bricks aspire
Do bricks aspire to transcend
The clay that constitutes them?
Do they make more of their existence than
Dividing up the air?
Is there escape from regimen?
A freedom from the mortar pen?
A time to languish in a wind that comes
From everywhere at once?
The ancient, vandalizing sun
An antecedent of Sherman
Be mesmerized by its incessant power
Or be compelled to move.
For in that stare that's just begun
There lies a bleak proposition
The tendency to gape in half-assed awe
And never prove it wrong.
No thing that ever built upon itself slept late.
No island broke away blind of the blessed strait.
Do limbs desire more rootless homes?
More work than dangling pine cones?
The grim audacity to wish for violent
Falling and decay?
It's every estuary's rose
The upturn of the nomad nose
A Sutpen's Hundred built if only for the sake
Of falling down.
Do tongues conspire to banish prose
And strain to aching for what throws
Or stinks or caves upon itself or merely
Glows more than the rest?
Beyond the blinds you separate
Will you ever eviscerate
The haggard corpse that serves as paperweight
To every single soul?
The runes inscribed there must be paid
Attention to and not evaded:
Forge a fleshly howl to fork
The mighty rolling on and on.
© 1996 John Brocato
The clay that constitutes them?
Do they make more of their existence than
Dividing up the air?
Is there escape from regimen?
A freedom from the mortar pen?
A time to languish in a wind that comes
From everywhere at once?
The ancient, vandalizing sun
An antecedent of Sherman
Be mesmerized by its incessant power
Or be compelled to move.
For in that stare that's just begun
There lies a bleak proposition
The tendency to gape in half-assed awe
And never prove it wrong.
No thing that ever built upon itself slept late.
No island broke away blind of the blessed strait.
Do limbs desire more rootless homes?
More work than dangling pine cones?
The grim audacity to wish for violent
Falling and decay?
It's every estuary's rose
The upturn of the nomad nose
A Sutpen's Hundred built if only for the sake
Of falling down.
Do tongues conspire to banish prose
And strain to aching for what throws
Or stinks or caves upon itself or merely
Glows more than the rest?
Beyond the blinds you separate
Will you ever eviscerate
The haggard corpse that serves as paperweight
To every single soul?
The runes inscribed there must be paid
Attention to and not evaded:
Forge a fleshly howl to fork
The mighty rolling on and on.
© 1996 John Brocato