A Brick Is A Poem

quick poem to start the day

A Brick Is A Poem

An object soaring through a window,

shattering glass, shattering barriers between

inside and out, between image-object,

subject-object, between two-distinct-images-

mediated-by-the-viewer’s-engagement,

a brick is a poem launching through

the spectacle of perception: it breaks,

it makes, it’s a weapon, it’s a chisel—

destruction and creation contain bricks:

like the yin, it is a symbol of darkness, shade,

passivity, comfort, earth, of places meant

to contain us, shelter us, and like the yang,

it is the sun, our passion, action, labor, activity.

A brick is the womb of an idea, the starting

point at which thought and action converge

like primer in a pistol, or grain in the baking

of bread. With it, we can build a house, or

we can bring one down. A brick is a poem

when it fractures the windshield of a police

cruiser, and no less so when the final one

is lathered in cement and laid upon a home.

A brick, like an empty page, is potential.

A brick in your hands, like a pen, is power.