Michael Brown has published his poetry, fiction, travel articles and columns in wide-ranging periodicals all over the world.  He holds a Ph. D in English and Education from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Robert Hayden.  For 30 years he has taught at high schools and universities from the South Side of Chicago to South Korea.  Michael was a member of the Boston slam team that won the National Championship in 1993.

When in Cambridge, check it out:
The Cantab Lounge
738 Massachusetts Ave, Central Square
Cambridge, Massachusetts
(617) 354-2685
Wednesdays 8 p.m. open mike; 9:30 p.m. feature; 10:30 p.m. slam
$3.00 admission
Hosted by Michael Brown, Sam Libby & Tommy Mendez

You can find schedules for the Cantab and other venues, the latest news in slam poetry and more at Michael's Slam News Service.
 

Three samples of the poet's work (with audio):

 
The Mockingbird
 

A fierce storm line boiled clouds above my balcony,
dropped lightning bolts in the harbor,
and swept humidity out to sea.
I opened my windows to catch the breeze,
and Beethoven’s sonatas lured a mockingbird to the opposite roof.
Ashkenazy played quickly, as though chasing the composer.
The bird laid back, filling quiet passages with counter melodies.
All spring I had tried to lure the bird
from the far side of the next building.
Today rain and sunset put him in
the right spot to be captured by a keyboard.

This earth, this concert hall, invites us to sit and listen
to air rustle leaves, whisper through grass, shape clouds,
turn waves back at the beach, push storms,
infiltrate our rooms with hands too small
to be felt except in passing.

Once a mocking bird and I shared an apple tree.
Each spring brought forth his sonatas
till he fell to desultory summer singing
only when prompted by my music.
On my last day in that house,
while I boxed kitchen utensils,
he watched outside the bare window,
his intent gaze a question,
a prompt for which I had no music.
Who’d have thought of Symphony Hall as a trap?
 

 
B.B. King
 

B.B. King can’t play and sing at the same time.
Some folks don’t have to,
but that alone isn’t any reason to sing the blues.
It’s like patting your head and rubbing your belly simultaneously.
I can’t do that.
In fact,
I couldn’t ever play an instrument
whether I was singing or not.

After I took trumpet for four years,
my teacher told me to quit.
“Try a reed,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t teach reed.”
I have tried guitars, trombones, ukuleles, penny whistles.
Someone once refused to teach me bass.
I failed at dating woman who played piano.

But think about one of the world’s great blues men.
Even the name of his guitar is legendary,
and he can’t sing to her and pick on her at the same time.
Think of it, ladies,
a man who can dance but won’t mumble lyrics in your ear.
Think of it, men,
a woman who only sings when you make love to her in silence.
 

 
Writing at Night with Miles
 

In great black caverns of depressed night,
when angry work and daylight demands
had been put to bed, I soloed in writing
while molten trumpet melodies of Miles
wove like satin ribbons through iron slats
of escapes from cold domestic fires,
around galvanized steel garbage cans,
along dimly lighted asphalt streets
until a train left for the West
where a larger commonplace maw
made it harder to keep from
being swallowed by the vague hope
that something worse might happen.

The desert of the American West holds
sage and cactus,
scrub and snakes,
scorpions and spiders.
Punch a hole in that till you’re down
to the rock where nothing grows.
Put a man in there.
If he hears the voice of a different instrument
play the songs he sings to himself
beyond basic survival,
past where success crosses honor,
outside the space where sanity finds love,
that man at the bottom of Devil’s Canyon
can learn to sing himself out,
can come to believe in angels—
not airy feminine spirits
for solace and defense against despair,
but archangels from childhood texts,
greater possibilities than he ever imagined for himself—
sword wielder, horn blower, text maker,
the defiant son at home in the flames.
 All shoulds vanished in bop cascades;
the way up was no path,
this light was not the end of night,
only his spirit rising on the updraft of life,
more certain as it brightened,
faster as he succeeded,
better as he ignored ordinary sound and sense.

When I strode off the barren plains into a great city,
my gait had no regular pace.
Traffic’s crashing tempo,
the scrambled sensibility of whisky lights,
the crazed logic of work
all seemed natural because
his horn had schooled me in their ways.

When I sniffed watery breeze,
street grit,
dusty aromas of sumac and brick,
the million musks of metropolis mangled in red lights,
Miles fit perfectly.
His melodies had hung a great cat’s cradle in me,
strung together my feet and eyes,
heart and balls,
ears and gut.
This was my instrument given to me
for all the horns I could not play.
This brain fused all those disharmonies
into words that ran across sidewalks,
climbed rough walls,
flew in sooty air,
their beaks snapping gun shots,
their cries the songs of homeless souls,
the rush of their wings nothing but
the joy of one inky scrawl after another
scratched across an immense and meaningless sky.

He left so many songs I have yet to play
on this crazy harp inside the twisted frame of myself,
songs that lift me to where the air gets so thin I doubt I can stay.
But I have this legacy from the archangel of jazz
ascendant to his righteous estate:
it may still be night,
but it’s never too late.
 

Remembering Marcel Kopp...

An Act of Faith
        Driving to Maine with Marcel

So it was an old pattern when he
headed west, our destination north;
the same when he missed the first exit
for I-95.  But to stop in the middle lane
of I-93 at three pm on a Saturday afternoon,
wait for the right lane to clear, creep
to the right and backup in the breakdown
lane, it put me on notice.

He paid close attention to exit numbers
and was easily confused by them.
He wanted to read the map and turnpike ticket
when they were in my hands.
He judged every traffic hazard
three miles after we passed it.

In a calm voice I said,
“That line of cars is stopped.
A toll booth is just ahead.
This is an exit ramp.”

I died six times.  In one vision
our engine block passed through my middle
followed by a Geo Prizm and a Camry,
just before a truck tail clipped off my head
and the top of our car.

I screamed a couple of dozen times inside,
profoundly, unleashing pure terror.
This man older than myself has driven
this car over 80,000 miles without demolition.
If he can make it 150 miles more,
I will get home exhausted but alive.
This is how we come to faith.
 

Marcel Kopp links:
Annoucement of Marcel's death, 5/27/1999 (SlamNews)
Marcel Kopp website
A Tribute to Marcel Kopp (The Umbrella)
“My Days,” a poem by Marcel Kopp
“Night of the Comet,” by Marcel Kopp
“A poem is not ‘good’...,” by Marcel Kopp

Michael Brown's collection of poems, Falling Wallendas, is published by Tia Chucha Press.

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