Heavy

Castles, Concrete & Consequence

A brick, flecked with red.
Wet, warm, 
Heavy.

Violence.
Where it shouldn't be.
Four men. Would-be thieves,
Where they shouldn't be.
And me, with the red god in my hand,
Where it shouldn't be.

But needs to be, tonight.

Suspended,
A makeshift ball peen hammer,
A lightning bolt,
Anti-life, hand-held.

Dirt, grit, and grey concrete,
God the weight of it, the consequence
Of two men dead already.
Of their lives, emptied
Out in my living room.

Dangerous,
How fast my wrist, catspaw quick,
Had become proficient
At death-dealing,
And sealing fates
With Kinetic indifference.

Contracts without signatures,
Honored.

A weapon, as if that's all it's ever been,
In a hand that should be trembling,
But instead,
Primed, locked, loaded and ready.
A thunderclap in waiting.
A receipt.
It's blunt force, traumatizing.

Such suspense
In those fishing gut tendons,
Tied taut in wrist, and grip
Of the inanimate
Potential for violence.
Dumb as dynamite,
Strong as ten men...
If you hit them from behind.

Brushwork, the art of survival.
Painting sunsets.
Pollock with a brick. Slick
with the product 
Of threat and response.
A rectangle, rough around the edges,
To turn three-dimensional threat
Into two dimensional spatter.

A brick, flecked with red.
Wet. Warm.
Heavy.

The tool user swings again,
Connects with cranium
And cartilage. Concrete
Collapses cathedrals to ruin.

To bone fragments, and the grisly
Business of the blunt brick-brought braining
Of another human being–

Bang!

...

...

"The fuck?"

I look up and see my killer's eyes,
Wide and wet and trembling.
He couldn't be older than eighteen,
But he will be, now.
As old as he'll ever be.

"F-fuck. Fuck... you." I manage,
A poor choice for last words.

They fall flat.
Followed by a body, mine no more.
Folding slowly, in disbelief,
Mostly at its own surprise.

On that miasmic summer night.
In a driveway. 
The bullet brings the bad news
And recites it to my nervous system.
Punctured. Leaking out.
Running out of time.

The brick falls from my hand,
Like a church bell, felled.
I don't even hear it land.
My brick, flecked with red.
Wet, and... And...

A man can kill a god with one of these,
If you hit him from behind.
But a bullet? Shit.
Who brings a brick to a gunfight?

Hell.
At least I tried.

I hear him running.
My killer.
Good. At least, the kid gets away.
Lives to see another day.

Got three of the fuckers.
The way they got me,
My son, my wife...
All that mattered,
All I needed to call mine.

She'd be ashamed, she would.
And my boy as well.
But I couldn't let the devils walk
After they turned my home, my castle

Into Hell.

So much red, too much.
It stains the sky.
Sunset? No, dawn already.
The Sun rises over the world of the living.
And sets on mine.

Amen.