Lament of a Blue Collar Poet

While I cobble my pyramids

using granite and slaves

levelling the ground in the Egyptian

sun, dragging leftfooted stones

out of quarries and cutting them

with quartz-sand drills

hauling the dressed stones

with bronze levers and

ten thousand past lives

up linear ramps and spiral ramps

staircase ramps and reversing ramps

interior ramps

orienting the stones

with astrolabe and palm-rib bay

to echo the stars

corbel-vaulting on a colossal scale

the great rooms

dying of thirst and love

you make me feel foolish.

you whisk pyramids out of thin air

and say:

"this pyramid has six corners".

"this pyramid has legs and ran off

to see its uncle"

"this pyramid stands on its head,

leering at Casseiopeia's underpants"

"this pyramid's eye is plucked and tossed

in the Nile. My dollar bill is blind."

"this pyramid was made by a girl

it combs it's hair and

pouts in the mirror"

"this pyramid was made by a boy

it drowned in mud during puberty

and has never been uncovered."

"this pyr m d is uns lv ge ble

it wants imagination and science."

"this pryramid has never been

transformed by a woman"

"this pyramid got drunk and shot

off it's pinkie toe."

"this pyramid smells like einstein's socks"

"this pyramid owns a motorcycle and

parks it in the attic"

"this pyramid devours it's young

they spin sarcophagus cocoons

in it's belly."

"this pyramid had a feud with Pythagorus"

then you whisk away your pyramids again

into the thin air.

Donny Davis, August, 2007