Day 23

Brick by Brick

for Gwendolyn Brooks

I was never a King-
but that didn't mean
I didn't have a dream.

No one asked me.

They would just say,
“How do you do,
and how do you do that
on cue?
Sing the blues
In your new shoes?”

They knew this woman had stories
Sitting on top of seven stories,

Wrinkles, lines, and worries,

But this chicken in the coop,
Looked like a Bronzeville beauty from the stoop.

Brick by Brick
those young men tried to climb
up the prison wall of that tenement
gnawing on gummy spearmint
they would lean in close and pull a line.
They'd shine their watches and ask for the time.

They could not see the dream had floated,
they could not see my bare feet were bloated,
This mother hen in the coop,
Looked like a Bronzeville virgin from the stoop.

So Brick by Brick
those young men tried to climb
to reach that floating dream a second time.
To catch my reason from where I sat,
yes, I was aware of all of that.