Brick

Doorstop, tarp-weight, scorpion-killer,
half-brick of my heart – feed me visions
of violated glass and tied-on hateful notes.
How is it, faux stone, you have shed
but a few red specks? In one year
you moved millimeters on your own.
Heft of conscience, leftover masonry:
you are expendable but refuse to go.


*

Does anyone with a house NOT have a loose brick or cinder block lying about on the porch or in the yard or garage?

Anyway -- an exercise in focusing intently on the trivial. Anything can be an object for lyrical meditation. Cheap emblems: people I barely knew, events I was on the periphery of, that sit on the grand, wrap-around porch of my mind like bricks and half-bricks, decorations, coasters, unread paperbacks, fly strips, dirty ash trays, gas cans, broken curtain rods, etc. Possibly I am a stray brown leaf, a bit of lint or less, on thousands of memory-porches, myself. Also a broken chaise longue, a rarely-used exercise machine ("As Seen on TV"), an antique wagon wheel, or a genuine Navajo dream catcher with maybe one feather left intact: something once of value or at least utility, long ago, in numerous peoples' lives.

Whereas I am a mad collector, and tend to everything and everyone as carefully as I can, and my memory-porch is a sad though impressive museum with no theme at all (except lost love).