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

Fuck You

Fuck You



You cannot understand
This leather jacket
And me.

I don’t care
If you want
Or don’t want to

Try.

I can’t even ride a bicycle.
This jacket, embroidered heavily in orange on the back, on the silver pin on the lapel
Says “Harley Davidson.”

This jacket is ancient.
The guy who wore it
Has got to be

Dead.

No one
No matter how desperate for drugs or drink
Would sell this beautiful, wonderful thing.

It squeaks quietly when I move, muted.
It is softer than any human’s skin.
It sleeps on me, so lightly

Like a lover, like a tiny coddled baby, like my own pre-birth placenta, like God.

It has gray veins
In its darkness.
Its zippers have been repaired.

Someone cared about
This thing.
It was

Him.

The man at the shop saw it on me
And knew, just as much as I did
That it was mine now.

He sold it to me
For nothing
Almost, I swear.

He smiled and told me to wear it in good health.

I don’t know who he was,
Who wore this skin.
He might have been insane.

He might have been bad
Or good
Or just

Trying

Just
Like
I‘m trying

Right now
Not to
Cry.

He might have had AIDS

Or killed himself with
Heroin or
Jack Daniels.

I’m taking over for him.
I’ll do the living now.
I will work this part.

The jacket will take the weather that still is falling.

If, when I step out of my goddamn pretty Prius,
A fucking “real” biker wants to look at me
EVER

With disdain, with a sneer,
As if I am a poseur,
As if I do not wear this shit with the utmost honesty,

That asshole

Can go directly
To fucking

Hell.

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

Avoidable Inevitabilities

Avoidable Inevitabilities



It’s not just that she’s Asian -
Her eyes try to reach forward
Through the thin glass in the
Mod rectangular frames
That her mother just bought her -
She must have practically begged
For them, repeatedly explained
That she could not read the numbers
On the small, bleached paper credit card slips
Printed by the twenty-dollar

Machine behind this counter

In this horrible thirty-room motel
Four stories without air conditioning
But it’s Denver, so I guess a man
Isn’t supposed to need it, I should open
The window like the curly gray-bearded

Angry, weathered alcoholic next door

And the young woman apologies profusely
Genuinely hurt by my dissatisfaction
Her squinting eyes are not cast down
But looking right at me, almost confused
Frowning a small, mortified frown
Insisting sincerely that it isn’t her fault that
There’s a bar with a loud live band
Right under my room every night
And that I can’t sleep
I know I won’t get back

The two-hundred dollars for this week

In that scratched tile
Open-air lobby
I realize
That she doesn’t have to strain
To be pretty

Although she can’t see herself

When she takes her
Hair down and
Her glasses off
And frowns
At night

Her accent is not very thick
She should be in college
But she’d
Have a difficult time
Convincing

Her mother

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

Capture (Road Poem #6)

Capture (Road Poem #6)



Does my photo steal the soul
From the black cherry dirt, as well

I can only see it
Hear the creek

By quickly stomping
On the brakes

Whipping out the camera and
Back into the long and winding road

-

I don't even remember Muir Woods anymore
Or my sister, almost at all

Only arguments with my ex
Me stomping away

Spoiled
All of us

Leeching
Any moisture from this land

Using it, turning it
With our focus, our attention

Into
Piss

-

I worried
I shouldn't stop to look and shoot at all

No idea how far I was
From a real road

Heatstroke or dehydration
Sunburn, run out of gas

Woman somewhere asked me
What I wanted to remember so badly

Around a bend two trees
Taller one's

Matriarchal
Green puffy arms

Hovering above
The other

I said,
"Something

Other than

That."

And suddenly
There was

The interstate
Crank up the radio

Sensation

I don’t

Remember





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

Road Poem #3

Road Poem #3



Reading the first things in ages
Made them Kerouac because I hadn't
And noticing the lamps, then
In the hotel room
Almost remembering marijuana again
It's memory so long embedded
And books and a cat, two now here, as well
Not matching lights but borne of the same elements
Burnished silver color and black and cream and one lucite
And realizing
You could see all the way
To the person who put this lamp together
With his hands
And the bedspread
I can't but
I'd bet you could


5-30-10





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