The Shape of Tools

By Joey Olschner

Square. Not hip.
Four Corners. Dean Smith.
Cube. Picasso.
3-D possibilities. Schrodinger’s cat’s home-coffin.
Cartoon. Sponge Bob Square Pants.
Marriage. Squared up.
Loss. Turn the corner.

 

Be the artist. Pretense will suffer,
become shaded, drawn, etched, sawn.
Sustenance here is not chewable.
Here, the colors on the wall, graffiti in the stall,
we always looked back for the clarity
windshields couldn’t carry,
Your Life breaking upon the Mirror.

 

All the while, the tools have been sharpened
by layers of miles, by instructions frozen
upon the wise, held unknown but for
the magical mystery tour,
beholden only to the shavings,
aimlessly drifting to the heavenly floor

 

Joey Olschner is a carpenter poet, harnessed to the Southern US in North Carolina, one degree above high school, woodworker, blessed to be stressed with all a man knows how to suppress.