A PICTURE FROM BREUGEL

The homing instinct is universal,
it is not the sole property
of pigeons, dogs and cats.
"Can I go home now?"
But no: why would you want to?
You are not as shit-out-of-luck
as you might think,
you are luckier than Lou Gehrig
self-proclaimed luckiest man on earth.

For Home
    skewed dreamland
            never truly owned.
The block of houses
along the Jersey Shore--
titled or Section 8 dumps--
eminent-domained from the poor,
handed over by the City,
bought up as tear-downs

to erect no-view-of-the-sea
million dollar condos
Red Roof lookalikes
where drug dealers are As Usuals
prowl the Long Branch streets
undisturbed by gentrification,
making their heaven of someone's misery.

Home is a Breughel landscape
The Hanged Man dangling
from the gallows, wrapped
in black swaddling like Mary Surratt,
swinging like a Mall-tramp's pendant earrings.

Like, like. Nothing is Like.

Once your home is gone
if you have an imagination
that outstrips fear,
then wonder at the ingenuity
of the created world
and at your ignorance of homebuilding skills,
marvel at the drainpipe snakework
now exposed to light,
somnolescent vampiric roaches awakened
and scattered in a panic.

Home is where the motherfuckers can get you.
Duck and cover, stupid.
Our first grade teachers and Chicken Little
had it right about homeland insecurity.

No inference or artistry here.
Home is no place to hide.
In the light
in the Church
in the hospital
all are suspended in black swaddle.

God has spoken, his Monty Python self
"Oh, don't grovel!"
clacking puppet jaw
the answer to your prayers
Redemption
only if you can laugh
through signs of the times

Braindead woman
Parkinsonian Pope
poet
novelist
I, none of these, have given my sons my living will
his best piece of poetrie,
to wit:
when the day comes I can't chew my blubber
put me on an ice floe,
not food for worms
but Purina Polar Bear Chow.

My older son calls me
irrelevant baseball talk
then "The question you've not asked"
his uncle comatose
one month today
self-opened veins
now failing kidneys,
his mother, my Former,
a raging madwoman.
"There is no change" he says

Yes there is, for finally
I am thankful.
Stevie Winwood
said it better than me
I can't find my way home anymore
either

And for that I am truly grateful

not to that home, Breughel deathscape--
instead where I am I exist maybe live.

KTW/4-12-05

-----------------------------
Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com

"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank balance was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child."