I owe WeatherWax for this one. I did a fairly heavy handed rewrite of a poem of his some time ago and gave it a new title, same as this one. Lately, I've had a bad case of writer's block and that title kept coming to mind. So thanks for the inspiration, Weather.Just a run of bricks, black on white,
flat and trued against the plumb
by automatic hands and wandering
mind. The layer does not know
the pattern he weaves, slapping
brick over mortar dreaming heavy
dreams as the wall expands.
Black and white opposing
as on a board for chess and he thinks
perhaps he should learn the game
then the pattern changes into tile
of a diner a long while past
where they served coffee strong
with or without a bracer.
A classic that diner, black and white
where he left his keys and dropped
his hopes. Ten years gone, his car still
there most every night, right by the fake
gas pumps where he watched her
leaving for something better
than a dreamer who builds walls
from a string of words banged
onto the keyboard, only coincidental
calculation, watching the run
dangle across empty space. Letters laid
in courses–like bricks in a face-work
of phonemes without
concept of what building
they form, house, or church,
morgue or hospital, prison or factory,
or maybe just a cheap checkerboard
diner. Just a run of words, a wall,
or a sanctuary, he taps another
brick in place, searching for the next
pattern, listening for a sacred word.
4 comments:
My father is a stone mason. Most of my life he owned a masonry company and i grew up watching dusty men slap moist globs of mortar onto walls and tap rocks or bricks into place then deftly sweep the excess mortar away before repeating the whole thing all over again. This poem was very visually vivid for me. Good stuff!
I liked the way the lines ran on and on into each other. It's just the kind of thoughts that flitter around inside the head when doing some repetitive job like that, and the story inside revealed its tragedy without being tragic, just another in a long line of happenings like the bricks themselves.
Thanks to both of you for the comments. Orianna, I actually witnessed the very same thing you describe when I was a child because my father was a building contractor for a while and I liked the masons. Growing up around hardware and building gave me a lot of metaphors to play with. LOL
Roust, you picked out the device I was using in this and are exactly correct in what you said.
Thanks again, good to know that I'm on the right track with this.
is there any reason for the use of 'as'? At times it seems like it is overdone with the use of that word. Perhaps also an overuse age on the word 'and' & 'or' as well.
What about this line?
Ten years gone, his car still
there most every night,
Isn't most night and most every night the same? Is there a need to use most and every in the same line? This doesn't seem to work for me. What about still there most nights?
I could be wrong.
'A classic that diner,' that made me think for a second and even confused me a bit. Was it supposed to be a classic diner, that or are you saying that, that diner was like a classic movie?
Altogether it was a wonderful poem with great emotion and feeling. The imagery is used to great effect to compound the sound, the sadness and the hurt. Well done.
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