Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife: 1 Read online

  TITLE PAGE

  Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife

  a collection of poetry

  †

  by Derrick Brown

  Write Bloody Publishing

  America’s Independent Press

  Long Beach, CA

  writebloody.com

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © Derrick Brown 2010

  No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews.

  Brown, Derrick.

  1st digital edition.

  ISBN: 978-1-935904-94-6

  Digital Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes — www.quantumredhead.com

  Original Print Layout by Matt Maust — coldwarkids.com

  Cover Designed by Matt Maust — coldwarkids.com

  Paintings by Blaine Fontana (Mixed Media on Plywood) — totembookmedia.com

  Illustrations by Matt Carver (Ink and Mountain Dew on Notebook Paper) — [email protected]

  HIRE THEM

  Special thanks to Lightning Bolt Donor, Weston Renoud

  Printed in Tennessee, USA

  Write Bloody Publishing

  Long Beach, CA

  Support Independent Presses

  writebloody.com

  To contact the author, send an email to [email protected]

  SELECTIONS TAKEN FROM THESE BOOKS:

  Born In The Year Of The Butterfly Knife 2004 Write Bloody Publishing

  Unapologetics (Prose) (Out of print)

  I’m Easier Said Than Done 2003 (Out of print)

  If Lovin’ You Is Wrong, Then I Don’t Want To Be Wrong 2001 Moodorgandistro

  Junebug Melatonin 2000 KAPOW Books

  The Joy Motel 1998 (Out of print)

  Hostile Pentecostal (Pre-released as Upside Brown) 1995 (Hopefully out of print)

  SPECIAL THANKS

  SPECIAL THANKS FOR HELPING THIS BOOK COME TOGETHER:

  Thom Meredith

  Claude Le Monde

  Jeff McDaniel

  Joel Chmara

  Buddy Wakefield

  Blaine Fontana

  Leigh White

  Paul Suntup

  Matt Carver

  Tank Farm

  Carolin Matzko

  Aimee Bender

  Marc Smith

  Taylor Mali

  Eitan Kadosh

  Mike McGee

  Tim Ellis

  Krystal Ashe

  Tatiana Simonian

  Buddy Wakefield

  Amarillo

  Amanda Valentine

  Matt Maust

  Open Bookstore

  Stephen Latty

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BORN IN THE YEAR OF THE BUTTERFLY KNIFE

  Here it is. Twelve years of writing. Ten years of reading and touring. Opera Houses, theaters, churches, coffee shops, restaurants, garages and bars, all over the world, all breathed out from these books. These poems were selected by myself, so I wouldn’t have to reprint the old texts, since many of the past publishers are out of business. Poetry is a tough racket, the bastard child of the arts. But I am so thankful for diving into this art form. The life I have seen because of it has been raw and remarkable. The people I owe are endless. Fistfights in coffee shops, seeing your poems tattooed on people, crying with old men after a reading, people sharing their inspiration over absinthe or beer, all this is the impetus that keeps me going. It certainly isn’t the cash or helicopter booty. After re-reading many of these texts I find that many themes keep occurring: dogs, God, riots, knives, blood, death and women. Great. I hope you enjoy the new work; feel free to ignore my commentary and forgive me if I’ve ever screwed you over. I’m trying to do better. Please read this book in public.

  Enjoy the dusk.

  D.

  OPENING EPIGRAPH

  I could never give you all the daylight you wanted

  but here’s some of the dusk you need.

  — Derrick C. Brown

  BORN IN THE YEAR

  OF THE BUTTERFLY KNIFE

  THE KUROSAWA CHAMPAGNE

  This poem was built after watching Kurosawa’s Dreams and The Lady from Shanghai by Orson Welles. It is infused with a time I watched a lover have a nightmare and did not wake her.

  THE KUROSAWA CHAMPAGNE MAQUET.

  Tonight

  your body shook,

  hurling your nightmares

  back to Cambodia.

  Your nightgown wisped off

  into Ursula Minor.

  I was left here on earth feeling alone,

  paranoid about the Rapture.

  Tonight

  I think it is safe to say we drank too much.

  Must I apologize for the volume in my slobber?

  Must I apologize for the best dance moves ever?

  No.

  Booze is my tuition to clown college.

  I swung at your purse.

  It was staring at me.

  We swerved home on black laughter.

  bleeding from forgettable boxing.

  I asked you to sleep in the shape of a trench

  so that I might know shelter.

  I drew the word surrender in the mist of your breath,

  waving a white sheet around your body.

  ‘Dear, in the morning let me put on your make-up for you.

  I’ll be loading your gems with mascara

  then I’ll tell you the truth…’

  I watched black ropes and tears ramble down your face.

  Lady war paint.

  A squad of tiny men rappels down those snaking lines

  and you say;

  “Thank you for releasing all those fuckers from my life.”

  You have a daily pill case.

  There are no pills inside.

  It holds the ashes of people who died

  …the moment they saw you.

  The cinema we built was to play the greats

  but we could never afford the power

  so in the dark cinema

  you painted pictures of Kurosawa.

  I just stared at you like Orson Welles,

  getting fat off your style.

  You are a movie that keeps exploding.

  You are Dante’s fireplace.

  We were so broke,

  I’d pour tap water into your mouth,

  burp against your lips

  so you could have champagne.

  You love champagne.

  Sparring in the candlelight.

  Listen—

  the mathematical equivalent of a woman’s beauty

  is directly relational

  to the amount or degree

  other women hate her.

  You, dear, are hated.

  Your boots are a soundtrack to adultery.

  Thank God your feet fall in the rhythm of loyalty.

  If this kills me,

  slice me julienne

  uncurl my veins

  and fashion yourself a noose

  so I can hold you

  once more.

  THE CHINESE ELEVATOR

  Sometimes you can feel them in love somewhere else in the city and it is like having a phantom limb.

  He is staring at a bottle of pills big as a lamp.

  Brighter.

  He sighs a noise that comes in the sounds of ripped silks.

  He loves the steady drums of her headboard

  played by a stranger.

  It is the tempo and timbre of men

  slicing the earth with shovels.

  He loves knowing that she can’t last a season

  without a new salesman knocking at her heart
/>
  through her uterus.

  His record player has laryngitis.

  The telephone’s tongue has been cut out.

  He had linked his heartbeat with hers.

  Now apart, when her blood races

  so does his.

  At least he finally removed the saddle

  from his head.

  Someone fair had straddled his skull,

  rode his dreams into the ground.

  He lies still in bed with his pulse, now rising

  touching his fingers to the sound.

  A mouth opens nervously and dry

  like young prom legs.

  ‘I still want you.’

  …but the woman is far and pregnant

  with blood.

  The blood is due.

  He removes his medical bracelet. It reads:

  ‘I left my heart in someone’s veins.

  She bleeds Valentines once a month.’

  She was born with backwards guts.

  Waltzing was miserable.

  Always spinning. Leading with her spine.

  Keeping her heart behind her.

  He is a Little Boy who has fallen

  over some Nagasaki.

  Lovers are on stage at the comedy club.

  He is a heckler who can only sob into a bullhorn.

  Love is a bullet that crawls on all fours

  He stumbles in the night to the poetry of whores.

  Exhausted, dirty and loose.

  Piss of a fighter.

  Shit as a lover.

  The box he checks is other.

  He has the handwriting of his Mother.

  The vanishing act of his Father.

  ‘We bury this now’

  is muttered

  as she unrobes

  for a shiny new lover.

  Across town he sits up in bed

  says.

  ‘You bring the dirt,

  I’ll bring the shovels.

  You warn the heavens.

  I’ll tell the others.’

  He had grown tired of pressing his head

  to his lover’s chest

  only to hear the sound of

  children gasping.

  It was her favorite love song.

  in harmony with the creaking of dark robots inside her.

  Our bed squeaked out a bad musical.

  He subscribes to the newspaper,

  looks for the black stilts of her name

  in the obituaries.

  Hangs his countenance on the wall,

  crawls into bed

  with a handful of pills to cancel everything.

  He simply rode the Chinese elevator.

  Pushed the wrong button.

  Someone went all the way down.

  PUNISH CHILDREN

  If I ever have a kid, they’ll probably be a spaz to pay me back for my brazenness.

  Who will curl forth honesty

  and say that they would like to send their child back

  to that sudden baby cave?

  I fear having a boy

  fore seeing the day I will stare into his skin

  and have to say:

  “You might unravel, son.

  Do not try to prepare for this.

  Know that I don’t know shit. No one does.”

  I fear having a girl the most,

  who will ask me what it’s like to die

  and I will have to reply:

  “Lose your virginity

  and fall asleep in pain.

  Be better than me.”

  If that small, hairless, voteless tyrant says:

  “Stop talking like you’re trying, Pop.

  What is it really like to die?

  Speak plain.”

  I will say:

  “Love writing with all your heart.

  Then have kids

  and write no more,

  you wretched, screeching Leprechaun.”

  She has that laugh ‘cause she has my sense of humor.

  How strange that the woman you always wanted to meet

  came out of your own body.

  How egotistical and pure.

  My past rushes through her like a river after winter.

  I hope she fails history.

  WALTZING THE HURRICANE

  If women only knew how dyslexic they can turn men by only holding their gaze on them for a few extra seconds.

  Waterslide architects have been spying

  the smooth of your back,

  Mapping blueprints

  from the finger trails

  adoring up your spine

  stealing your design.

  Do not keep ask me for more revelations, dear

  or I will just keep sending you to the back of the Bible.

  Revelation 12:7

  And there was war in heaven.

  It’s still there.

  In this light

  I can see through your body.

  Black Hills Indians wrapped your bones in arrows and feathers

  for the day you make your exit, inspiring new battles in heaven.

  Enemies sliced by the wit in your lipstick.

  You are a Sunday porch I could do nothing on

  and feel like everything was happening.

  Let me pull my hurricane move—

  a move to turn your gilded fortress to shrapnel—

  to windscorch your overbooked rickshaws,

  melting your slippers into glass formula.

  Girling you out.

  Bursting your leggings

  into pink shredded wheat.

  AAAAAAH!

  Andromeda Carnivora

  envy of novas

  zing your flesh across twilight.

  Stay asleep

  so the aircraft aren’t drawn to land

  on the Christmas lights

  crackling safety signals

  from your eyes.

  I saw you

  panting in the oven of your skin.

  Aren’t you tired of awakening next to lost armies?

  Sick of people looking for jade in your nostrils?

  Subterranean teeth-gnashing orchestra.

  Zebra killer.

  Flexed duchess.

  Carved cha-cha-cha.

  Zirconia sass rock.

  I want the theater without the drama.

  I want the opera without the soap.

  Lay in the stillness of a fighting-saints fairy tale.

  Your partner is here,

  a frog in a coma of kisses.

  You, dressed as wonder,

  screwed me backwards

  with your

  dyslexic kiss.

  Fairytale saints fighting a stillness.

  Kisses of coma.

  Here is partner your.

  Wonder dressed you.

  Backwards me screwed.

  Kiss dyslexic.

  THE SILENT FALL OF NEW YORK CITY

  Beau Sia, Jason Muhlberger, Rob Neil, Cristin Okeefe Aptowicz and I experienced a real NYC blizzard and I’ve never heard the city silenced before. It was the most beautiful time with fantastic people. I couldn’t stop laughing and no one was saying anything.

  New York City fought the quiet for too long.

  Taxis poking through the white

  like Corn Pops in cold milk.

  A sneak attack of slow down.

  It came to us

  the way a kiss turns into

  a sudden veil.

  The blizzard has sent down a bride.

  THE DAWN OF WEIRD

  This is the first and maybe last time I will use the word ‘Twas. I don’t know why I have these visions, but I do.

  AT GAURD AT THE HUMAN GARDEN

  Twas the dawn of Weird

  and I had woken up early.

  There was no difference between

  sky and sea,

  so dogs chased tennis balls into the shore break

  of cumulus clouds.

  Sea lions flew point

  in the fo
rmations of sparrows.

  Fishermen caught birds,

  apologized

  and set them free.

  The birds were understanding and as a gift

  brought back worm sandwiches

  which were surprisingly tasty.

  Airplanes landed safely underwater

  as mermaids guided us in with pop-electric jellyfish.

  Guns had turned to black licorice.

  All the cops were nibbling on shotguns

  and one by one all the criminals cried

  and turned themselves in

  to the dentist.

  Hospitals morphed and became

  rubber bounce castles.

  They had to call security

  to usher out the scalpels

  and to keep the elderly

  from hogging the twisty slide.

  Billboards became drive-in movie screens

  replaying what our feet looked like

  when we were chasing our dreams.

  Everyone walked home.

  And all the tombstones

  in all the graveyards

  crumbled into seeds.

  Flora bloomed immediately.

  Bees halted on the outskirts

  of the cemetery walls,

  reverence for the ending,

  the passing of all.

  With antennae bowed

  and honey tears starting,

  they pledged to stand guard

  of the bright human garden.

  The largest pile of flowers…

  It rose from your name.

  The wind swelled a whisper

  That said

  They’re O.K., they’re all O.K.’

  My Lord, it was a solid mountain of sunflowers.

  The world blazed in color and I welcomed the change.

  It was the dawn of weird and the morning of strange.

  Amazing how all this

  did come to pass,

  just a child cutting loose

  in a poetry class.

  THE DAWN OF WEIRD

  WITH THE GUIDANCE OF DOLPHINS

  If you write, the dark spots can be considered the sweet spots.

  I found the coordinates for the payphone that rests

  at the bottom of the Pacific

  near the Channel Islands.

  Soon you will get a call from me.

  You will know in your stomach