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.......The Poetry Of.
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Richard Brooks
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LOST ....................
Someone ....................
needs to be banging out a song ....................
on an old ....................
upright pianny ....................
and someone sit under the apple tree ....................
sitting and waiting for kisses ....................
under a sky spread out like a scarf of stars ....................
their stockings rolled ....................
not gartered- as the steel mills ....................
crank out heavy, metal cars decked out in chrome, ....................
with fenders that stretch forever and the ladies wear ....................
My Sin ....................
and sing in close, three-part harmony. ....................
The kind ....................
we never got right again. The kind ....................
got lost in Viet Nam ....................
or the Reagan years ....................
of imported, Japanese cars ....................
and plastic everything, like the lightweight ....................
daddies and sons ....................
since. ....................
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The very air we breathe ....................
catalytic convertered ....................
down to puny, likely to stall ....................
while big business pumps its cancer in the waters ....................
while we all protect ....................
what little we have left, dream of whole butterfat lives ....................
and sugar- ....................
rationed, but real- not blow away snow ....................
to keep us slim- and women ....................
with serious thighs and high ....................
high heels. ....................
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What We Carry Over
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'Our little life ....................
is rounded with a sleep' ....................
and each day ....................
too. ....................
You never know ....................
from pillow to pillow what color the world will be ....................
at first eye open; there's cough and coffee. The ....................
gathering in of yesterday's laundry ....................
to see what's permanently stained and what is ....................
PermaPress, unchanged ....................
and smooth as a newborn's skin. The love, ....................
the love is last to open up, slow ....................
as you check the faces, the ones ....................
you go to sleep with, ones with wrinkles and the ....................
chapped cheek, the chewed, dried lips of worry, ....................
the perfect memory of who they are in your life ....................
their waking too and throwing their voices ....................
into the fog. ....................
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The More Things Change
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Quonset huts ....................
sprouted during the forties ....................
to house soldiers ....................
and equipment, still arch ....................
low and corrugated ....................
in any city ....................
in the United States. After the war, ....................
though painted up and commandeered as ....................
sales emporiums, storage hangers, they're the kind of buildings ....................
never can be disguised well. They're the sewage pipes ....................
of what it meant to throw a generation ....................
at the guns. They sit in uneasy quiet now, despite ....................
their often garish skins ....................
that flake, revealing camouflage ....................
our lives are never far from. We just turn the music ....................
louder for a time ....................
invent ....................
a new dance, then ....................
shoulder arms. ....................
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