Poetry By Alan Britt

In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of the first cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. During his visit, he participated in venues all across the country including the international literary conference sponsored by La hermandad de las palabras 2015 in Babahoyo, Ecuador. In 2013 he served as judge for the The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. His latest books include Violin Smoke (Translated into Hungarian by Paul Sohar and published in Romania: 2015; Lost Among the Hours: 2015; Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013; and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

THAT BLESSED DAY

If I found myself in Shakespeare’s company
cruising the thermals high above a tarnished 
sterling platter of mantis celery, white cheeses 
harpooned by cellophane toothpicks, & jaundiced 
dips speckled with flea-sized spices, I’d bow 
before Sir William, (or Sir Edward), & apologize  
for scorpions prowling the perimeter of my 
indigestion, thereby expunging any regret for 
my periodic battles with academic seizures.



LISTENING TO SOME EXQUISITE VIOLIN
& THINKING OF MICHELANGELO 


Mantis eyes flicker gas blue flames—
barefoot verb pirouettes scalding ice—
disturbance of coconuts waist deep &
bare-chested into the lake that Michelangelo 
enjoyed as a boy on full moons; yet flames 
prowl the golden thicket like mother jaguars 
with infants in tow, heat waves melting terracotta 
tiles over algae-coated Beverly Hills chateaus—
“Hi, I’m Michelangelo, be sure to tip the mice 
who shoulder ice from the whitewashed shed 
& tell ‘em cheeses on the house, wherever 
that house shall be!” 



WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT


Frustrated, first one picks up a rock, 
second one, petrified timber, third one 
wanders the electric blue forest of Austria, 
fourth kicks his Ludwig igniting the most 
dynamic rock ‘n’ roll quartet in history.

We circled the moon’s waist on a raft of
driftwood across a sea of blood—WWII 
left its mark on us—now, we’ll never go 
quietly or any other crazy adverb into that 
stuck in some god forsaken place someday—

But I’ve got rhythm, plenty of rhythm. 



WHEN YOU DON’T THINK ABOUT IT


It makes sense: we age, we bore with vagaries,
we tell tall tales because the truth is too expensive,
we quilt the Lord’s Prayer on a niece’s christening
blanket—chop confusion into firewood—lest we 
find ourselves at the end of a long journey from stars 
sprawled like octopi→200→feet across a minute or 
a day, if, for example, the Pope suddenly, inexplicably, 
retires to 300 acres of prime pasture, thanks to you 
& me.

Make sense?



POSTPONING SUICIDE


Think folks who chose suicide
over a backyard bug zapper’s blue
sparks splintering canasta, pinochle
& fat cigar mushroom clouds 
swirling the local morgue was 
a perfect crock of shit, then you 
weren’t paying much attention. 

Me, either.

But, think about it—before the 
bank closes, jams alleyways, clogs 
arteries called ports & coerces 
reluctant restaurateurs, in long run 
or the short, because it’s better 
that way.


EMERGENCY ROOM


Ocean creeps through soda machine’s gilded gills

Blood pressure off: 79/49

White-haired wheelchair in purple knits

Black shoes’ ankle straps crinkled over cinnamon nylons 

Fox 45 visits Newtown, Connecticut

Back pain’s piranha . . . lower vertebrae 

Severe cough’s traffic jam on northbound 95

Samsung flat screen skids tractor trailer triples across I-80’s black ice

Buzzards litter, blobs of ink, stubble cornfield 

             ✄  ✈  ☂  ☢  ☮  ☤  ☠  ♑

Feathers like ash like 60 round clips like adjectives crumpled into stainless steel cans 
like smartphones riding the white backs of stallions circling circus rings littered 
with peanut shells hash tags & pulverized vertebrae like recessed light bulbs like an 
appendix sinking to the bottom of the Black Sea like nurse straightening Newsweek & 
People on plywood shelves near plastic spruce dripping raspberry gauze, golden cones, 
bright green bows, & blinking white lights tacked to walnut overlay like titanium 
thoughts like smoke in the shape of corroded angels like tongues in the shape of 
corroded smoke like eyeballs bouncing between metal jacks sprawled across granite 
linoleum like voices left out in the rain, edges curled like stale bologna, voices wading marijuana fields’ sticky red-veined ceremonial bulbs that taste like liquorice like young wanderers in seer sucker sun dresses faded baseball caps & smiles like crucifixes like revolving doors & saints with hoodies like emerald EXIT sign’s little arrow pointing 
toward heaven up down east west in-between the onionskin layers separating one
dimension from another like each electron aggravating each neutron & forcing each
proton to reveal itself as giraffe or moose, emerald housefly in blazing estrous, ether  
masks covering the lips of holocausts, as orderly in paper slippers poaching a Pepsi 
from soda machine wheezing a televangelist soliciting funds in the form of death bed confessions & beehive hairdo crushed beneath eighteen-wheeler tailgate (head lopped cantaloupe clean into Benz backseat) as chuckling televangelist & squirming blond wig 
on straw-colored, microfiber sofa, as palm trees swaying, as curved beaks shimmering, 
as snack machine wheezes crackly bags of chips, nuts, candies, & twinkling white  lights→→→→  ← ← ↑
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Poetry By Alan Britt

In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador for the first cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. During his visit he did TV, radio and newspaper interviews gave presentations and read poetry in Quito, Otavalo, Ambatto, Guayaquil and Guaranda, plus the international literary conference sponsored by La hermandad de las palabras 2015 in Babahoyo. He served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. He read poetry and presented the “Modern Trends in U.S. Poetry” at the VII International Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada, May 2013. Recent readings include the Biblioteca Comunal at the Ecuadorian Consulate in Queens, Long Island City, NY, November 2015, the 6x3 Exhibition at the Jadite Gallery in Hell’s Kitchen/Manhattan in December 2014, the Fountain Street Fine Art Gallery in Framingham, MA in June 2014, and the Union City Museum of Art/William V. Musto Cultural Center in Union City, NJ sponsored by LaRuche Arts Contemporary Consortium (LRACC) in May, 2014. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. New interviews for Lake City Lights and Schuylkill Valley Journal are available at http://lakecitypoets.com/AlanBritt.html and www.svjlit.com/aninterviewwithalanbritt. He has published 15 books of poetry, his latest include Violin Smoke (bilingual English/Hungarian): 2015; Lost Among the Hours: 2015, Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013 and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.


HOUSES OF THE HOLY

Stunned like a catfish,
iron pliers cracking skull bone
that splinters bird of paradise feathers
all the way to tail fins tapping
for all their worth
the warped boards of the Lake Worth Pier.

Stunned like that again? I think not.
So stick your needle-nosed, leader wire
pliers wherever they pinch & grab,
but don't show 'em in public lest you
invite the most god awful fire & brimstone
into your esteemed houses of the holy.



THE ROYAL SCAM

(After Steely Dan)

I await the squealing saxophone.

It arrives
on rolling bolero waves.

Squawked and mugged
over and over.

The piano inhales.

Chiricahua guitars
search for oasis.

Red and white feathers loosen from the sax,
then drift over a neon city
leaving fossils embedded in granite
high above the dark tinted windows
of Capitalism.



THE EXPANDING BRAIN

Where are you now?

I’m in my brain.

What part of your brain?

I don’t know exactly.

Well, are you in the reptile brain,
the mammalian brain . . . ?

Ha!

Why do you scoff?

The human brain is more complex
than a few Jungian archetypes.
I roam the brain the way mangrove roots
finger an inlet’s dark waist,
feeling each root’s fingertip caress the emotional gills of salamanders
one moment,
then scratch the vermilion silt of intellect the next.

I might live primarily in one hemisphere
of the brain for six months,
simultaneously inching, slithering
into several lit and unlit rooms,
little emotional rooms
where I stroll freely
like August wind
through an abandoned Maryland barn.

At times I sleep in this beautiful barn
and watch its shoulder blades ignite                                                
into a beautiful goldenblue fire.

Actually, there’s so much of the unexplored brain left
that I sometimes believe I’m a wild animal,
a leopard prowling utter darkness,
a toucan excreting large seeds from its dream
onto the brain’s pine needle floor.
In my secret and humid places
orchids explode with exotic beaks, raspberry wings,
and swan necks of shivering light.

So, you see, I’ve barely covered
any great distance at all
inside this mountainous vegetable
we call the human brain.
Often, I know exactly where I am
and where I’m going in my brain.
Sometimes, with a flickering tongue of intellect,
I taste flowing mists
from mysterious universes I’ve yet to visit.

And I cherish long walks
through the gilded halls of paradox.
I feel amethyst joy when the intelligent coyote
drags around the thunderous tail of a crocodile.
You see, this coyote has an intuitive understanding
of Heidegger and Eliade,
plus a weakness for cabernet as dry
as the abandoned skin of a speckled cobra.

I take it there’s no point in asking
about the New Brain?

DOCUMENTING EPIPHANY

Monks   humming   salvation    24/7  might   consider   a 

Chardonnay   sloshing    the    Cuban    coast—smuggled 

aboard—smuggled  inside   the  livers of  drunken  popes,

hammerheads   &   red-tailed  foxes    tattooing   two-lane 

asphalt Butler Road lit by four florescent blues exploding, 

not  in  the  usual  sense, but  exploding, nevertheless, like 

proteins     from    the    barbed    tendrils    of   our   DNA. 

ODE TO FELLOW TRAVELERS

Blue   snakeskin    fingerprints'   white    flour

impressions    along     portfolio    known    as 

Lloyd—that    &     nothing     more,     except 

briefcase Lloyd, Jr. & perhaps a chambermaid 

with   seashell  buttons   unloosing  her   white 

poppy collar—but Lloyd has other   plans that 

don't include boring  Tuesdays  or  pouring his 

life savings into a GM gas tank.  Lucky Lloyd 

still    has    time    to    make   such   ludicrous 

decisions.       But       that's       our        Lloyd.