Anna Brown: Favorites

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Charles Bukowski

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Cows In Art Class

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Charles Bukowski

Cows In Art Class

good weather
is like
good women-
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
***
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated.
I am drinking tonight in Spangler's Bar
and I remember the cows
I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything
in here. I am drinking in Spangler's Bar
wondering which to love and which
to hate, but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only
myself-
they stand outside me
like an orange dropped from the table
and rolling away; it's what I've got to
decide:
**** myself or
love myself?
which is the treason?
where's the information
coming from?
books...like broken glass:
I wouldn't wipe my *** with 'em
yet, it's getting
darker, see?
(we drink here and speak to
each other and
seem knowing.)
buy the cow with the biggest
****
buy the cow with the biggest
****.
present arms.
the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar
like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand
stops it, lifts it,
golden **** of dull temptation,
I drink and
stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready
to stroke up
the green grass straw eye
sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot
fast
to give me the guts and the love to
go
on.
from "poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window" - 1966

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

The Icecream People

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Charles Bukowski

The Icecream People

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

I Met A Genius

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Charles Bukowski

I Met A Genius

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Raw With Love

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Charles Bukowski

Raw With Love

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

morning epiphanies

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Lappel du vide

morning epiphanies

you know what i will not do?
i will never, ever pity myself again.

what is there to pity?
i have everything i need;
i have a golden body filled with fulfilled actions,
and nights to live through
to rest my tired head on
some grassy hill when darkness is fading
and know that i have lived another day
and i will live so much more.

i will
take a deep breath,
tilt my chin,
and hold myself with this strength
pirouetting within me.
and i'll feel every one of my emotions like
they are
the early dawn itself,
skimming their bodies above mine,
sinking into my growing,
stretching skin,
lighting fires inside of me,
i'll let them burn inside me like
bonfires on hills with small pieces of paper
shrinking to ashes as black as
the fingers that caress my body
on empty mountain tops.

i will create even more of a woman within myself,
filled with
everything i have ever *******
dreamed to create inside of my whirling
*******, and
erupting heart.

i will walk,
and my steps will shake this earth.

i will never pity myself again,
because i will wake up with
the ******* sun shining out my eyes;
i am everything i have set out to be.

i will not tread lightly upon
my life,
afraid.
i will step with purpose,
i will make my actions
create a masterpiece of life,
i will make being alive an
art.
i will make a dent in this atmosphere,
i will spill, contract, expand, dance, explode
because this is my life,
and i will stop cradling it,
i will grasp it
and
i
will
run.

i am the roaring of motorcycles attacking
cement,
i am paint splattered canvas, sketch grooves in paper
carved in a frenzy,
ink stained palms,
i am the blazing sun, and its wrathful heat.
i am stumbling words, creating
rivers across
sleeping faces,
i am feet racing,
in cold winter air, breath slapped with one thousand
whisking tree branches,
i am a weary spine,
bent over four in the morning pages of sloppy poetry,
heart spilled all over like clumsy sipped coffee,
i am drunken truth,
i am real,
i am whole,
i am.

STOP PITYING YOURSELF
AND BE

ALIVE

e·piph·a·ny [ih-pif-uh-nee]
noun, plural e·piph·a·nies.

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

10:34 pm

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Lappel du vide

10:34 pm

i haven't slept as early as
ten
since when i was small, afraid of the
blinding, groping that would come to life
in the darker parts of night;
unless you count times i've been too intoxicated to stand,
too empty to breathe,
too ****** to speak,
that i close my eyes the second i hit
third base sheets,
hoping oblivion would
take me.
swallow me like one of those pills.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

bad

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Lappel du vide

bad

"Is it bad that I never made love, no I never did it
But I sure know how to ****"

god i might not know how to
say those three words,
but i'll kiss you against your soft
cotton sheets
and sprawl bare against them,
and make you think it all the same.

"Cause I had some issues, I won't commit
No, not having it"

i'll slink my body
and move my hips around the atmosphere
we'll both be drunk,
slurring on the beat
that my tongue moves to.

"I'll be your bad girl, I'll prove it to you
I can't promise that I'll be good to you"

my mouth is like
nicotine,
you'll never get enough of it.
but baby,
its so self destructive.

spending my four in the morning procrastinating on an essay listening to relatable rap songs and writing ****** poetry~

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

4:52 a.m.

Feb 2014 Anna Brown

Lappel du vide

4:52 a.m.

every time i hear your voice
i just think of how
it would sound
breaking out of pleasure,
gasping,
your mouth open in
surprise to the
silk of my touch,
how it would sound sighing my
name out
tickling the hair that
falls lightly around my neck.

i want your honey
voice
dripping from your
quickfire tongue
soaking me
so i am sweet and stung
fresh from the hive
i want you to make me

scream