"brunswick" poems
it seems my entire life is defined by drinks.
mother's milk out the womb.
(and maybe those suckles were sweet - it's not like i remember - but her words, for the rest of my life, certainly weren't.)
an hour-long debate, with my best friend at twelve years old - apple or orange juice?
(orange, obviously, is the right answer. we rehash the argument sometimes to this day.)
the day i turn 19, a beer in my hands.
(i'm sat around a campfire with my closest friends, birthdays all older than me - the beer tastes disgusting, as cheap alcohol is, but i'm glad to be there.)
yesterday, i had 1 coffee and 2 mugs of lemon honey tea, 4 glasses of water.
today, no tea, but 2 cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and 3 glasses of water.
i bite at my nails when i'm nervous, swallow down the spit that comes with it, the bile that rises.
last summer, i visited pei, had a raspberry cordial - my favourite drink to date - then bought a case of 4 more to take home with me.
last summer, when i lived in new brunswick, my friends in the same building knew me as the one who would always have a drink in hand - a milk tea, or maybe a pink lemonade, maybe that obscure korean soda i liked.
when i left new brunswick, i took a photo of my 2 trash cans, of the way they were both filled to the brim with empty bottles and cans and jugs.
i still miss the apple cider they made there.
my life is defined by drinks, sips, swallows, taking five minutes to breathe by making myself a nice whipped coffee, trawling the internet for pretty coasters and glassware for an hour in lieu of doing actual work.
Eventually, i close the shopping tabs, take a sip of coffee, and resume with the rest of my life.
Nov 5, 2023
Nov 5, 2023 at 7:38 PM UTC
Pilsner cap switch blade
tie dye and piccolo
greasers and freaks
with platform feet
muscling in
on the bow legged hoofer
tapping
Bursey Hill Tram
Diamond tuft console
mullets n' ****
angels and saints
(unrestrained)
appropriately trimmed
as 3 mile wreaks havoc
on the nickers and
fighters of penn
Bangers and home boys
hookahs and sheiks
hostile geeks
breaking knuckles and jaws
on the caners and skinners
who are locked
and grinding the root
Desert boot foothills
boardwalk jeans
rainbows and sea fairs
and psychedelic dreams
(the platinum queens
jamming it hard
on the jade room floor)
8 tracks
and fender packs
the hottest summer days
psychedelic haze
center hall, graffiti scrawl
(sinister yet refined!)
covering the subtle
yet striking third ****
Brunswick cues
and red man chew
350 blocks
(on a solid Chevy - stock)
monkeys and beatles
and laugh in scenes
pastel dreams
from the long and coveted
velvet scroll
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019 at 12:39 AM UTC
Purple is my favorite color
But I hate plum,
New Brunswick skies appear so ugly
But they are good for telling the weather
I wish you would stop cleaning your stupid boat
Which think what you want
But it’s not really a yacht,
At least Girj says so
I believe it’s important to get *****
Like how the stray kittens in my backyard play
As I smoke stoags and light bowls
In my stoop kid fashion kind of way
And I really wouldn’t mind having a coke with
Frank O’Hara
Or a beer with Charles Bukowski,
In fact I think I’d enjoy it
But everyone has their secrets
I tend to buy mine at Kohl’s;
And I hope you realize
This happens to be my life poured into a paper cup
Just incase you get thirsty
While you’re cleaning your stupid boat
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 3:48 AM UTC
The volition of Augusta planter and blacksmith ..
Elberton Pulp-wooder and Quarryman .. The song of the steam fired engine , back breaking labor of Tifton Sharecropper and Atlanta Iron -worker ..
To the heat lightning of the humid Georgia night , the cold rain of
November , the unsure , bitter turbulent shrieking winds of March ..
The first turn of the Albany Ploughman , to the evening whistle of Macon Factory worker . To dawns horizon goes the Brunswick Shrimper , to the honor of Cattleman and Savannah Tugboat tender ...
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 9:17 PM UTC
It's snowing tonight,
and I think ********* Dad,
when Maryland beats Indiana
and I move to text him.
He's beyond snow now.
So what do I do with these
unbearable photos he took
of me standing alone
in the withered sun
on monumental trains,
I was six or seven,
out by the rusting roundhouse
in Brunswick?
It's been snowing for hours
& I carve a footpath
out to the unplowed street
to watch the shining gray
banks under the amber light.
There is no route to carve
through this silence.
My father was made of ghost towns,
from Manzanar, from the endless
pine-dark of Idaho's rivered night,
from all the unmapped places,
he grew complete in himself.
And even now as I watch
the snow slant and stumble
I am left behind as his son
apart from him and without.
The snow dives into the
night blankness and I wonder
if I had died first, cutting short
this reckless careless crooked sprawl,
would he be writing here?
The smeared gray glow
of the screen across his hands,
the fat flake snow rising
like dough beneath the windows?
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 3:20 AM UTC
how often I wish for 91 Brunswick Ave
compressed together in a claw foot,
your flesh my home
cakes baked in too shallow pans
I forget what song was playing when
you told me you loved me.
how often I wish for the freeway between
Cocoa Beach and Orlando,
a friendly chaperone asleep in the back
hands knotted thinking:
“this is ours”
how often I think of August bonfires
the terror of an international move
“you would be a day ahead of me for ten weeks”
I felt stronger than the 100-year-old ruins we were
standing in
how often I wish for The Standards,
High Line and East Village,
bacon cocktails and antiquated photobooths and
windswept harbour panoramas
my insubstantial voice begging
“don’t turn the red light off,
I need you to see where my bones shattered
and pierced my skin”
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 12:44 PM UTC
Wearing mittens
boots all laced up
scarf around my neck
it's so cold
I can see my breath
hell
it's so cold
Jack Frost isn't nipping at my nose
he's already chewing it
Winter in Maine
well you'd think it'd be grand
there is so much ice here
that there is nowhere to stand
the birds have flown south
in Florida they land
People cover their lips with Chapstick
there is so much snow in Brunswick
seriously whats the deal with it?
I may get ******* hypothermia
walking to my bus stop
Thank heavens I wore my wool socks
© 2013 Emily Larrabee. Legally Copyrighted, all rights reserved
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 11:56 AM UTC
This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
I never got to swim the backstroke
before Brunswick Basin bled
Lake Olympia from amidst her oak,
before Deer Creek went dead.
*The streets'll burn, the bodies break
and the blood washed away by beer.
The streets burned, bodies broke
and we're still here.*
Shadow people wander the sidewalk,
been here since the bombs dropped.
Never got no noisy television,
just watch the streets and shadows in them.
I'm pushing up just like daisies
and pulling them up for fun.
Convinced that I'm going crazy
from the trips that I get on.
*Jane says she cannot get it:
"something hidden...back when children."
You're always looking for the road
where we used to drink too drunk,
where you look to have again
what we had so long ago.*
Do you feel it coming?
on Earth His will be done.
Collapse a long time coming—
still nothing new under the sun.
Summer is for the living.
That's a bubble-bursted, sun-dried reason.
It's the end or I am fibbing,
still live up the rest of the season.
*First came the flood then spilled blood.
Had anyone caught on of that to come
you know we'd never have let it begun.
But it had:
got you, your mother, and dad.
Surely there was nothing we could do
but hunker down, get a job, and rue
the day they brought us into
the Old World and buried the New.*
I hear tell that downriver
the water gets warmer;
I hear tell that valley below us's
a hotter n' hell, body-ridden bowl of dust.
—
I hear tell that upriver
the trout they run thicker,
the water cooler, air smoother, and **** sticks thinner.
I wanna flee up that river
but I'm not that good a swimmer.
How do we know?
We think we're smart,
in fact we're geniuses.
But we're still sitting
and can't stop talking about...
This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 1:20 AM UTC
What a way to spend October 11, all in one day?
There are many enterprising words that I could say
It was the 14th Annual Mass Transit & Trolley Modeler’s Convention in New Brunswick, New Jersey
It was held at RUTGERS UNIVERSITY Gymnasium Annex
All attendee’s wore badgers and stepped back into time
Trains, busses and trolley’s all had their preservation combined
A look at steam engines who was the workhorse of the rails
Come and follow me as I explain in more detail
Transit and highway buses the vintage of their trail
Towns with trolley’s, a matter of tracks and wires
A world from the past with tomorrow that’s here today with plenty of technology advances that inspires
A trip down memory lane in years before my years
Yet the honor of preservation to continue my passion for buses in preserver
Then there were highway buses I once rode
Purchased a scale model MC7 Challenger of Vermont Transit, and added to my personal collection of look and behold
A day well spend indeed
The story goes on in proceed
I really didn’t know where time went
This was my exploration being support
You could say, “My determined will”
It was my ambition running on still
Yet it was a worthwhile experience
But it was a lot of walking and you had to have endurance
I learned even more mass transit and buses
This places me like an Ever Ready battery to influence
Also with that knowledge, I learned about the back roads and rails no longer exist
This was a thought I couldn’t resist
The mass transit flow and time is moving with systems go.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 5:30 AM UTC
As it happens I did not buy this book
of collected poems in St. John, New Brunswick or
Charlottetown, P.E.I. I didn’t pick it up
in Yorkville on a long weekend in Toronto,
nor was I delighted to spot it in a window display
on a stop I didn’t make for coffee in Kamloops, B.C.
No doubt Halifax has its share of bookstores,
none of which I’ve visited on the road
to North Sydney to catch the ferry to Newfoundland,
where one imagines happening upon a salt cured,
weather beaten mom and pop clinging to life
quayside in St. Johns.
The border with sleep lies just up ahead
where soon I’ll be borne across
on thoughts of the boats of these poems
lifted on the rising tide of the U.S. dollar,
Billy Collins buttoned up for the night
inside a tent pitched upon the calm seas
of my chest.
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 8:48 AM UTC
Mimi her name was
roams the halls
ever since she took that fall
eating lunch with her friends
talking about the latest trends
her cheer leading skirt was stuck
she fell to her death that very day
she now haunts the place where she died
at least we now know she couldn't fly
it was quite some time ago she passed
people say she was quite a pest
she is still searching for her future
to get out of that place
she was in high school
but they tore it away
now its an elementary school
i don't think she knew
she now has to stay there not be able
to move on
how are you supposed to graduate
from high school
if it isn't that
poor Mimi
poor girl
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 1:35 PM UTC
In a town where it's always after hours
Where progress and time mean nothing
Neon lighting and sparrows fighting
The call of simplicity becomes enlighting
Streets that remain quiet, Friday nights past 11
Where the bay meets the loyalist man
While fog creeps its way across the land
And cellos play to the tune of a lonely band
Tomorrow night is winding down
As is my familiar little town
Draining away with the rest of the province
Until there is nothing
Save the sound of waves upon the shore
Jul 6, 2016
Jul 6, 2016 at 11:11 PM UTC
As it happens I did not buy this book
of collected poems in St. John, New Brunswick or
Charlottetown, P.E.I. I didn’t pick it up in Yorkville
on a weekend spree in Toronto, nor was I delighted
to spot it in a window display when I stopped
for lunch in Kamloops, B.C.
No doubt Halifax has its share of bookstores,
none of which I’ve visited on the road to North Sydney
to catch the ferry to Newfoundland,
where one could imagine happening upon
a salt cured, weather beaten mom and pop
clinging to life quayside in St. Johns.
The border with sleep lies just up ahead
where soon I’ll be borne across
on thoughts of the boats of these poems
rising on the tide of the U.S. dollar,
The Rain In Portugal a tent
rising and falling on my chest.
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 9:34 AM UTC
Her hand brushed the rough edges
of the tips of taupe timber wood.
Burgeoning into barren branches
billowing briskly as the stump stood.
Brunswick green buds
engraved mini mints of mixtures.
Painting pages of profound poetry
reproducing rings of pretty pictures.
Recovering from her inventive imagination,
she released her hand and rotated around.
Shamrock slips of silvery shades
glimmered on the lime lagoon and gentle ground.
May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020 at 3:45 PM UTC
*Unknown musicians paying their dues
Grill smoke , multicolored blankets , children
riding seesaws , lollygagging on swings , curing my blues
Laughter and celebration ,the smell of Brunswick
stew and barbecue filling the Sunday air
A fews hours with zero cares , a sweet smile and
auburn hair , a beach towel for two , we gaze into
cobalt sky blue
Searching for angels , faces and Presidents
Feeding the nuthatches , the thrushes and the ravens
We're the hot dog and hamburger mavens , we're the connoisseurs of plum wine , brie , swiss and shortbread biscuit , sweet tea picnic table caramel corn cravings
Holding each other tight in sleepy , piedmont sunshine
Savoring this memory forever* .
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 7:04 PM UTC
Start walking at the end of the driveway of
the modest yellow house on Haven St. made of
crumbling bricks and splintered high-beams
tattooed in black ink
at the back of your hand.
make a right down Crescent
towards the sun
and another right on Brunswick Avenue
no stopping for snacks or bathroom breaks
and if you don’t shut up
grandpa’s going to reach over to the driver’s seat
and cuff you at the back of your head
with his callused hand
overworked from his years
down at the cattle station.
After twenty miles or so northwest
kinetosis hits, upturning today’s sad breakfast
of French fries and saltine crackers
You will stop crying and be a man
Grandpa said as we
reached a sign that says
Nursing Home, 3hrs. 15 min.
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 6:22 AM UTC
And what is love? It is a doll dressed up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a perfect tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Till Cleopatra lives at Number Seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warmed the world,
If queens and soldiers have played deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say
That ye may love in spite of ****** hats.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 3:40 PM UTC
Country roads and summer drives back home
From New York to New Brunswick
The adventure and the memories
Worth the cost multiplied by infinity
Looking back now, it is with fondness
Not bitter qualifications
Though I do not admit to a state of total jovialness
Rather, acceptance that is bittersweet
Something I have come to realize
Is the taste of all that I eat
Dreams are hazy and full of such identification
Memories posted to the halls of physical locations
Classes I wish not to share
Those I've dropped in order to avoid another fall
Odd to ponder the growth since air was warm
Physical and spiritual
With lands that have fully expanded into vague territories
Aspirations now seek for success alone
Rather than success and a loving home
Seeing all this now, in the rearview
Accepting each new reality with a weary smile
Held up by internal fortitude and stubbornness
Too much love, spurned but not forgotten
Such lessons not forgotten
This heart and face
Rendered cold and new
Patient and distant
Thanks to you
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 3:50 AM UTC
The curt March winds terse elocution , where seagulls explore noonday menus and beg for meager sustenance . A vision of shadow people cleaving the meld o'er boardwalk divisions , blackened , with crested burnt orange perspectives .. The barbarity of water subdued , I am born witness to warm ocean pirouettes .. Where a mans senses become one , at the final turn on the road home ...
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 2:37 PM UTC
1/8/2019
an argument down below
i get up,
gaze down
from the 16th floor
black sheet over window,
punctuated by this:
orange and white
the concrete of the street
i hear voices
they feel something
i can't find them
i hear them rising with passion
all i can
think is
i agree.
i sit back down
stare at the wall
remember where i am
i
keep
forgetting
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019 at 1:04 AM UTC
Mandala ******
Bird brain herder
Pack of wild wolves
Owls without.
Grit teeth say please.
Sea of folks different strokes
Non of genious
And certaintly not I
Mind is feeling weak
Strap boots to feet
Got em brand new,
Brunswick stew
Over Converse☆ conversation.
Grossly mass produced.
I hate you.
Thats my good pen.
Bought not found.
I like the way it writes
Hate the way I do.
**** me, love you.
Grossly
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 5:14 PM UTC
I know a woman that I don’t know anything about.
I know so little about her that I don’t know where to begin.
I don’t know the names of her cats, or her children, or her grandchildren.
I don’t know if she’s from Portugal or Pascagoula.
I don’t know that she tried to grow an orange tree inside her head.
Or that her Guardian Angel wears a Captain’s suit— and lives in New Brunswick.
If she stood beside me I’d be clumsy and wouldn’t know where to put my arm.
And I have no idea what she feels like pressed against my chest.
I don’t t know her fears: flying in airplanes, spiders and **** roaches, and Me.
Especially Me.
I don’t know what she tastes like.
And I can only wonder about her tongue in my mouth.
I don’t know that her hair is perfect.
Or whether she’d like a picnic in the desert.
In fact, I’ve never seen her hair, and we’ve never been to the desert together.
I must be thinking of someone else.
I do not know that she has a husky voice and tells me stories.
Or whether her laugh sounds like wind in a pine cone.
How would I know if she snores under a half moon on the highway?
Or whether she fancies fruit pastry?
I don’t know if she is as cruel as a nun with a yardstick.
Or if she’d go with me to a place she’s never been.
I certainly don’t know how she makes me feel. How would I?
And, I don’t have a clue— nary an inkling— about falling in love with her.
Because I don’t know anything about her.
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 11:31 AM UTC
and the difference between
a higher tier whiskey
and a lower tier whiskey?
higher tier: pale amber...
lower tier:
tickling caramel bourbon...
and yes:
i like my alcohol with
a story of its own,
one of exploring
the palette...
yes... glen moray:
there's certainly
butter-scotch in it...
but the lemongrass?
not with every glass,
which is why
i find connoisseurs
suspect...
not from one
glass,
and certainly not
from a sniffing around...
unlike *****
drank properly:
shoved into a freezer
and then drank
smoothly like
a gômme syrop...
whiskey:
the profanity of
sipping it straight...
or mixing it like
some British WWI
colonel
with some soda water...
on ice...
one minute delay...
culls the bite
of any excess Smokey
Fitzpaddy left...
neck on the guillotine!
oh but i have drank
to the brain-drain
body numbing
stages of youth's exploits...
famously
Edinburgh's snakebite:
half a cider, half a lagger
topped with blackcurrant
concentrate...
what?! not lagger?
what then... lager,
i.e. lay-ger?
digger not dye-ger
of diger?
no via
no why as to why:
it's dein-ger
for danger
and hop-hop for
the dagger of Brutus?
et tu: tutti ******* frutti...
hop-hop:
Easter bunny softy,
as i...
et tu:
as an epitaph with
no grave...
and however
many maxims...
said puppet in
the fiddly tongue-tied
aspect of death's
philosopher stone:
the Hindu wild-eyed
traffic of reincarnation...
epitaph contra
maxims:
life's load
and a foot dent
on the earth like:
the one that they won't
take a photograph
of: as they did
of the one on the moon...
pointless going
to Mars...
not taking random
earth objects
to the moon...
to see:
funny-whacky
gravity do don't:
sample some
clock-ticking
on the father
to the daughters of
the tides,
the rains...
and all:
and they minded
the egoist...
while they shoved
the whole universe
in their minds with
cthulhu receptors:
and...
well... it wasn't exactly
1990s television static...
or... what the sight
of Belzeebub looks like...
the whole lagger
not lager "debate"?
i don't even want to bring
diacritical marks into
this...
and i won't!
first prize: silver sputnik
of brunswick...
now all i'm missing
is a banjo... and a toothpick...
as ever this medium:
concentrates upon the motto:
sequor lepus albus.
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019 at 8:19 PM UTC