on the design of robert bell (poem from chapbook)

THEWINDOWSAREMADEOFBRICK!

the section for smoking is called the smoking section

you can smoke against a wall, against a fence – the wall

is red, brick, color, and faces, some smiling toothless

the bricks fall partial to groaning, the foul human complaint,

bickering flies like pesky birds – birds live in brick,

a generation, families of beaks pecking

the soft part of the red stone. maybe they chip the mortar

until their beaks are concrete cased; they carve

nests like comb into the walls, the bricks are birds the

bricks

are

birds

the brick is alive, the brick

exists language, graffiti

high stalks of brick, here

the brick is alive, on brick

i put my cigarette out on the brick and scream mao, diddy mao and

they watch me leave the section for smoking, called the smoking section the halls

are

painted

bricks

the

halls

are

painted

bricks

some halls are fish scales, sunburn – sores and topography, genius

all over and pulsing and with wings and birds and capitalized red

letters: shocked and drooling, necessary golf shoes to walk course

side from side, brick from brick isn’t the right material, brick from

gold, brick from paper, brick from cocaine, brick from frustration

brick from lack luster deprivation

, brick for every word you write for brick for all

words you dress up and puppet in a pretty little theater, bricks for

the sold out, bricks for shopping carts and cash and bricks for

salt and ink and bricks for gold stamps that are round and have saw

teeth…the bricks

are years the bricks are years