Elephant

The elephant, the thick-heavy wrinkle,
Shows no movement. 
He stands in the room like a defendant.
Like boots put in a box, he may not walk again. 

I’d like to read, or watch TV, but there he is. 
The crushed sofa, the love seat—
There’s no place to be. 
So, busily, we make the elephant a pet;

Busily, busily we ignore and he remains. 
Once, I reach around him.
Twice, you try to find me and (I know)
There’s almost-absolutely-no-one there. 

The ghost of my shadow tells you
To not worry the beast,
To not even think of mice or make a move
That might disrupt the elephanty peace. 

And though we want to forgive,
We cannot forget HIM. 
So, we go on tiptoe while he stands there:
A sad sturdy brow and four enormous feet.

On Disagreement

These bricks, in our hands,
rise up like storms to wreck our plans
on disagreement—to lay up, or pull down?  
These mortar joints and tools
break the arms of worker-fools.
For us, there is no harbor in this town.

If bricks could attest,
They’d raise a cairn to our unrest;
This post would tell of work yet to be done.
It can only point the way
back to where we quit the fray.
For us, there is no haven from the sun.

These bricks build choices;
they raise questions without voices.
The answers are chisels on a stone.
Bricks can compromise;
they won’t bruise or get black eyes!
For us, deals are made of flesh and bone.

These bricks will destroy—
rise up like lonely in a boy—
while, ignorant, I try to keep my life.
…we can build…we can rise…
there is time to gain the prize.
For us, the shelter stone is in the strife.

cairn: a marker, often a pile of stones

Broken

Between us, on a tabletop of glass,
a working hand becomes a hammer.

A man wants his way.
He won’t take no.

Blood, though not spilled, boils.
Shards ring out and sing

the ways we will not mend—
how the heart, like a fractal,
repeats a pattern of breaks
and splits when magnified.

My heart rages.  It pushes blood
along a crooked line of strife

until I heed the rattle-crack
and attend the bang of anger.

The embittered rackets rise until
the broken pieces lay at rest between us.

Amid Old Friends

Amid old friends, a working hand
comes down hard.  Fear falls on the land,
as a fist becomes a hammer,
a glass tabletop to shatter.
A man, afraid, will take a stand

when, not according to his plan,
he receives a humble brand
and is loath to drop the matter
amid old friends.

Shards sing out how rage will expand
into violence, will demand,
with a loud rattle of anger
and a bang of bad behavior,
that we heed a fool’s reprimand
amid old friends.