THREE POEMS by TONY BREWER
Candy Mountain For Poets
for Bill SovernThe ditch weed is super kind
Cops are all well read
City fountains spew cabernet
You still wind up dead
Smoke breaks count as meditation
Well dressed is a state of mind
Chapbooks are legal tender
You still wind up dead
No monuments or class fees
The weather is always beautiful
or beautifully glum
You still wind up dead
Readers know your best work
Readings are celebrations
Every road an invitation
You still wind up dead
Glaciers are still frozen
The sky’s not full of lead
Everyone gets somewhere to be
You still wind up dead
There’s always a party cooking
in a church where no one prays
Every poem breaks god’s heart
You still wind up dead
The infinite becomes graspable
I am every grain of sand
All hair comes with flowers
Being alive is work
The whiskey flows like water
from rock deep in Earth
Printing’s free
Pens never dry
Outside doesn’t touch
too hard anymore
&
you still wind up dead
Petey
There's only one Petey, thank God,
which is good because otherwise
Jesus would have to kill
all the other idols
and that's a lot of blood
on the hands of a mere god
even a bolt-throwing thrill-kill god
such as Zeus or one of those tentacled
Sumerian guys who hates everyone
and everything and one day will
devour us all
Petey says hard things, meaning
he has difficulty saying them
Petey could have nailed my sister
he was so hard last night
But he didn't
Instead he read about velour which
was a mistake and a huge turnoff
My sister is into raw silk and cashmere
Petey is a yard sale goldmine
my sister just drives right on by
She says she likes his stuff
She says, "I love Petey"
but deep down
she doesn't mean it
and she says it several times
Petey laments killing bugs
in his kitchen – but he kills
them anyway
He would never hurt anyone
or anything – the stomping
doesn't last too long
and he is very accurate
He likes his bug-covered floor because
he is above it and because
of the sound it makes
under his sneakers – hard-
wood, thumping, like a drum
like a heart beating
that stops when he's killed enough
when he's had his fill of killing
That's not really Petey
That's just me being weird,
trying to make him sound
more interesting than he already is,
which is hard to do
but not as hard as Petey.
The bugs mostly are ants
and Petey hears them scream
collectively, which may be why
he starts stomping again
Petey is not cruel or short-sighted, though
He is a giant and he towers
over hick poets and ants alike.
There's only one Petey, thank God.
I mean how many spliced haywire
clones of Woody Allen and Franz Kafka
can exist in this his perfect universe
at any one time?
More than one? I doubt it.
That's a lot to ask of Zeus
or even Kthuluu
though I'll bet he could
work in a little
immaculate Petey
just before his big
tentacle-laced Chuck Taylor
with a pentagram All-Star
comes crashing down
to the floor
above us all
THUMP
and that's it
The Politics of Shaving My Balls
Go down on enough smooth strange
it begs the question—why not?
Well, it's dangerous, frankly
I have emotional scars to prove it
Never tit for tat a woman, dude
know that a trimmed bush indeed
makes the tree look bigger
like a scared suddenly sky-clad mouse
With your sweatbox removed
lotta slippy slide going on
just sitting there in traffic
even imagining hearing the word
Kegel causes one to occur
You’d trim back your beard
if they asked—why not?
You’d bathe brush your teeth
shower shortly after pulling out
Mostly it’s a feel & look
she likes no pubes in her teeth
I know—I’ve asked
gross personal intimate
& precisely the same reason
only a few crazy loudmouths
show up to hog the mic
at school board meetings
even though everyone has
the right to vote
Tony Brewer (he/him) is a poet and audio artist from Bloomington, Indiana. He has published 8 books including Homunculus (Dos Madres Press, 2019), Pity for Sale (Gasconade Press, 2022), and psithurism (Last Lights Press, 2022), and he is a frequent collaborator with experimental music & field recording collective Urban Deer. More at tonybrewer71.blogspot.com.