Clifford Brooks
Poems
from the new collection Old Gods
This Weeping Affliction
Worry, memory
wound like an 8-day clock.
Awake—my will,
a fetching corpse
fidgeting—never still.
I do not ask you to understand.
Dawn, daybreak, the cock—
it makes my mouth lock
on the taste of adult candy.
Possessed, a quiet skeleton.
I do not listen.
Do not whisper my name.
I do not ask you to understand.
A skiff
of ragged veins and mercury,
my future hobbled.
Hungry, immediately
the morning
reminds me:
Addiction to actively
looking back
is anomie.
I do not ask you to understand.
Anomie
Blue lights, whoop-whoop,
cops, swerving, shouts.
An ant winkled out
by a baboon.
Lions before a fawn.
Blood drawn,
naked and scrawny.
Apathetic, parasitic,
a rubber spoon,
no bail money.
Anorexic, tremors, twitch,
scheming, barking.
Fourth arrest demands
undivided attention.
Inside: Orange the equalizer,
shoes sans laces,
a decent lawyer,
one lover, all Plexiglas faces.
This hinders
my career.
This endears me
to no one.
Twilight nears
windows
too low
to see stars.
Seventeen days,
prison without bars.
A clown fish
caught in anemone.
Bacchus Tries to Retire
Bacchus sits back with his dignity intact,
itching from the stitches of mismanagement.
“It is not romantic. It’s avoidably tragic
to waste one’s life as a drunk.”
A demigod, semi-sod, speaks to his breed,
“Broken stereotypes are the addiction.
Fear, the artist’s cruelest affliction.”
Jaw squared, Bacchus still
bears the marks of cruel intention.
The barroom is poverty. Royalty repeating,
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
His youth, middle age, my forties—centuries—
not all sad songs, not sad even mostly.
Still, havoc remains spiritually costly.
He whispers to no one: “You can’t get it back.
Not a vagabond nor a god.”
A moment of silence, the cross, and a nod.
“Ridin’ stars, rusty pipes: Anything but free.
Inevitably kin note their family tree
drops another meth-addled apple.
Cidered inside a fermented chapel.”
Soul’s weakest smoke, broken spirit’s harbor,
a life sans light, a drug-induced torpor.
Then Ariadne,
played by Theseus, stumbled upon me
passed out more than asleep.
Out of the Athenian’s devious plan
asleep, safe, unaware, father damned.
She laid bare beside me, eternally.
Aware, longer—sober days.
Ariadne stays.
“Close to being consumed,
apathy was my altar.
Self-pity, a pathetic, fetid womb.”
Bacchus stretches his back.
The man blows smoke:
“One thing coaxed me out of that tomb,”
His eyes hovered over his ocean view.
“Peaceful, humble, healthy, subdued,
respite enjoyed by few.
Ariadne, I stand a half man
for you.”
Good folks:
I did not expire
in the addled by-and-by
because death-by-cliché
is the worst way to die.
Wolf
Be it Beowulf
or Virginia Woolf,
heroism
in my undrowned life
lifting rocks
from deep
pockets.
Not heroic,
deaf against silence,
wonderfully made, unafraid,
content
and undulant.
I might be that bird
dancing while
casting a net for people.
No cry. No foul.
No church.
Wrong derby.
I am a monstrous barn owl.
Wear the hat and cravat
of a bona fide man.
The smell of leather,
the sternum
pregnant
with laughter.
Be it Beowulf
or Virginia Woolf—
be Beethoven,
sitting up,
deciding solitude
is company
enough.
An Ode to Autism
Almost awake, floating between snow leopards, I slumber under Great-
Grandfather’s desk. A reptilian child, my mind fixed, unreasonable,
incinerating, dreaming, unaware of the Great Out There: no squelching
school buses, no crowds, no close talkers.
Sleep: Foggy banks of sleep. A great tank below, enormous koi (blue and
yellow) circle slow-moving light. I, the man, am undetectable neon.
An invisible man, unstuck, in-luck, steering his steam-powered riverboat
straight into
white noise—comfortable.
…
Awake, uninhibited and un-drunk.
My mind? Where is my mind? Typically, war-torn mountains—more in
adored valleys these days.
In a diner: People off buses, babies cry, and the sound of chewing.
Aware of what everyone’s doing.
On the kitchen’s window ledge sits sugar, salt, and cinnamon—content
in place. The waitress bats her lashes. I imagine sparrows in her eyes—
flirting someone tells me. Missed but un-mourned.
Every nook and corner, song, ring tone, and odor—this moment in
vivid technicolor. Awake. (Breathe.) Serene against a riot. Don’t grow
blue.
God whispers, “I am in autism, too.”
Oyster of Addicted Pearls
In my soul’s chewed center is the fox.
Deep-biting elbows, fighting like the third monkey
almost on the ark—just short of saving.
Lungs scorched from oxygen’s absence.
The weakness of man plunges me deeper,
a foolish flesh refusing its fur.
Less than a monkey, much more a money-bound thing –
a lazy Essene out of water,
drowning—the fox.
My disease in an oyster
of addicted pearls. I sink,
ocean above unbroken.
Clifford Brooks was born and raised in Athens, Georgia. His poetry publications include the books The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart, and the chapbook Exiles of Eden. Old Gods, his third full-length book of poetry, is available through Mercer University Press.
Clifford is founder of The Southern Collective Experience, a cooperative of writers, musicians, and visual artists, which publishes the journal of culture The Blue Mountain Review. He hosts the National Public Radio show Dante’s Old South and co-hosts the podcast This Business of Music & Poetry. He is an instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, Teachable and Noetic. His teaching includes courses on creative writing, editing, and thriving as an autistic person.
Website: cliffbrooks.com
Instagram: @cliffbrooks3
Facebook: facebook.com/charlescliffordbrooksIII
Twitter: @CliffBrooks3
