Appropriate (For Charlie)

Appropriate
(For Charlie)



You were blamed.
They were wrong.
That was then.

It's time
To begin
Sometimes

To feel
Guilt
Again.

Midsummer Shower

Midsummer Shower



Don't need this plush and bed-buggy couch anymore
It was nice, like
Three hundred bucks
On the curb now

Now it's raining

Now I'm still standing still in the yard
In my jersey gym shorts, is all
Being soaked - sopping - staring
At the quietest and calmest revelation ever

Yeah, move now
To a new place
With nothing
Allow it to wash clean away

Parasitic
Thinking and
Folks and
Ways in which to spend your money

Time

And do not worry, Boy
That the deep thunder is just as judgmental
As your next-door Baptist
Neighbor

You know

Better

That you

Are

Okay.





by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com

Housing

Housing



This computer's default mode
Is inward

What's thinking
Why

Useful? Y N
Connection not made

Data
Intel ligence inside

Dig
Self-contained

Shell

The Eyes in Our Heads

The Eyes in Our Heads



The mirrored sunglasses
Stop everything short

His
Mine

Mine having been
On the road
Alone with me
In motels for a month running

His just half a foot over
The Formica table
In the gas station "country store"
His face forward

Blank
Resting

At a level to quietly communicate
With a dull red ketchup squeezer

An extra inch of
Brown handlebar could
Drag crumbs
Across his biceps

Laid out flat and forward
In front of him
Like one long, thick arm
Hands clasped at the end

As if in thanks

As if.

Our
Eyes, uncovered
Would have
Met

As I head
To the head
But I won't be
Giving any.

Mine
His

Are
Reflective.

Are

Shaded.

Thought Karaoke Lizard

Thought Karaoke Lizard



But I play one
Chamaeleonidae
On TV

You have to understand
Every
Person has to

If you don't get it
I'm doing it wrong, quickly must change it up
Warble more desperately in more octaves

Or drop to gone, unjustifiable
Inexplicable
Scattered off-white paper litter

If you're familiar with celadon
Let me put it out in those terms
I'm sooo familiar with it, too

If that's too easy - you think you know it completely
Or you're a hardcore chlorophobic
I'll tell it in another way - magenta maybe

I stared at the swatches for days without stopping
Each and every single shade
Can produce them with my head

Robert
Fucking
De Niro

Rich
Fucking
Little

From the realistic podium
In the smoky, black-scratched, acryclic, sound-proof booth
Up here, above you

I'll assume
You still
See me

Let me
SHOW
You

Just
Watch
Me

Misunderstand
Mime
Force an education of it on you

In any
Color
That you want

To recall
To request
To

Recognize

-

All vindication
ALL
Depends on

Your

Empathetic

Eyes.





by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com

Sisters

Sisters



The dental hygienist
Picks and scrapes
Lifts and separates
The soft, pliable matter
From the hard
And digs
But it's not personal
It's cold
Like the chemical air in your mask

Her sister is the psychiatrist
The same to your brain

At the restauant table
Their heads turn partially to each another
Their eyes don't need to meet
Their smiles are flat and rigid
Their necks are
Full of ligaments
Taut

Everything
Is as

It should be





by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com

Needing Rain

Needing Rain



Something about this huge expanse
Two-thirds of the way to the bottom
Of Utah
About being
Alone in it
Makes a person want to talk
To God.

The red and pink
Goliathan pointed rocks
Having been thrown from inside the earth
At incorrect angles
The lines of strata drawn so starkly
Unnaturally thrust from the land
Haphazardly, horrifyingly naked

Can cause a man to think too much
To decide too much
For lack of anything else
To do,
To believe too much
To need to somehow
Relate

To a massive, poking outcropping
Of dirt
And fleshy sand
And stones -

A different layer
Is on the surface here
Than in most places.

You can see clearly and too far, how
Some self-justification
Could be a great comfort
How some self-flagellation might make things change
That never seem to change
How a spiritual man
Might have baked out here

A hundred years ago
One summer
How God could come
How beliefs are born of desperation
The need for some kind of knowledge
To make him solid and full
In the void.

Maybe
God really spoke - speaks to people
He really told - tells them secrets
Whispers history that no one else knows
That can’t be translated
For fellow human beings
Things so intimate

Between the Almighty
And the one man
Yet entirely accurate
Real
Astoundingly universal
Certain
In some singular way.

Every man - might be an island

And if he tried to swim
Across the desert, the sky
This infinite
Cornflower-colored sky
To touch its individual
Round puffs of clouds
These same-difference

Separated, bobbing blobs
Of white air and water
If he could try to step
From one to another
He’d only fall to Earth
And be flattened
By his own weight.

These clouds don’t communicate.

They are seen by each other,
Heard by each other, but each
Must maintain its distance.

Each is much more firmly, closely held
To God

Than it is

To the next.





by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com