Manuscript of Starstruck, a Chapbook by Tim W.

Brown
Published in 1996 by Contemporary Arts Publishing
© 1996 by Tim W. Brown
PART ONE: ORBITS
Heart is a Drum

"I want I want I want"

is a refrain you will hear
if you listen close enough.
Its source is the heart:
a beat is heard as blood
reverberates in ears, pulse
is felt inside the wrist.
It's a two-step rhythm that
everyone, even the unmusical,
has a feel for, vibrations
propelling us on a march
in this parade called life.
It echoes and resonates
through the chest cavity,
attuning the listener with
just how big and hollow,
like a bass drum, we are,
how much we ache to fill
the world with our noise.

Originally published in Indelible Ink No. 10 (1995)

Daddy Steel

Whenever I asked
about the navy or Japan
his memories would fade
to battleship gray.
All he has to show
are tattoos that scrunch up
when he drives in screws.

I never met his dad,

who was a brakeman
and died of a stroke.
But Dad said really
he flushed his gut
with drink.
Sobered,
he came home from the plant
with fingernails splintered
as the steel he picked
from trouser cuffs.

His eyes galvanized

when he heard
my steel was the brass
of a French horn.
He thought my blood
was his, with cells
shaped like wingnuts.

Originally published in Oyez Review No. 16 (1988)

Empire Builder

Train is a gullet, swallows

dust and rock, sand and snow,
passengers -- beer is all
they need until There.
Wooing women and work,
signals flash red, green, yellow.
Cowboy sees red,
yowls of women's thighs:
"They're slicker'n steer horns!"
Then there's Bob.
He'll straighten up
(he really will),
working on the docks where
peas weigh more than gems.
I see yellow: Pardoning myself,
buying rounds of beer,
I bob down the aisle,
eyes hidden under cowboy hat,
-- polarized --
between the right side and
the wrong side of the tracks.
Tread

Beneath a halo of heat the tar

road trickles by a cornfield

Grit and sweat glitter

on men housed in carapace
who sow gravel
onto the muck with shovels

The steam roller plows through the group

and planes smooth the roadbed
which will rage five more years
against the tread
of truck tires and sun

And beyond the barbed wire

corn tassels tan
peppering the air with pollen
as husks bulge and flex

Originally published in Towers Fall 1981

Bugger Square

They belch
and fist dough,
these gods
who circuit the block
in cars shiny
as shopping carts.

The lake whips wind

round chess tables
and trees,

and me with ice

in my shorts, as

I watch some stripling

in blue vestments
stride up Clark Street.

A door swings open:

Sweet Chariot
drives him to his knees.

Originally published in Towers Spring 1982

Reprinted in Indelible Ink No. 10 (1995)
We're Romantics, Not Mechanics

(for Steven Lynn Anderson)

Spiny Norm was dressed near an astronaut and I

wore those pants too thin except to ride in taxis
in. We had a ball to catch before it came down.
So we were tearing up tar roads to avoid the Main
Streets that stagger along state highways with
stop signs everywhere.
This mother was even on
the map yet our car croaked in a creek flooded as
the veins in my temples became. Before yelling
for a truck to yank us out we decided the trees
were drifting not the stream. And can you believe
it we heroes made the diving catch at two girls'
feet with no stains on these knees.

Originally published in Towers Spring 1983

Jesus Yuck

A gust has caught this garret

and rocked me awake
before the end-shudder
of some nightmare
lucky for me.

This morning
sleet blares beyond the blinds
and I've got errands to run--
Jesus yuck.
Knots

(for William O. Brown)

I still hear the BOOM!

of sixteen-inch guns
lobbing shells big as cars
toward the Korean coast
when I think how they

sunk you in a coffin

of battleship gray.
Or maybe it's the CLAP!
of you boxing my ears
not with fists, but words

that began at age eight:

every post card you sent
while working on the road
said, "Be a straight shooter,"
meaning to pee in the pot.

Up until age twelve I told

my friends I wanted to join
the navy, drink beer,
get tattooed like my Dad.
But I was born a land lubber.

Pushing a lawn mower through

a sea of grass was for me
like breaking in a horse.
Shaking your head, you called me
a "left-handed Jap bazooka shooter."

When I grew up, you still

believed I wasn't "working
with a full sea bag."
Now I see you tried to pack
a sailor suit in a saddle bag

built for a bucking mule.

Those sea dogs sure taught you
some fancy knots, one
you used to hang yourself.
Unlike you, none will lasso me.

Originally published in Children, Churches & Daddies

November 1997
On Sangamon

(for Mark D. Hedl)

My roommate and I
take it for granted,
living where we do,
that we can revel
in our madness,
untouched. It scares
away certain guests.

The walls are brick

and painted peeling blue.
Ghosts seemingly
drift in and out
as if into clouds.

The el shoots us home.

It hurtles and tilts,
bumps us off of people
we plot against all day
from street level up
to the eighty-ninth floor.

It creeps, it slithers in
and rises up so much
it caves our stomachs in:
Truck Pollution.
They park late at night--
big diesels, panel trucks--
all stuffed with meat
that feeds a million mouths;
and all huff and puff
and blow us out of bed.

Wild dogs (one limps)

rampage after scraps the bums
have left. Wandering forever,
they bark and chew their
growls, snap at each other's
heels. We call the pound
before they bite.
The picture is snowy
outside those windows--
it dusts in every crack,
every crevice of this place,
this body.

The pigsheads someone

dumped on the sidewalk as a joke
will probably haunt us
for the rest of our days.

Our view is of a chute

that spits out bones,
skulls and rib cages
of countless cows.
It scares away certain
guests…

So late at night, alone,

my roommate and I play
ball, tossing it, whipping it,
bouncing it off of walls,
catching it while tripping
over where the floor
wrenches up, and if
a window breaks or a lamp
is punched around a bit,
we laugh. We laugh hard.
We cry we laugh so hard.
We laugh. Hard.

Originally published in WISdom No. 2 (1994)

Bottles

(for Steven Lynn Anderson)

Sealed in their box beside me

my bottle collection clinked
when our car whisked away
from your town.
Bottles
we huffed as flutes, bowled over,
sold in bars.
We'd smash one
now and then for spite and sweep
the glass into the sump pump--
our secret. Then the bottle tales
long distance: you said
Truman Wilburn stuck his dick
in a rum bottle and sliced it up bad.
I told you about the porn at school
--women fucking themselves--
with coke bottles. "Sometimes they
even wrench out their guts!"
Such news rolled of our tongues
like pickle jars across wooden floors.

• • • •

During my visits we'd tear

up tar roads toward parties
inhaling bottles of beer
like canisters of laughing gas.
Then chuck them out windows--
German hand grenades. Always
when bottles were stashed
under a seat, a cop would sniff
your muffler, and you'd grab for the gum.
I'd photograph your friends,
their bottles funnels sudsing up the rug,
and you, posing, some punk
seething to jab a bottle's jagged edge
into my camera's eye,
the eye of your latest love
who, spinning the bottle,
kissed some guy named Joe.
You'd swallow your rage, though,
a handful of broken glass.

• • • •
Streator, where everyone hammers out
bottles, your newest home,
with the glass plant out back,
Leviathan that stretches for blocks,
heaving and spouting. And the empties--
mountains sorted by color and shape
ripe for mining.
You'd watch
the workers whoosh in the doors,
tick-tocking louder than bottles
shooting down the labeling line.
Their kids screeched up in pick-ups,
heads clear as bottles of Miller beer,
wanting to scrap with the stranger.
You'd pace the floor over such scenes
breaking bottles over your head.
I purpled--"See, you're a bottle of Heineken
among ten thousand bottles of Bud."
After scanning the sandy silica soil
of the town, you grabbed up the bottles
dotting the coffee table like tombs
and tossed them out back
in a garbage bag, too big,
like the sofa, to move.

Originally published in Towers Spring 1983

Tulip Blooms

The tulip bulbs

of May do not
unfurl their leaves
in my neighborhood,
where those who care
enough to plant
cannot uproot cement,
nor crowd out broken
bottles that sprout
furiously in yards.
So I think as I walk
to work, pavement
a badly stretched
canvas, whose borders
could stand tulip
blooms polka dotting
yellow, red and blue.

Originally published in Strong Coffee May 1994

PART TWO: GRAVITY
Water and Glass

(for Audrey B. Pass)

Eyes grow bleary under

a cataract of files,
reports and documents.
Such is second shift
on the forty-seventh floor.
So whenever I can,
I rest my eyes
on farther sights:
Sailboats like diamonds
on Lake Michigan,
cars scurrying through
a maze of streets,
buildings red in sunset,
bricks no more a reach
than picking plums.

Looking on the skyline

I see my lover's building
located blocks away.
It's then I know
I can't reach
that far after all.
For there are canyons
between, and a river
where at night a crane
dredges, shovel slugging
through smoked glass.
My fists also pound
on glass restraining me,
at least until midnight
comes, and we're free.

Originally published in Strong Coffee July 1993

My Love

My love's
a bassoon,
cranes
like Nefertiti,
tawny-grained.

So hard
to hum:
lips
too pursed
she squawks.

Cold air
swells her
vents,
blow too hot
she drips.

Demands a
wide hand
span
to cover
her keys.

* * *

But when
the orchestra
rests,
I toss
my head:

Oh, my love's
a bassoon,
soars
husky-voiced
as I tongue

her reeds.

Originally published in Rockford Review No. 11 (1992)

Galena Rose

(for Audrey B. Pass)

You can't buy a good rose

in Galena, Illinois. None
with a stem long as a finger
tracing the vein from elbow
to wrist, none unfolding
like a wicked lower lip,
none that smell half so good
as nosing breasts, none
with thorns that prick like wit.

Say it with flowers, they say,

but how with bloodless, juiceless
flowers dried to adorn a door
for all the neighbors to see
or consigned to gather dust
in a sitting room vase?

The florist does his best

with what he stocks, cupping
hands around the flaccid bloom,
blowing pale breath to redden
a rose I'm dying to give my love,
the only rose in town.

Originally published in The Ledge Summer 1995

Bruised Rose

(for Audrey B. Pass)

At times she doesn't care

for herself like me, who
gives her a long-stem rose
once a week, navigating
it through revolving doors
dizzy from businessmen
barging through, or down
escalators, where I say
to them, "Watch the rose."
So I think, rose zippered
inside my coat, trudging
in the snow on errand day.

She bruises easy as a rose;

a purple bruise appears
on her knee, a brown one
on the inside of her arm,
another fades to yellow
on her shoulder blade,
first she's seen of it.
She never knows for sure
how she gathers them:
maybe she bumps a desk,
or clips a door frame,
or tags a swinging lamp.

She bruises within, too:

stamens bend in her brain;
her windpipe, thorny stem,
lacerates her throat; her
heart unfurls like petals
that bloom too far, then
fall off their receptacle.
This is why I bring a rose.
Carry it against my chest,
where bubbling blood within
releases scent, reddens it,
makes the bruise dissolve.

Originally published in Hammers No. 7 (1993)

Allegheny Storm

(for Audrey B. Pass)

Rain drops are clopping

like horses' hooves
across the windshield
as we wend our way
through the Alleghenies,
ears ballooned with air
from lower elevations
and from thunderheads
lumping air together.
I ask her if our heads
will explode like homes
do in tornado weather
when we hear the radio,
sizzling as if lightning
bolts were stirring it
around a frying pan,
warn of funnel clouds.
She laughs, then says,
"Kiss me here," pointing
to her neck below the ear.
I lift up her earring,
tiny beads adangle like
a doll house chandelier,
and oblige. She drives on.
Thunder rumbles overhead,
an endless elevated train;
I tell her that they say
tornadoes sound like trains,
but since I can't hear
so well till my ears pop,
I'll keep a close watch.
"Kiss me here," she says.
And I do, one eye on her,
but the other on the sky.

Originally published in Slipstream Spring 1995

Love Drunk

Like a shot of good whiskey--

vapor lingering too short
in cavities of my head,
warm-wet soaking lungs,
then shivering cold--
she tastes like more.

So I think waiting
for my bus, cut off
by that stern bartender
Obligation.

How to face the day soberly?

Women don't just show
like the bus, soon as
you light your cigarette.
Nor can you bottle what
they distill down there,
liquor so rare it evaporates
when touched by air.

Funny how drunkenness

dissipates, how
hangover blots out memory,
leaving nothing save scent:
fruity drops on a sleeve,
perfume down my shirt front.

Once I take my seat

I unzip my coat,
unstoppering intoxicant
I desperately inhale,
lap up every molecule
enveloping my face.
And know that is all
that will hold me
till I'm drunk again.

Originally published in The Free Cuisenart April 1997

Make Love, Not War

The current war

is messing with
my love life, I
swear, because
all she wants
to do is watch
CNN, not roll
around with me,
make love, see
stars explode.

Originally published in WISdom No. 2 (1994)

Her Dead Husband

Shafts of light enter her room

between vertical blinds, streak
the ceiling, reminding me of rays
that emanate from ghosts.

So I think, lying next to her,

spinning in bed like on a lathe.
Chips of skin fly off, unbark me;
underneath I bleach from this light.

She is haunted, too; in her dreams

disembodied hands attack her heart
with knives, perforate her sleep.
She doesn't snore exactly,

she gargles blood, what remains

to those alive, along with skin,
nothing that compares to light
cast by ghosts, pure, undoctored.

Originally published in Oyez Review No. 19 (1991)

Sand Cannot Be Counted On

We have come to the far shore

of Lake Michigan (via charge cards
and a rented car) away
from the City of Towers.
The surf eases toward our feet
leaving crooked lines drawn by a child,
and then, like the poet,
erasing, erasing.

For sand cannot be counted on.

It seems to rise in horseshoes
up the bluff behind us, but peering closer
we see the sand melting and bending
with the scuttling of wind,
the hush of a breath.

As my lover and I clamber up a dune,

we spot on the western shore
the Towers where we make happy faces
for the Boss. We notice that the Lake
is not smooth like glass
like they say over there;
water will never crumble or break
into sand as eventually will the Towers,
which shrink from our view.

Stripped, warming our parts on the sand,

we hear the water play fortissimo,
more pure and glorious than horns.
Water and sand seduce, but a glimpse
at the Towers says pretty soon
we'll have to brush off our bare bellies.
I ask her why we can't
make demands of the sand
like the Towers do for us.

My demand is that the sand

will stick to her naked breasts.
I spell my name with sand
down her back, making her laugh
and then roll down the dune.
She understands the nature of sand
(she notes with the turning of the moon
her own body responding, remolding).
Naturally, my name spills away.
But I cannot be sad--
it's not her alone, it's sand.
And though sand cannot be counted on,
I hope our stampings above the beach
will stay behind us for a time.
My lover, I know, will recall the tickle
of my name down her spine--
for a little while at least.

Originally published in Skylark No. 18 (1989)

Of Spoons and Bras

(for Audrey B. Pass)

Propelled by the snap of elastic,

the wife's brassiere came flying
across the room and landed
on the bed. I expected laughter
when she entered the bedroom,
but instead she was crying.

"This bra is done," she sobbed,

looking through considerable holes.

"So?" I responded, thinking twice

about reaching for her bare breasts.

"You don't understand," she said.

"I was married in this bra!"
Then I saw why she was sad:
one more day and one more object
removed from that memorable event.

While I embraced her to show

our marriage wasn't yet stretched
beyond its limits, I remembered
a similar sad moment, when
washing dishes, I noticed that
our silverware, a wedding gift,
had lost its luster after
three years of nightly scouring.

"Time is measured by destruction,"

I said. "Pyramids fall down,
highways crack, money wears out.
What can't be broken are bonds
of love, flashes of memory.
Nonmaterial, they are permanent,
they have the most substance."

"You're so smart," she said,

her mood suddenly altered.
"Smart guys turn me on!"
she cooed, then she placed my
hands over her breasts,
the memory of their caress
longer-lasting than any bra.
A Call to Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman! Walt Whitman!

your praises rolled across the plains
like conestoga wagons, people
inside yahooing like flies,

sharing with you that sheer goddamn joy

to sniff a continent not yet
better than a heap of dung--
flies all, but equally blue.

They buzzed happy as bees,

gathered pollen, stoked their hives,
but served themselves, not a queen.
Dung for all, all for dung.

Everyman, you sang their praises,

lifting them from flyhood.
They put on boots, became men;
they dug ditches and shared their water,

for all men need to drink.

Neighborly, they built bridges,
shook hands across ravines.
It was electric, Walt.

Everybody seemed to pour his share

in the bucket--the sweat, the grain, the bricks--
because the mixture was America.
All for one, one for all.

That was about the time you died.

Clouds spell out your name
in the poets' corner of heaven.
You're an angel now; we lack your gleam.

You rock, Walt, what killed you?

The Civil War? Or was it the sight
of most men staying flies,
conniving, rubbing their hands?
Dammit, Walt, they're bottle-eyed;
nothing's enough to fill those facets.
Neighbors? They're to hound.
Their dinners are for infecting.

Worse, they lay their eggs,

suckle them in corruption
to carry on the strain,
"All for dung, dung for all."

The buzzing has gone way out of tune.

Come down from your cloud, Walt,
and teach America your joyful noise,
teach us to sing of ourselves,

"All for one, one for all."

Originally published in Free Fest March 1992