remember
To wake up tomorrow and
To write this and then
To take another sleeping pill
And to sleep
Again
And if I walk
Anywhere
Into
The ocean
Onto the
Street
I may not be
Safe
You've convinced me
I will always be
Alone.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
You encouraged me
To walk into the ocean
I knew
That I'd come back to shore
Later, still wet, I walked
The Main Street median
In my short, blue swimsuit
Sleeveless T
Flip
Flops
Beer
Blasted
Horns
Blasting
Open
Container
And knew
Exactly
Nothing.
I allowed you to be
My lifeguard
My
Taxi
My bankroll
My backup plan
My designated, my trusted
Friend
My lack
Of responsibility
Of
Worrying
For a
Goddamned second
But
No.
You had just said that
Folk don't give up
Important ideals
After age twenty-five
Or
Something
But now
After being there
And being abandoned
Never having done it
To
You
You
Asleep
In the
Passenger seat
Not even drunk
Just
Without any
Willpower
To remain
Awake
For yourself
Certainly
For
Me
My belief
In humankind
Wavering
Again
It can't be
Relied upon
To ever do
The right thing
I might never again be
A happy spectacle
Might never
Relax
Trust
Or remember
That someone
Can care that much
Because no one can
But me
I will only remember
To wake up tomorrow and
To write this and then
To take another sleeping pill
And to sleep
Again
And if I walk
Anywhere
Into
The ocean
Onto the
Street
I may not be
Safe
You've convinced me
I will always be
Alone.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
I Can, Cory
I Can, Cory
I can love you.
I'm allowed.
I can pretend that I think that
I'm Jesus
Because sometimes
I do, a little, no,
Sometimes
I am.
I can learn to hear voices, and
You can hear mine, and
We can both be confused
About what's imaginary and
When it's not:
Running,
Selling it off,
Selling out,
Someone who's turning,
Never really free
From mistakes,
Past or
Today's,
Ours or
Someone else's, or
Those that belong to no one,
The ones that just exist, just
Are.
I do.
I love your specific,
Your individual perfection,
Your taut, veiny, groaning,
Hungry, resentful body,
The thing that you give me
That's so very close
To honesty
Because
I'm allowed.
For a day
At the very,
Very least,
I can.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
I can love you.
I'm allowed.
I can pretend that I think that
I'm Jesus
Because sometimes
I do, a little, no,
Sometimes
I am.
I can learn to hear voices, and
You can hear mine, and
We can both be confused
About what's imaginary and
When it's not:
Running,
Selling it off,
Selling out,
Someone who's turning,
Never really free
From mistakes,
Past or
Today's,
Ours or
Someone else's, or
Those that belong to no one,
The ones that just exist, just
Are.
I do.
I love your specific,
Your individual perfection,
Your taut, veiny, groaning,
Hungry, resentful body,
The thing that you give me
That's so very close
To honesty
Because
I'm allowed.
For a day
At the very,
Very least,
I can.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Sleep
Sleep
Don't decide what decision to make next.
There's no reason for reasoning.
You shouldn't figure out what's best to figure out.
Tonight, there's no sense in being sensible.
Don't think about the fact that
You sometimes think too much.
You shouldn't plan on doing any planning.
There are no considerations to consider.
Don't worry about whether or not
You should be worried.
Allow yourself to be uncertain.
You're not required
To require anything
Of yourself
Now
Or ever again.
Sleep.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Don't decide what decision to make next.
There's no reason for reasoning.
You shouldn't figure out what's best to figure out.
Tonight, there's no sense in being sensible.
Don't think about the fact that
You sometimes think too much.
You shouldn't plan on doing any planning.
There are no considerations to consider.
Don't worry about whether or not
You should be worried.
Allow yourself to be uncertain.
You're not required
To require anything
Of yourself
Now
Or ever again.
Sleep.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Thursday, March 4, 2010
I See,
I See,
Through the cloudy, bullet-proof glass,
That the thin, small woman
Has a gold stud in her nose.
I fill out the card
And slide it, and thirty-five dollars,
Through the slot.
She seems to stare down at the desk
But watches me like a television
In her third eye.
I wonder how deeply she sees,
The pen in her hand stock-still,
Her mouth open.
I wonder how far her senses can go
Into my thick past,
My problems.
I’m the weirdest thing she’s ever seen
Or maybe just everyday,
Only clearer.
There’s curry smell
And a sensation
Like marijuana.
-
In the room,
One pillowcase
Is gray from greasy heads.
The shower curtain is
A torn nylon tarp, and a nickel-sized hole,
Not a peephole, is in the door.
She gave me
No
Key.
Since I have my good camera,
I strip and I shoot myself
On the carpet.
What else could
Such a place
Be for?
I spend an hour
While she watches me from across the parking lot,
Acne under her chocolate-brown face.
I
Don’t see
Her.
The strength of my awareness,
My picture, my fine tuning,
Makes hers, for that time, even stronger.
A five-dollar bill
Lies
On the discolored pillow.
This is more,
I’m sure,
Than she
Usually
Gets.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
Through the cloudy, bullet-proof glass,
That the thin, small woman
Has a gold stud in her nose.
I fill out the card
And slide it, and thirty-five dollars,
Through the slot.
She seems to stare down at the desk
But watches me like a television
In her third eye.
I wonder how deeply she sees,
The pen in her hand stock-still,
Her mouth open.
I wonder how far her senses can go
Into my thick past,
My problems.
I’m the weirdest thing she’s ever seen
Or maybe just everyday,
Only clearer.
There’s curry smell
And a sensation
Like marijuana.
-
In the room,
One pillowcase
Is gray from greasy heads.
The shower curtain is
A torn nylon tarp, and a nickel-sized hole,
Not a peephole, is in the door.
She gave me
No
Key.
Since I have my good camera,
I strip and I shoot myself
On the carpet.
What else could
Such a place
Be for?
I spend an hour
While she watches me from across the parking lot,
Acne under her chocolate-brown face.
I
Don’t see
Her.
The strength of my awareness,
My picture, my fine tuning,
Makes hers, for that time, even stronger.
A five-dollar bill
Lies
On the discolored pillow.
This is more,
I’m sure,
Than she
Usually
Gets.
by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com
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