Cussing
Brandon Brownmy dad has a pretty good
way of saying fuck you
he told me since Janiece died
he storms around the house
yelling at her, cussing
“yelling at God”
it sounds so cinematic
I sometimes forget
how horrific
like reading about
the goddamn
Battle of Antietam
I like when kids cuss
I always have
went to my hometown
to see my dad
my sister came and
we drove around
it sucked
drove by that slice of woods
between two crappy houses
where I learned to smoke
learned to cuss
saw the ruins of the pool
the pool is where I learned to crawl
I wish I had been more of an athlete
my dad showed me where crosses
burned in the 1980’s
over by the middle school
right by the railroad tracks
that snuck into the woods
behind our house
the spot where Dave Cox said he’d kick my ass
if I hadn’t had a broken wrist
I was carrying a gallon of chocolate milk
my sister says Dave Cox
is a really good dad
I love chocolate milk, now that is naughty
I would never drink it
abstaining has its own high
as Geoffrey told Hannah
about quitting smoking
“it’s its own drug”
when what we need hurts us
like when they leave us
and we still need them
that’s when we’re most fucked I guess
makes me want to cuss
Discouragement Poems
Brandon BrownI read some Sanskrit court poems about old age
they’re okay, kind of predictable, not very funny
old guys licking their lips, ogling
wishing they were young again
I prefer the poems about discouragement
sometimes they are also about aging
like this quatrain of Dandin
I’m broke
I haven’t learned anything
No one admires me
And now I’m almost dead
I made Alli watch Space Jam 2
Lebron’s toupee very sturdy
we both want to watch the Olympics
they say this Kazakh archer is thirty one
I’d like my teenage self to see me tonight
I don’t think it would be so discouraging
is a goose deterred by wild ramps, no
it knows they taste delicious and are healthful
and radishes are tasty as well
I didn’t do the river hike with my friends
that didn’t feel very good
lots of steep sharp rocks to climb
I have a bad knee and balance
it was fine I read a book about St. Louis
laps in the pool for every chapter
smoke from Dixie fire filled the air
the book was good
St. Louis...no
I mean yes and no I guess
I had fun there with Paul and Duke
Erica, John and the Fiddler
I like when summer is very hot
but only for a few days
and there must be a pool
here’s fresh sherbet
floral spritz on closed eyes, drugs
preferably some cool pool toys
it seems so normal to have been born in the seventies
to be more or less as old as the Ramones
the gurry shark lives five hundred years
but never does fucking anything
courage is cognate with quarry
maybe miscreant and credible
dis is their splitting apart, here I mean the heart
discouragement is the diminishment of heart
turritopsis dohrnii never dies
when they get old they fuck themselves back into birth
do it all over again
immortal jellyfish
every sea lion on earth is younger than me
but I walk under the redwoods in Philo
fry on granite in the Yuba young as sperm
and I am younger than Nelly
and the other St. Lunatics
we heard the Yuba was full of sunscreen
Steve was all yeah the oxybenzones
the Yuba flows through Konkow land
Maidu, Nisenan, and Miwok land
and always will, probably faster and higher
now it’s hotter and lower, it’s discouraging
I guess it’s been a lot of ages, been a lot of sizes
Dandin’s been dead for like thirteen hundred years