Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, POEM FOR MY BROTHER TIMMY, by QUINCY TROUPE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

POEM FOR MY BROTHER TIMMY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We walked streets / of river-rhythm town counting
Last Line: With a brother's deep love
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


We walked streets
of river-rhythm town counting
cars that passed
for nothing else better to do
warm cold days now packed
away in straw

& when at home on Delmar
& Leonard streets, living over Joe's
Super Market, on weekends
would repeat from our window
the same ritual
all over again

this counting of passing cars
(you took the Fords
eye took the Chevrolets
but the Cadillacs would win.)

& from our window on saturday nights
we would watch the drunken fights
across the street
at Meyer's tavern
where people died with
ridiculous ease from street surgeons' knives

Summers brought picnics & barbecues
baseball games & hot funky parties
where we styled hard laid off
in bad summer rags

& on warm idle days
on concrete playground courts
eye would beat the hell out of you
playing basketball until it got dark

In winter, we would bundle up tight
in fast shrinking clothes
bought three years before
when daddy was making money playing baseball
in Batista's Cuba, or bought when
mother was working downtown being
a deskclerk at Sonnenfeld's

& on frozen winter nights
we would fight like two vicious alley cats
over who pulled the cover off of who
afterwards, we would sleep side by side
in the dark in our own spilt blood

& if someone was ever foolish enough
to mess with either one of us
they had to contend with the both
of us sho-nuff righteously stompin
eleven-thousand corns on their
sorry asses

But time has worn away those days
as water rubs smooth in time
a rough & jagged stone

You took the blues of those days
filled with sun dues & blood & turned them
into rhythms you played
superbly on your talking drums
before you heard the calling of your Lord sanctified

Eye took that beautiful song
you gave to me & turned into poetry
this poem eye give to you now

with a brother's deep love





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