Silo
Silo
by Jay Giacomazzo
I figured it out this morning. my mind
will serve better as a compass than as a night light.
the rhythm of footsteps on Brooklyn blocks
a butcher happily sharpens his knives
while I dare to fault the ergonomics of destiny.
fists wrapped in gauze, dipped in glue
then glass
I know what it means to fight
to claw at these fish-hooked dreams.
silos lined up for miles it seems
your stockpile protected behind clean sheets of metal
waiting for the day the skies close
and you’ll go running to your rations
only to find they have expired.
I was gonna say this piece was dreamy yet surely smacking of life’s bleakness, then i figured that both of those qualities might be better summed up with the word ‘surreal’.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste and yet it is the idyllic wasteland. I dug the visual images in this poem and the violently painful mood set by so many sharp iconic items: knives, glass, fish-hook.
All the doom/gloom foreshadowing leads up to and culminates into the final two lines–“…and you’ll go running to your rations/ only to find they have expired.” –Love it! So often in life we meet an unexpected and evil end…maybe because thruout life we dare to dream of heaven so close to the outskirts of hell. Awesome read! Thanks for sharing!
Ergonomics (by the way): “At its simplest definition ergonomics literally means the science of work. So ergonomists, i.e. the practitioners of ergonomics, study work, how work is done and how to work better. It is the attempt to make work better that ergonomics becomes so useful. And that is also where making things comfortable and efficient comes into play.” (About.com)