He is the publisher of 2x4, a currently dormant quarterly poetry magazine that showcases work from within the national performance poetry community.  Tony has published his own poetry in various small magazines across the country, including Syncopated City, Echoes, Omnivore, Spoken Word Poets Anthology and Worcester Magazine.  He has won the Worcester County Poetry Association contest (1994), placed second in the Pawtucket Arts Council’s poetry contest (1990), and placed second in Worcester Magazine’s annual poetry contest (1996).

     Tony was member of the 1999 Worcester Slam Team that competed in Chicago, and, in the summer of 2000, he was one of 100 poets chosen for the SlamAmerica Tour bus, a cross-country rolling poetry performance that spent a month on the road, traveling from Seattle to Providence.  (OK, he only did the East Coast leg... it was still very cool.)

     He has performed in coffeehouses, rock clubs, bars, libraries, schools, churches, and other strange places throughout the country, although he is usually found somewhere in that hotbed of poetic activity known as “the Golden Triangle”—the area bounded by Boston, Worcester, and Providence RI.  His home reading is at the Java Hut (Sunday nights in Worcester, MA), where he is the host.

     Tony’s chapbooks include Church and State, Spirit Knows Spirit, The Radioactive Artist’s Sketchbook, Narrow Path–Falling Rock, and 6 (all on Doublebunny Press); and At the Place of Definitions and Lilith’s Shadow (on Loyal Weasel Press).  His eight and latest chapbook is One Spark (Doublebunny Press, November 2000).

Tony is married, owns way too many cats, and probably should sell off a few of his guitars.
 

Samples of the poet’s work:

 
PUNK

someone stripped the emperor
and the sneer became an honest form of speech
and someone who had never twisted a knob before twisted a knob
and someone who’d never bent a string before bent a string
and someone sent a cowboy’s chords to do a bulldozer’s job
and someone let joy out on a rampage
and the devil became a hero
and we forgot the time
but we remembered how to bang things
we recalled the joy of bomp bam boom
whether it was drums or bodies we were slamming
and the radio quaked daily
and the songs got shorter
and the music industry couldn’t get its pants up in time
to get out the door and milk the noise until it died
and someone stuck metal under their skin
and made a memento of the blood
and someone pointed out that there is NO FUTURE
and if there is NO FUTURE there is only NOW
and if there is only NOW there is also NO PAST to hold us back
and everything began to bounce very hard
and everything began to whip around itself
and someone made a magazine and sold it without benefit of bookstore
and someone wrote a poem with reverb
and it shook the colleges down
and someone made an evening gown of sackcloth
and started a religion which began with Jesus dying
for someone else’s sins
and what it was was freedom in the form of a rejection letter
and what it was is what it still is
because someone somewhere
is still trying to find out how far the human soul can go
on three chords tuned to exhaustion
wet sex in a van
the roar of the crowd
and most of all on the joy that comes
when you spit all the outrage and triumph in you into the face of death
as you realize that it’s you – you – YOU
YOU did it
YOU stripped the emperor
and crumpled his vanity
and you did it all by yourself
and when you were done
the gods of the big beat looked down on you
and said in one dirtysweet voice
“1-2-3-4    oh that’s LOUD
             OI- OI- OI- OI     oh that’s GOOD”
 

 
MORNING DEPARTURE

Dew settles in,
burdening the distant lawn.
A sudden crow drops from grey sky.
Chilly air goosepimples our flesh.

We spot a last hardy songbird on the wire,
an old dog on point,
yellow grain in waves
moving
just as the piercing by
dawn begins;
hear the cornstand shivering –
its voice describing fragile shatters
in dry fields;

the city is
so far away
that we have forgotten
it exists.

She turns left,
away from the sunrise.

Autumn does this –
turns a body
to face the cold
as astringent,
as protection,
to build immunity
for what’s coming;

and she says,
“I know it’s early
but we ought to think about
heading back.”

I swallow hard, disbelieving, taking in
the rhythm of this day
that seems already, at first light,
to have slowed down and swapped
its waltz time for
funeral march,
and I can’t think of what to say.

We will have to be
on the road
for hours. She is
right in that way,  but I can’t imagine
leaving this place
that’s glowing
beneath a halo of almost icy
dew.

I’m looking across the fields – thinking
there must be a tree here
with some fruit left that I can pick
that, once eaten,
will let me keep
my dearly bought knowledge of her
after we’ve left
this perfect place –

but she knows that story,
and appears to be getting a jump
on its ending:

“You can always come back,”
she says, brushing something
from her eyes.
You.
Not We.

She is wrong in one sense –
for I’ll never be back:

I know what a sword looks like
and there’s one now,
burning its way up
over the horizon.
 

Click here to hear Tony’s poem Lighter, included on the DownCity Slammers page on MP3.com

Click here to read Tony’s poem Elegy for the fact of a doorframe

Email Tony Brown at Chrysler77@aol.com

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