january 2020

Derek D. Brown

Derek D. Brown is an author, poet, and venture expressionist born and raised in Los Angeles. He seeks to speak for those too embarrassed or proud to claim their truth, through a lens of male vulnerability uncommon in the urban jungles of today.His premiere collection of poems entitled Articulate Scars: Comfortable Silences and Reluctant Tears (Still Waters Publishing, 2017) was met with wide acclaim from poetry virgins and seasoned wordsmiths alike.His work has also been anthologized in Voices from Leimert Park Redux: Los Angeles Poetry Anthology (Harriet Tubman Press, 2017), Lummox #7 (Lummox Press, 2018), Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired By Horror (Moon Tide Press, 2018) as well as These Pages Speak: A YouTube Creative Writing Course Reader (World Stage Press, 2016) used by teachers to assist their students in the completion of college-level creative writing assignments. He has been a featured attraction at numerous performance venues, educational institutes and festivals. His mix of humor and truth in punchy poems has deeply embedded him in the fabric of the poetry scene. In 2018 he added the title thespian to his resume after joining the casts of Love Beyond Doubt and To Love or Leave, two standing room only spoken word musicals at the Regency West Theatre in Los Angeles. You can stay abreast of his latest and greatest at: www.derekdbrown.com

WORK OF ART

Architecturally speaking, I am endless Picasso

A cautionary tale written in bloody bottle caps

on the petrified streets of past procrastinations

I’ve lain limp too long in comfortable constructs

dressing in funhouse mirrors

dulling the ooh of my hue

But like moonlight, I’m a nocturnal emission

so despite my blahzay calm

I am always the brightest dark in the room

While striving for perfection

that elusive illusion of grandeur

I realized

it was just a witch hunt

to pitchfork and torch my nature

away from all the thin skinned townsfolk

Now

having gnawed off that string of garlic

that kept my beast at bay,

I wave my freak flag proudly

Dancing for those too timid

to redefine their tribal rhythm

the frantically

chill

freak show

on permanent sabbatical

from a false asylum

No matter where you find your GOD…

He or she makes

mistakes

HOPE FULL

I spun a starfish in the sand

like an old rotary dial phone,

hoping you’d answer

The briny whisk of the ocean air

distracts from the memoir of your musk

but It’s oaky charisma defiantly endures

I placed a handwritten letter in an old whiskey bottle,

hoping the benevolent tide sees fit to grease your palm with it

Then,

once uncorked and read,

you would somehow be pied piper’d to this shore,

clutching my confession to your palpitant heart

your eyes,

two boiling pots of reciprocity

Despite knowing my dream is just that,

I painted my face in these starlet hues

longing to be cast in the lead role of your slumber

Perhaps a scene of reverse closure,

where you are the lovelorn ingénue

trying to conjure the courage to be out of patience

and I, in the 11th hour,

emerge from a receding curtain of sea foam

to find the best part of destiny

sitting hopelessly still

awaiting my rescue