The Old Bricks of New York

I once dreamt of a distant skyline soft and grey against blue

jazz floating with taxis down crowded avenues of the night

grooving naked and echoing across a city cast brick by brick by broken bones,

heaving with memory and time and

forged by fresh sweat of young dreaming minds in the old fuming furnaces of our fathers,

now fueled by foreign fingers.

Sturdy by the Hudson, we endured as our sweat cooled.

we saw aluminum birds seek explosive perches on the most vulnerable of branches

We shook and we grit our teeth as our Towers fell,

sweat now beading as mothers and brothers knelt weeping.

Sifting the dust and twisted steel, we stooped and bled,

swearing and wishing our enemies dead.

But from the gritty hate we rose and looked in each others eyes.

For the sun also rises and the distant bell tolls,

we set our jaws and gathered our dead under the ancient skies

and came together once more, with plans in our minds.

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