No Place Like Home
Where else would I be at this hour of the millennium
but talking body bags and organ donors with you
over plates of paté de foie gras in the cool aluminum
evening, half listening to the answering machine’s
ventriloqual echo paint the room a shady shade of gray?
Never mind the distance of better lives, the prospect
of quaint moons and Indian summers, knights
on their mythopoetic ponies shouldering out the dark.
Kiss me and I’ll tell you there’s no place
like home, with its slippery floors and half-closed doors,
bulletproof pasts stacked like unopened maps waiting
to be misread. Travel is best at dusk, with your back
to the sun and the stuttering traffic of evening.
Leave the clean-taught questions that don’t talk back
for the milkman; we fired him years ago.