Bricklayer
No crime in hard work.
I earned it.
Always worth it.
I’m a bricklayer.
Stack the weights.
Never show up late.
Put on the music.
Get to work.
Don’t put down the weights.
Feed the machine.
How bad do you want it?
No going back.
Born to starve.
Hungary for more.
Be a warrior.
I’m a bricklayer.
Go to battle.
Show the anger.
Be a worrier.
His wheelbarrow wobbled
Across the broken sidewalk
Toward the job site
Where the work was
Some girls in yellow taxis rode by and whistled at his tanned arms.
His brown boots got chalked
as he scuttled and scooted
The heavy load
And he thought about her
Again
He was so clean and polished last night
When they sat down for dinner
Around perfect white cloths
So uncomfortable for him
Only to hear her say,”I’m leaving.”
Her skin was like a pond in the morning
Before anything was awake.
Her eyes were like Grecian isles
Even her nose was a perfectly acute angled
Piece of her face.
He was a bricklayer and knew his place.
And he would never ever get to kiss her face
Again.
So today he dumped out his wheelbarrow full of bricks and started building his walls again.
Third day on her honeymoon
Sharon asks Butch what it's like
for a man before he gets married.
A bricklayer by trade,
and a man of few words,
Butch doesn’t know what to say
but he knows Sharon has always
liked to go bowling; in fact,
that’s how this odd couple met.
So he tries an analogy although
he doesn’t know it’s an analogy.
From age 12 on, Butch tells her, he
always felt like he had a bowling ball
in his pants; that was a problem.
He couldn’t find pants to fit.
When he became a man he joined
bowling leagues, three or four, and
went bowling as often as he could.
Then Butch tells Sharon he met her
and knew he had to quit bowling
having found a lane of his own.
Donal Mahoney
Daily toil is yours
Bricks all laid in perfect form
Art from skilful hands
For my talented husband
have read a few great senryu today and thought I'd try one.
My friend was a stone Mason
built houses made of words
usually rhyming, I suppose,
but that really matters not-
the message is the essence,
the reason...we build
our worlds the way we wish
our buildings of words
are strong willed.
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