Author: Michael Angelo

I write to cope with the world,

like how a drinker drinks to life.

I wet my whistle on the fountain pen,

diving deep into the bottle of my mind.

I hide there surrounded by my own darkness,

part of which is gunk picked up from time.

Ever seen spat-out gum on a street?

After a while it becomes a black blotch;

afterwards it’s just part of the scene,

along with homelessness

and people consumed by broken dreams.

Well, that’s all inside of me,

blended with the misspellings

and grammatical issues of my birth;

I can’t handle it all without spilling

my drink along the page.

There sat a brick on the corner

of Chelten and Green.

It was red, dusty and stained

with anger.

Anger because someone had thrown it

through the window of a church.

Angry because shattered shards

took everyone’s reflection with them.

It wasn’t the first time, you see,

that rage and brick met head to head.

It wasn’t the first time

foreheads bled.

Over the years, different hands

attached to different voices

declaring different causes

have picked up the brick for their aims,

and regardless of target, homegrown or foreign,

no one ever asked

the brick how it felt, what it wanted to do.

No, it was simply chosen

by arms far larger than itself,

gripped by steaming red nails

much harder than itself.

Truthfully, the brick had no natural rage.

It wasn’t at all a thing of violence.

What it dreamed of was construction,

the building of things,

from homes for the abandoned,

to bridges between understandings.

The brick truly was

softer than what others thought,

and when the Powers had learned this,

oh, how they scowled—

how they hurled bloody hate.

And for one last time, someone grabbed

and tossed it—this time out

of a window instead of inside one.

There it lied, exactly where it fell,

on the corner of Chelten and Green,

abandoned by those that once had need

of its innocence and generosity—

abandon by all

except wind and rain,

except time, except pain—except

the funny thing was

this rain and this time

became its greatest friends

because pain over time, fades with cool rain,

and through weather

the bitter got better,

the hot red dust clearing away.

Yes, that’s right, the violence and causes,

and even the people,

melted away.

The brick was no more,

and no more a brick,

what remains

today on the corner of Chelten and Green

is a flower as sapphire as day.