Rick in the Rainbow Lounge

Rick in the Rainbow Lounge
(Conservative Thinking)



Every day he’s there
Like good clockwork.

The equation is

Hard liquor and Coke on the one hand, while
The insulin pump pushes in on the other.

Pure poison and the health of medication
Are equally effective

In making him Not Rick
But a thin, brittle, opposite-of-autonomous object

A receptacle, a host, a tin bucket

A tool for the use of parasitic, living, liquid molecules
A plastic toy with which substances and light and shadows play.

--

He holds the scales outstretched and even.

Real justice is surely the limbo

Between a blind life and a death.

--

Truth is not the American way, and
Whether one thinks it is or not

Depends on the definition.

We get “truth” from the TV
Or sermons, seated next to our selves

Our practically identical family
Friends and FOX

Or we figure truth out
Like any other mathematics

That rainbows are made of water and sunshine

Refracted, and so
Are we.

--

Calculations can be objective, can be a little bit of safety.

Conservative thinkers can watch the most basic facts, the CSI shows, without guilt or anger

While the stoners stare at the pixelated, binary slickness of Showtime.

--

Don’t expect
Much more

Understanding

Than either of those, though. This is entertainment
Not active involvement, not evolution, not

Equality won for
The races, for the sexual differences.

The numbers, the digits in their heads
Won’t, can’t reach

That far.

They are fed with electronics and images
And the illusion of learning. They want to sit still.

--

Stay steady, Rick

On your stool. It was engineered with numerals

To hold your weight.

--

Conserve, hold together, your enthusiasm
Your ideas

Your hope, the length of your

Formulae
The breadth of your service to, but not your coddling kindness to, not your indulgences of, yourself.

It might look right anyway.

You believe that’s what matters.

--

I’m no happier than you are
Or than

Bill O’Reilly is

And
No one

Is angrier
Than I am

But my will is certain, that
Neither my placidity nor my actions will destroy my potential

Or me, or you

Or him, or her
Or us.

--

My flashing yellow pride does not just exist out of nowhere, you know.

It was not a gift, granted by the sky. It was fucking methodically fought for, hard

Like you could be fighting if you wanted to live.

--

Strength is founded, and
Yours could be

Not only upon these drops

Of cold, lazy, pulling, insidious, thick liquid
And too-bright stripes of warm, waking, pretty, shining light

But in a huge, intrinsic power, in a hulking knowledge
That the liquid and the light are the primordial, stackable blocks of life itself

Essentially unchangeable, yet traveling, malleable possibilities of discovery, the
Unequivocal construction of the universe.

Equations, fairness and balance, sense, can be forced into it

Or out of it
By us.

--

It is never only our falling down with gravity or

Our flying up with helium or with petroleum, with rocket fuel, it is

Never only our perceptions, our sensations.

--

The fact that we see, that
We can move, that

We can know the atomic arrangements of

The lights and
The liquids

The poisons
And the medicines

That we can take them
Or leave them

Means

That all of these elements
These parts, these pieces, their

--

Ability

Their potential, yours

To be recombined

--

To take
Or be taken by

Life

To move toward
Or away from

Pride
And strength

Is
The truth.

-- -- -- -- --

You could

Be
Anything.

--

Under that neon with that drink in your hand

Your chances, statistically, your choices, and then, again, your chances

Are

--

Real.





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

Overwrought

Overwrought



Garbo is
Making a movie
Playing a professor
With haughty sex appeal
Lecturing
To the camera
Pointing
A baton
At the ignorant
Audience
Parroting
Lines she's learned, that
She believes are literal
Sensible
Worrisome
Important
Truth

Convictions are
Created

Convictions attract
Circling attendant bodies

Convictions are
Weight

An undeniable mass attracts
Insignificant objects

Gravity

Centers

Attention 

And deciding somewhere
Behind her projecting voice, her
Made-up
Emoting eyes

It's all b.s.

"Not my job,"
Is sinking in on her

The speeches sounding the same
Whether unreal or
Evidentiary

"Don't listen

Don't even
Look

I don't honestly
Know anymore

Don't ask
Don't pay for a

Performance

Don't make me
Want

To say, to show you
My libido
My words
Anything"

It was suggested she
Get into her Bentley
Drive herself away
In the silent night
Stare at all the stars
Where polluting spotlights
Could not
Intrude

Then
At a single one

In mascara
In the rear-view

And see





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

A Part

A Part



An African man
In a U.S. Army coat
Pulls on his cheap cigar
In the trees
In a park
His back to a cemetery wall
Made mostly of mortar
Not so much of stones
In the tepid night
In Tel Aviv

Skyscrapers just to the east, but
So close to the beach
I can feel the sea
Pushing and pulling
The Earth

And he speaks to me
In Arabic or French
Something weary but pleased
Baritone
And romantic

Having just received
The most sincere efforts
Of the insides
Of my mouth.

He looks into the far sky
Perhaps high
Idealistic
An oft-defeated fighter
For some unquestionable kind of freedom
And I say back to him
Stupidly
"American. I speak English."

"Ah," he merely said
Nodding slowly
As if he should have known before

And our hearts
Both sank
Into pity, to
Dull
Dissatisfaction.

In the moment, in the place
In the single time and space
Where coexistence
Was forever manifest, where
All was right here, every
Variation
Compounded and complete
Natural, full
Sharp, pristine, and clouded
Flawless, filthy, fantastical and real

I am only the audience

Forever a witness
Is all.

I will never

Be a part

Of Heaven.





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

Why I’m Hateful Sometimes

Why I’m Hateful Sometimes



Because I’m Bo Diddley or
Robert Johnson or at least
Eric Clapton, but I’m
The only one who knows it and

Because you’re Carol Burnett or
Phyllis Diller or at least
Mo’Nique, but
You don’t mind.

Because I’m
A stationary vagabond
And you’d fall apart
If you pratfell.

Because my heavy lifting
Is behind me, maybe, but
You haven’t finished
Procrastinating:

We were both thrown in the lake, naked and infantile, but
I swam to shore while
Everyone pushes her boat out again
To get you.

Because you’re never unhappy
In my estimation, but
I’m everything and that and always
In yours.

Because everyone sees that
Sometimes I’m creepy, but
Only I know
That you are, too, a zombie friend.

Because I argue with the radio like an old, old man -
I want them to do it right, dammit, and
You just
Never switch it on.

Because you don’t remember
And I can’t forget;
You imagine starshine from the black hole when
It’s just, plain, empty.

Because you’re in the moment, and
I’m in next week, even when the
Visibility
Is zero.

Most of all,
I hate you
Sometimes
Because

You’re at your house,
I’m at mine,
That’s what we decided, and
At the crossroads

I can be both
Satan
And myself;

You’re asleep in your armchair
In your bunny slippers,
Maybe never

Having

Nightmares.





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

Magical Reality in the Carolinas

Magical Reality in the Carolinas



Magical reality
In the Carolinas
Is not
The same as the Southwest.

Hillerman’s is dry, emaciating heat
And the other
Is dank, dripping, growing,
Moldy.

There is not so much dying
In Charleston
As there is always
Illness,

Putrid, rotting, festering, spreading

Suffering.

The central Atlantic coast is not about
Earthly murder and holy spirits
But about resurrection, about
The living dead,

Not about hot, spiraling, rising mirages,
Wafting hallucinations,
But about the commingling
Of hanging white smoke and sharp flames,

Hellish

Blessings.

In the desert

You can see the evil
And the enlightenment

From a mile away.

In the swamp
The things swim
Below the surface,
Bloated from their bites

Of the bodies

And the minds.





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

God Poems #5

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

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

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