Bricks
That’s a nice truck you’re diving. Would sure hate to see it repo’d because
you missed a payment, because you need the money so you could eat to eat.
We’re walking to work now, putting in all the hours.
To eat. And maybe sleep
in our little hovels,
the ones we are allowed to afford
with the price of gasoline, bread, milk, and eggs,
and straw to make bricks,
all going up and up,
ascending like a feather caught
in a whirlwind of hot air updraft,
swirling in the slick narratives of entitlement,
casually spun
as if there’s no price to pay for abdicated responsibility
or cost for betrayal of allies,
no penalty for unbridled hubris, bigotry,
and the pointing at others yelling, “Adulteress! Slacker!”
while cheating the poor, raping their children, picking their pockets,
and resigning school kids to target practice fodder for anyone’s gun-toting discontent
or blood lust entertainment.
As the Proverb goes in regard to such faithless ways, “She eats and wipes her mouth and says,
‘I’ve done nothing wrong’”
The elite preachers and politicians with the thick rings on their manicured fingers and
bedazzled watches on their delicate wrists
say that Jesus came that his followers
might have a life in abundance
while they soil your sleeve with the filth from their lips,
but you and your misplaced loyalties say “thank you”
and keep on walking in your golden sneakers made in China.
Christmastime lore slips from your numbed memory, “every time
a bell rings, an angel gets their wings”
and is replaced by the notion that at the dull, soul-deadening sound
of the toll of a bell, an eagle’s wing feathers drop like pebbles
on their way to hell, but land in your path along the way instead,
and get kicked up into your pretty shoes
as you’re out here, walking,
refusing to believe that there will be no rising up
without an uprising.
But you keep walking, pale-faced slave to the grift.
Go to your job, clock in those hours to feed you pallor-stricken children
so they can grow to be good soldiers, rising through the ranks,
to achieve enough merit worthy of bloody maiming wound or death
on the battlefield-
a strip of waterfront property in Israel,
their corpse or limbs graced with honored resting place
same as clippings of straw
entombed in bricks
made to build a golfing resort state and dynastic tower in Gaza
for the “world people” and you are
too weary to grieve
and too cluelessly blind to the significance
of what the hell this all really means.
Here you are still
out here walking, stooped over now,
stone heart heavy with the weight of denial
and muffled cries from its cauterized flesh begging for surrender
to its weight,
a forward free-fall,
face to the floor repentance,
but you keep stumbling on,
clutching your culture war hate around you
like a cloak of no colors,
knit from recycled grievances, fear-mongering talking points,
and dark loyalty pledges to people who don’t give a damn about you
and all your walking,
having abandoned you on the side of this dirt road
without a thought,
hoping it may never occur to you
that their hate may be impenetrable for now,
but love, should you choose it
is invincible.
Sandra K King copyright 2025
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