This Town

This town is built of poetry

with secrets drawn out in sidewalk chalk,

colors, concrete, cut limbs,

diced innocence.

The house beams are cedar conspiracies

and bricks are only metaphors

For the ties that hold houses together.

Stores stand only to hold all the words--

written, thought or told--

Piled in news columns and built in block quotes

for paper cities

and scissor-made men.