Building the Extension
I say let’s buy a hod. You chuck
the next brick straight up: grazed wrists, jarred thumbs
encourage me, until one bugger plumbs
back at your head. I yell Shit, duck,
sorry dad. You shake the legs of the scaffold.
I’m warned. The knack to catching bricks
is to pluck them at nil-momentum: fix
your rhythm to mine. I do as I’m told.
Beer for lunch, so we avoid heights, just yet.
I could watch you mix cement all day,
shuffle orange sand, Blue Circle, to brown-grey
muck you scoop, corrugate, season with sweat.
The craft you jacked in young cracks your nurse’s palms.
The trowel rings like a tuning fork
but tonight lime will smoulder up your arms.
B-TEC brickies wear gloves to work.
When I was apprentice I left my touch
in the pointing, fingered initials in render
Mending hearts, my hands have grown tender
- I’m not allergic to hard work as such.
We finish the storey. Time for a fag.
Dusk is the pissy cement stench, your last drag.
The mortar sets on the blood and skin cells
we’ve given to graft, presses tiny fossils.
Page(s) 7
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