DEEPLY AWAKE - POEM - HOMECOMING

 

HOMECOMING

 

Your greed is the burden I carry

 

Injured, shaken, needing relief

From a collision of desire and lack

right down the street

Knowing I deserve

the ease you now take for granted

In which you may never indulge

 

Some monk you make

meditating on your mountain of money

Issuing indulgences to your flock

Willing this dream, that nightmare tableau to

burst into life fully formed and

hungry

 

I want to go home, to rest among the remaining things which

have long exhausted their futility,

Fearing I am heading to their quiet knowledge.

The undiscarded

The utilitarian

The long suffering and

sturdy objects which endure after sister and brother have

found adventure and separation in

pawn consignment second hand shops

 

These low places have

consumed everything that

seemed like a good idea at the time

Before the flood

Before this freeze

Before this accident could lead to no other result than

 

Tonight, standing on your porch

Bleeding, spent and knowing

Now I am

more man than woman

more old than young

more resigned than certain,

laying now this burden at your feet

 

Coming to the door as you are in

underwear and indignation

Unconcerned by wound,

angered by blood,

Condemning me my weakness of body

Slowness of wit

Irresponsibility of thought

though I cannot reconcile the meaning,

as cold and shocked as I am

 

The mechanism of injury

happened so long ago

Cleverly you passed on the fear for survival

without its remedy

 

This is a fine inheritance, one my son will not endure

And when he finds my door after his fifth decade

Battered by all the left turns he made

Having misread my directions, my well crafted lessons

Uttered from a monk from the mountain of want,

I will set his broken bones with the strength

This dark night gave

 

The night I realized the address

I have always called home

is a place of disregard and neglect

Of crime and punishment

Actor and stage.

I the vanquished,

You the conqueror,

The design inlaid and set with a resin

Deeply hardened by the bitterness

Only the betrayed have the tools to work with

 

I know I will be turned away this night

I know the E.R.s are full

This full moon is tugging on each of us

And I have no way home

 

The struggle as simply ended as “Please come in,”

I walk into the night

Needing a nurse

And remembering, reluctantly

I am.