The following is a small excerpt from Fermon Brown’s book of poetry, “For a Moment”…
available for sale at: https://molesgallery.com/?product=for-a-moment
Little girl can you control the wind,
that rips through your dreams of him?
Can you contain the blood
of a million men?
Serpents pulse, crawling in the sea,
rigid with the fear of the newborn.
Tossed like rocks from a peak of blackened glass
into the storm below,
that swallows and glows and then tiptoes home.
Hoping in the hidden world
of fathers rising before dawn,
sucking eggs
and sleeping on
their wrinkled way to work.
Little innocent eyes.
Dreams.
Can you hold them in your hand?
Can you pretend you understand?
I’ll take you home
in my pocket
to the country, in the hollow behind a rock.
A place with no signs or initials,
carved by ghosts drinking toasts
to the moss that grows on their bones.
And when you realize
we’ve always been alone,
I’ll split your ass with my axe
and torture my lips
with your black bitches spit
and pretend you’re a goddess.
*****
You would wrap me in silk
and suffocate me.
I would pierce you with poison eyes,
sting you with steel,
build a temple around you
slowly
with mouthfuls of mud.
An ancient gypsy moth
mummified, eaten inside
lost to the sea.
Upon the shore he left a shell
of an egg,
a free seed
floating towards some vagina.
A thousand thoughts
waiting to be born
and to consume you.
*****
The dragon rides
on the icy misted wind.
The body twists
trying to crawl out of it’s skin.
The jaws are locked
in the fear
that they will be broken,
like bottles
on a heap of trash.
Flames dance
upon the icy wind of fate –
And from the ash,
the guardian of the gate,
living in the fear
of those that turn away.
Melting like an illusion
in arms that reach for it’s power,
And turning
it’s burning eyes,
from the ones
that would flow through them
like water.
Many miles from here
we’ll curl up in our fur before the fire.
We’ll dine upon the souvenirs of summer,
and entertain ourselves
upon the memory of tomorrow.
I’ll wear my rings,
and get drunk on the smell of your rose,
And we’ll weave our words
into flattering clothes –
And wonder in the silence,
how much of yourself
the other knows.
*****
I asked,
“Would you hold my hand
as we cross the great highway?
Would you stay?”
But you were already gone.
Maybe I’ll see you
on the other side someday,
When the road unfolds upon
the golden dawn.
Love’s a long long journey;
It takes some getting used to,
and by then it’s gone.
If you want you can follow it
but it will just keep moving on.
Over the hill the horizon
looks like one more
cloud in the sky,
Of another sunny daydream
waiting for some wanderer
to discover what it means,
Waiting for one another
and wondering…
*****
And the river carries you away from your dreams,
Branched and meandering
leafless limbs, and frozen streams.
Once we reached for the sun.
Once we couldn’t help but run.
Now we are one
with all the other monsters on the highway.
The wine of some twisted Eden
lingers in the aftertaste.
Baby you were the apple of my eye,
Tell me why we left that place
for this comfortable distance.
Sooner or later tailgater,
whiplash median mirage,
shrug soft shoulders,
nod off in your lap,
transit nap.
Dream map unfolding,
while countless systems
remove the work from being human –
serial numbers follow no order –
encircle the border –
of this man made reality,
broken promise land.
A scheme is not a plan.
Lets get down to the business
of comfortable distance.
We raised our flag without a mast;
We thought it would fly;
It just kind of fluttered out there
like a butterfly – with one wing.
Taint no devil that wastes our chances;
Just a conspiracy of circumstances;
Still we strut
Still we try
And flap our feathers at the sky
Lets get down to the business
of comfortable distance.
*****
(Veterans Parade)
It was near midnight and time to change the channel
when the call came through.
One of those calls for help
from an old friend
that you wished you never knew.
So now I’m off to the veteran’s parade,
or a lost crusade,
with bald tires on slick black top
and worn out wipers in a storm.
and the rain hypnotizes
The faster it falls the slower I go;
Mind wanders and loses sight of the road,
and I wonder why I’m doing this
and is he really worth it?
With guys like this,
it’s hard to say what you see.
Never mind that any jury would convict him.
I guess I saw he was the victim,
of his own crimes
and yours and mine
and he didn’t want to be.
So I adjust my concentration
on the only thing that’s clear
the faded old divider line
still shines enough to see;
and I’ll put my faith in the road.
It was laid out by someone long before me
and it will get me there eventually
If I take it slow and easy.
*****
In the midtown bars
They called him prophet Dave.
He had a mind like
A razor blade that split the hits.
His philosophy ruled.
When he was out of the money
he wasn’t hungry.
He never begged a man
or bowed to a city,
and it hurts to think of him
Lying there beside the road
a broken rainbow.
In high school they called him horsebreaker.
His mama called him David
as she made his apologies.
But to me he was the man
who named himself
after the sun.
A piece of the puzzle
that didn’t fit in anywhere.
So he was at home
wherever he happened to be.
He was a colorful character
like a broken crayon.
Just when you had forgotten summer
he’d show up
in the strangest places
at the strangest times
like a lucky seven
in the cosmic crap game.
Living on crackers and kool-aid
just to paint upon the walls
of abandoned buildings.
And when his palette was empty,
he’d paint on your open mind;
Cause heaven knows
he was never out of colors.
In empty museums
art lovers come
talking of Michelangelo,
and wondering where did Van Gogh go.
While the world erects statues
and demolishes heroes,
down at the disco
we all dance along
to the same old song
wondering where’d Van Gogh go.
There are the oddest of little flower
on those weeds beside the road,
And it takes a special kind of crazy
to follow your heart
in a world that has no soul.
Who knows,
He could have been our last chance
but we missed it,
because it needed a haircut and a shave.
Now the shadows salute the darkness
in the back of Plato’s cave,
and it hurts to know
somewhere on the road to Texas
there’s a broken rainbow.
*****
I’ve danced with saints and sinners
and known them both to be the same.
The ones that shone the brightest
danced nearest to the flame.
I’ve seen perfect nights
and better days
doing time.
*****
Were you looking for something
to bring home to baby,
or to take to your grave;
The find of a lifetime
or just the catch of the day?
I saw him hitching on the back-roads of Rome,
Twisting across lost treasure maps,
crumbling in the hands of Editors
who say, “He got lost along the way.”
I saw him hiding in the light of day;
the God of mongrels,
and the words rattle, clang, and bang,
together like rusty tin cans.
The rhythm of famine
the feast of the beast,
too much confusion
too little peace.
*****
Count Down Take off
The moth hovers the flame
Keeping the moon it’s right.
Constricted by light, blinded by night.
Searching direction
amidst the Dresden of conception.
Cliche’s ricochet.
No accident, No innocent
Meaning dies and is reincarnated stillborn.
The pupa is smeared with lipstick,
Stripped and mounted in the gallery.
Sleeping pilgrims gather in search of a dream. A
tourist in the night
Snaps a Polaroid of the scene,
Ignites it and prepares the ashes display.
Some ones utter a death sentence-then a belch. A
pronouncement from the new digest:
God is obscene.
Science is a torture chamber.
Art is dead.
Critics and Teachers are 2B fucked, killed, and eaten.
My mouth salivates in anticipation of the feast.
I feel a yearning in my shoulder-blades.
*****
The last time I jacked off,
I wiped off my belly with toilet paper.
I remember miscarriages
and hemorrhages
And a still-birth.
There was some grieving and some guilt.
But, I’ve never known a woman
That gave up her child at birth.
I remember young girls
with no jobs trying to find the fee
and women that made careers
from thief mistakes,
living off the fruits of their labors.
It’s a beautiful day,
a little cold though.
Buildings are all the same.
Roads curve in one of those
designs that must have looked good on a drafting table.
Numbers are especially important here,
as they define your destination.
But I’m not looking for an address.
I’m looking for the small huddle
of middle-aged Christian women
that guard the driveway
to the gates of Hell.
God loves crusaders.
And the pious.
And the morally superior everywhere.
And God loves a good argument,
and politicians sit at his right hand
as crumbs are scattered across the land.
Her name was Nobody’s Baby.
She remembered a story
that her parents told
about a little girl
that was sold,
stole,
raped,
and rolled.
And when Baby gets old,
she can have a little girl
of her own,
to tell the story
her parents told.
She gave love in swift intense injections.
The fix was all that mattered;
never mind the connection.
The ground is littered with cigarettes
beneath the bench
by the entrance
where she sits,
with the answer in her belly
and a question on her lips.
Who gave us the right to be God?
Who would take it away?
Somewhere doilies are dusted,
and recipes exchanged
amidst reverent chatter
of the miracle of motherhood.
(But I’m not apt to sing hosannas for horny Pollyanna’s)
If there is a miracle
in any of this,
anywhere,
it’s that you learn to care.
But what of the child that prays for a miracle,
and the miracle’s never there.
And what of rights and responsibilities
when the only choices
are too much and not enough.
Never-mind.
We’ll wring our hands
and take a stand.
Never-mind.
Love standing there
With tears in her eyes
And thorns in her hair.
Never-mind
I’ve said what I have to say.
The last time I came,
I washed my dick
and walked away.
…Meanwhile in the distance,
What rough beast slouches
In a beat up Chrysler
Towards the city
To give birth?
*****
No longer to battle brambles –
No longer to be led
through twisted thickets,
but to walk together
by the river
where the water flows
from stone to stone.
*****
Come lay beneath this tree with me
and wade through the branches
where the stream returns to the dream
in a land where we played as children,
sailing across the clouds,
flying through the sea,
surface in a bubble to the sky,
a falling feather in a sea of wings flying,
a memory in an old man’s mind,
spinning time in
The Psychic Wind.
Ideas fly by,
Theories we create to comprehend;
Impressions we claim and defend.
We are in the matrix of today
of flowers that bloom
and butterflies in the wind.
We reach out to capture them.
Do they enliven us
or do we create them?
As they float through our lives
and suddenly we notice the beauty
and pluck it from the stem;
Or reach with nets to capture
the fleeting thought,
And the question once again,
do they possess us?
or do we possess them?
*****
We bumped into each other
on the way to somewhere else.
She looked better than she should have;
I needed a shave;
Question: “How did you spend your life?”
Answer: “Like a paycheck on Saturday night.”
*****
I’m glad to hear that you took them by storm
but the rain doesn’t hide the tears on your face,
and the wind hasn’t taken you back to that place.
I’d love to take you back to that place
where roads crossed
where lives were lost.
I’d love to make it right
but it’s too late – it’s too late
I want to reach back into the past
and pull you on through
up here next to me
and hold you close
and tell you it’s all right.
We’ll go back to that mattress on the floor
and this time you can open your eyes
but it’s too late – it’s too late.
I’m holding you somewhere else tonight
waiting for you to awaken – to a new dawns light,
I hope you find me – out there – in someone – somewhere.
This time you can open your eyes,
It might help – to open your eyes
your shining eyes.
Those eyes that change their colors,
the eyes of the weary child,
the windows to your soul,
It’s never too late to open your eyes.
*****
She laid with her body around me,
and listened to the music run down me.
She cried in the fear that her tears might drown me.
A smile came sadly from my home beneath the sea.
There is no forbidden territory
in the passage from Neptune to the sea..
Sing the siren’s song. Let it rock me.
Up and down your waters lap. As I ride upon the wave,
let it wash over me. Sing the song
and I will drift along. Sing me to my soul.
(There is no forbidden territory
in the passage from Neptune to the sea.)
Take me with you, let me be.
Take me into you, let me be.
Take me home, to the sea.
*****
Bodies born of fire
Buried in flint and steel
such distance –
but the spark that passed between survives,
though never kindled and nursed on emptiness,
the spark that passed between survives,
and on the horizon
there’s a blaze of brilliance.
I was sitting on this rock
searching for a sign;
I was getting lost in the sunset
and you came into my mind.
I realized how much of you I missed
and how we had such little time.
*****
So why should this surprise me?
I knew it was coming
since the death of days.
Flat tires told the story.
Broken gauges – Burnt out fuses reminded me
from time to no time
the death of days.
Squeeze in a realization
Between the exits.
It haunts me.
The shadow knows
there’s something I should be doing
while I’m doing all those things
I must do.
Squint from a glint of light
reflecting on the dash
between the Broken lines
and the speedometer hasn’t got a clue.
I’m gonna miss you
riding shotgun
sleeping in the backseat
with your face in the sun.
Even Steven
as the bleak squeak
of your tired tapes
finish their revolutions
that were never begun.
Now it’s my turn
and I’m gonna miss you
riding shotgun
sleeping in the backseat
with your face in the sun.
*****
I’m sitting here
same couch, same place
This ain’t no deja-vu.
This memory’s always new.
Ain’t wearing any shirt or shoes.
Listening to the lazy rain,
and mellow Blues.
Got my camera pointed out the window,
focused on reflections
reflections of the room
in the glass,
reflections in the rain
on the grass
reflections in the water
on the street
beneath the light
at the intersection
where reflections meet.
yesterdays
drowning castaways
in the seas of grey
now islands of white
floating in the night.
Spirits adrift in space,
searching for a place to meet;
The face in the window stares back at you;
the timeless memory always new
in reflections rendezvous.
And the piano player is smiling and nodding
and the bassman’s talking to himself.
*****
What do you say to darkened porches and quiet streets?
What do you say to approaching headlights?
What do you say when no one’s listening anyway,
to a whiff of winter,
to small dogs that bark in backyards
and growl behind bushes?
Small houses huddled in bunches
beneath street lights.
Here a castle with bird bath
and camouflage jeep.
There a Kansas clipper ship
with a wishing well flower box.
Immigrants of time.
Monuments to the generations of Kings
and Queens who’ve written their names
on mailboxes (and having writ moved on).
A frilled lamp shade
caught in the grate of a storm gutter.
A one room church.
Red bricks stacked
with true reverence for austerity,
where souls sit in rows
and quiver at the promise
of ecstacy.
The ancient tree
that’s lost it’s leaves and limbs.
A gnarled Venus grown over with vines.
The sidewalk cracks.
The patch.
The world turns on
the mortal wheel
that neither aims
to crush or spare
the conversation
with evening air.
“Hey man you need a ride?”
“No, I’m just out for a little walk.”