Today’s Poem
Presidential Debate October 3rd, 2012
I didn’t watch because my vote
is as good as cast. Nothings news
here: Obama is a handsome,
charismatic man. Yes, I could
watch him brush his teeth,
and be compelled.
But he would have to confess
he’s a product of an unnatural
birth in space, undress
down to a lizard-man
skin and eat a small child
live to lose my vote.
And this is why Republicans
have their fingers crossed.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
For Michael
Thriller was my first
tape and it gave me fever dreams
but that could have been the hundred-
zippered faux leather jacket
that I thought would keep my cool
all that July.
Tonight I pray
that some of my heroes not come back
haunted, hollow-eyed, zombiefied,
howling or moonwalking over laws
of pop culture. Let them not chip away
what they once set in stone.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Zombie Rondeau
If the apocalypse came lit by rainbows rays
that’d make my heartache and pain fade away,
‘cause when zombies campaign the streets
I don’t think of my empty bed’s lacking body heat,
and I’ll retreat into sleep forgetting the word fiancé.
The plague ran from here to Boston then to Bombay,
poison contained in the pollen we called Satan’s bouquet,
overwrite the wrath of her fingernails on me in the backseat,
if the apocalypse came.
I might as well have built a house of paper machete
on uneven terrain, as they walk these walls down in disarray
looking for something good to eat, all my sobs are obsolete,
the turning neighbor’s trapped in wet concrete,
but I’d stop a beat to sing your name in the last cabaret
if the apocalypse came.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Case Study
The project’s gone gonzo again,
I’m off the grid and meandering
between participants and observers,
just a good stones throw from skid row.
I call out to them for thick description.
Note their fingers and toes, the way
skin makes a web, the knots that dirt
always finds. Turn the bare bulb on high
to sweat it out of the focus groups.
They lie. They know the names
and pictures on the cartons momma
bought before the storm summers ago.
This was the case study of small towns
and minds. I tilt my hat and am atypical.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Morning Cartoons
Now I know Heckle and Jeckle
broadcasted Jim Crow thinking
into our TV room every Saturday.
Sad to learn that this one show my sister
and I agreed on, now leans on me.
Jeckle’s falsetto switch never did much
for me but Heckle’s Brooklyn gruff
was something I kinda admired.
Turns out we were all being conned,
but not by the magpies.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
The Point Near Blue
You cannot sooth me at the point near blue.
Cool it on the signs and mumblings,
it knows amour’s at fault and that these ills
are the kind that kills men for souvenirs.
The joy French waiters have venting
on tourists. The appraisal of each penny
spent in another language. How much?
The vanilla nut latte, the cinnamon pastry,
the hour kneeling and lighting candles
for the sacrifice son—explain the exchange
rate compared to the past. Less man dances,
the less man rests with woman face to face.
Those tan disco souls know this. The point
near blue denotes where a brass band
will pass this evening. I will be kneeling there.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Brontosaurus
Abandoned by scientists but cradled
by schoolmarms in the cool cave
of the grammar school classroom.
Mrs. Rothenchalk, made all of third grade
memorize the dinosaurs that were issued
U.S. Post Office stamps in 1989. I’m sorry
she sapped your blood for her red ink.
There always was temptress in her
teacup. A bone misplaced, never sets.
I could have been held back that year
for this or any anything else
that didn’t really exists.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Sediment
Under a stone heavy enough
to hold a full grown horse
in place, in between the worming
soil and the weight, a relic of love
breaks down—becomes sedimentary,
mixing with rubbish and a cicadas shell.
Once I knelt down on the side of this road
to put my face against it.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Order
Young, the four French girls grew otherwise
and were submerged by time. Four French girls—
the young always seem to keep the fashion,
hold crushes against history’s lament.
Girls: the four, young French defined
it in a magical way that made the banks
close early. French, the four young girls
gave off an air of propriety consistent
of vigil for fathers lost at sea. Girls, the French
young found their way up the staircase
where other contents would be their context.
The four French girls, when they were young,
called out all the silent letters.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Communiqué
When the curfew came down
in Paris only the fools and old folk
stayed to watch the gun-smoke action
sequence, the melting gold, the neon
street fight, and lip-smack of flesh.
The intergalactic ash changed shop-
keepers into bandits looting blood,
marrow, and everything in-between.
Foolish, I thought a repeating rifle
from the forties and two boxes
full of shells would keep me safe
and warm. Dawn came again without
the sound twenty tanks should make.
I crept and crawled through rotting
men and fruit for food and drink.
I was bitten, and killed him, and now
turning, say goodbye. This is not
a good year for red wine.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
2AM Voodoo
Fighting a war on two fronts,
its unwise to spend time
watching Zombie movies
when you’ve got a case
of the common cold.
Growing sluggish, a fever
takes hold. Sweat marks
your ragged clothes.
Breathing through you open
mouth and dragging one foot
into the pharmacy. They keep
the distance of a pitchfork
between their cold hearts and you.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Take Backs
This is why we want time
travel. Don’t pay attention.
We’ll do it over. Push the leaves
back into the tree branches.
Button up a girl’s blouse
then light a cigarette. Watch
the bully pay the weakling
to keep his lunch.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Grandfather Watching Planet of the Apes
Space makes a man lonely, Charlton Heston
told me this, hours past midnight. Then I remembered
my grandfather loved this man. He could
watch Heston crash-land into lakes all day,
pausing and shaking his fist at the nomads who stole
his clothes. That year he bought me a membership
to the junior RNA. I liked to shoot birds and cans.
I learned animals were machines for making meat.
My grandfather loved America, penicillin,
the man on the moon, and the production of heat
only visible as steam inside a crane’s soiled, cold cab.
He knew man makes a desert by in putting green paradise
and too much time. He taught me to make paper airplanes,
mentioning Bernoulli’s principle of lift. His blood
pressure rose. He watched and whished to be Heston,
running off with a girl who couldn’t speak, a gun
and a fresh horse with nowhere to go.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Attraction
A sink says what it does
when its working. A trapdoor
at the bottom of a pool
answers the question
your searching foot has been
asking. This is a how a banana
peel becomes a murder weapon.
Old men do not cannon ball,
they consult their machines
blinking red light for gravity’s
call and their response in good-
byes ends with the holler for dirt.
-Jason Braun
Cosmos in Evergreen Review
Here’s poem of mine that was just published by Evergreen Review.
http://www.evergreenreview.com/b/cosmos/
Today’s Poem
Underground Ethnography
Reporting from the Earth’s core
I come to you tonight live. I’ve searched
for drinking songs among the men
down here and found none. Not one
note hovering above a bottles mouth,
nor has any man attempted tremolo
in-between the falling of canaries.
Living in their quarters, I can attest
to the horrors, the heat, and longing
for home. Years ago an old man
in a new suit told these boys
that the beautiful virgins were fed
to the volcanoes above, they could
be found here and taken back.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Barkeep
The monkey’s not the problem,
I told her. It’s the smoking.
Doesn’t matter what carnival
you’re coming from, Rio’s down
the road, you can smoke there.
She took the cigarette and pulled a trick
most of the boys at the bar had seen
in a book. She blew rings around
the room the rest of the week,
streets went bare as a ghost town.
All the boys at the bar, titling
upward, smoke in their nostrils,
with their heads in the clouds.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Bedtime Stories
When the cyborgs tell
bedtime stories they telescope
into the little one’s earpiece,
set a low tune to turning
slowly between music
box and modem. They speak
in the imitation of a tremble
about the last boy without
enhancement. He was a baby
when the shipwreck happened.
Both parents tried to fly,
swim, signal and each sunk
separately. Startled by the sound
of drones, he always hid
from passing ships. At fifteen
he started working wood and stone.
Later in the moonlight, he listened
to the birds and began tooling
a new language in which the first
word was goodnight.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Poem as Birthday Gift for My Girl
I also took her
out to dinner.
I’m not the beatnik
I used to be.
That is not to say, now
I know better.
I don’t. But I do
have a job today.
She not aged,
laughs the same
as she did years
ago when we dated
the first time.
Big-eyed, long-legged,
so foxy and with a halo
of hair that old, white
women don’t understand.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Loss for Words
When I traveled back in time
to stop myself from uttering
bourgeoisie at the dinner table,
I had to laugh. The word doesn’t
rhyme with family, and that joke
would be lost on them. What business
did that word have inside this walled
city of mark-down-bins, saved soup can
labels, and all the songs that have gone
out of style? So many stereotypes
fit much more snugly: three martyred
mothers, one stock car-racing in-law,
a little thug growing a dirt lip mustache,
and the superior but still broke college boy.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Electric Storm
I want to be your ampersand
and pop song-stop-you-in-the-drive-
way-to-listen, kissing you sideways,
recollection man. When that one
Beetles’ track about love
comes on, no matter who you’re with,
you’ll think of me twisting
out of shape to join you in a city
that made a molehill of me.
Let me be your plus one, or even
just the plus. Someone must headline
this show and when the curtain closes
you’ll string me around your finger.
You’ll send me off into the atmosphere
tethered to some point near, but not,
actually your ring finger.
I’ll be the key in this history play,
swinging in the electric storm between the kite
and you dragged out as Benjamin Franklin.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Understanding for Bankers
Security questions asking
the name of your first
girlfriend or boyfriend,
mothers maiden name,
street you grew up on—
this means something
different to the old and lonely,
the doorstep orphans, and boot-
less refugees. U.S. Bank,
don’t you want their money too?
Resist the urge to ask about
the number of cats in your household,
amount of tissue used per week,
height of stacked magazines
delivered discreetly each month.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Seeing All of Rome’s Underworld—
That’s in fact where the wallet was.
The gloved hand of some pickpocket,
brushing back his hair, then slipping
my money places I’d wished to go and see.
But for some things they don’t sell
passports. I keep an eye on backpack,
and ignore the beggars on this railcar.
I’m going home knowing I came close
enough to touch and be touched by a true artist.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Garden
There has been a garden
here before. This mossy
place, a palace for shoeless
mothers stepping out of one
overgrowth into another.
Stories come from the rabbit
talking run, chew, thump.
Mother knew what to whisper
into the elephants ear.
Alien in her own region,
here, she taught the roaches,
mealworms, and moths the song
of fishbone plunk. The bulldozer
taught us all supernova.
-Jason Braun
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