Long Bricklayer Poems

What will they do with Grandma?

What will they do with Grandma, now that she is old?
No longer able to fend for herself, by her home-help they've been told
She's always been there for her children but...

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At every turn in time, I wish to live the best dream 
The best wish everyone could have
That caress the precious grace per luck 
Which colors achievement
And can be counted on as reinforcement cum hard...

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Olive Frazier

1854 – 1895

To my many august friends,
Mere survivors under this hungry consuming California sky.
Before you can reach high to the stars, my friends,
Both feet must firmly be set upon the ground first.
This, in essence,...

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They Said

Don’t talk when big people are talking
Leave their presence now, start walking
Be a good boy don’t ever backchat
Greet a big person, take off your hat

You got bushman blood, hair’s not straight
To be dark of...

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I once knew a bricklayer named Bruno 
And a lunatic known as Joan, 
A Buddhist some called Judas 
And a policeman who was always stoned.

Now Bruno wasn’t brilliant
But he sure could build a wall –...

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In the late 1970s I was a bricklayer, and for about half a year we worked in a new housing allotment along a state highway in Ohio.  There were towns in the area, and...

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Life Weary, So Hungry I Could Eat A Dry Bone


Trekking through fire breathing desert, yes all alone
Mouth full of sand, shattered heart so heavy too
Life weary, so hungry I could eat a dry bone 
Looking...

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I, betray my soul, when I utter, no,
When I feel, yes; and my ignorance show;
To constant communication, within,
Hummed by God, like the breeze blowing in...!

My heart was like crystal: clear! Transparent!
Sky: devoid of dust-layers; with...

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I once dated a chef …
I was worried about getting a bun in the oven
But when I saw him mincing across the kitchen
I knew I wouldn’t be getting my fingers burned!

I once dated a fireman…
Oh...

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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...

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Do not tell me they are job creators

Sitting and watching their money

Like pit bulls

Deaf to the screams of the innocent

Web designer lawyer and bricklayer alike

At this last hour of decaying madness

Of system that doesn't listen

Machinelike...

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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...

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He was told he was gifted at an age of ten, 
Gifted in every subject that he had.
His mum said he would become a prodigy, 
He would be an intellectual nomad.

Shifted to the next year...

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Rebuilding what was torn down
might take endless effort,
and it can be definitely done
without recalling the hurt.


To visualize it again,
it's putting together the ideas 
that started it in adolescence...
will it be the same dream as then?


Some...

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Words are the tools of my trade
a carpenter choses to use wood
with which great things he makes
my choice will always be words

Just like an artist, a picture I make
instead of using paint, just like
a bricklayer...

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