3/30 - Home

(This might be a blueprint for a different poem.  Not sure.)

HOME

Home is the place you were born

Home is where you return when you leave

Home is where your stuff lives

Home has 500 channels and free WiFi you pay for monthly

Home is not someplace you go to, it is someplace you come from

Home is where the rent is always due

and they can evict you when they feel like it

Home is where the mortgage is 90% interest 100%  your energy

Home is always after a long day of working to pay for home

Home needs renovation, minor repairs, new kitchen cabinets

and a garage door opener

Home is what you clean on your day off

Home is where the dirty dishes are in the sink

the dirty laundry is in the hamper

the dirty sheets are on the bed

and the dirty secrets stain the wallpaper

Home is not always sweet  -- Home has fangs,

is nocturnal and out for blood

Home is where the abuse takes place secretly

behind locked doors opening onto sprawling green lawns

Home is where your tongue is mother lashing out at you like flames

Home is not flame-retardent

Home is what makes you real for governments

Home is what you have a right to defend when it is violated

yet have no right to defend yourself from violation within

Home is safe until the umpire calls it out

Home is where you flee from persecution

begging for asylum in someone else's home

Home is go back to where you came from

wop, kike, mick, spic, guinea, gook, gypsy, gringa

Home lost one ruby slipper

after binge drinking at the high school reunion

(if only she knew it is hiding under the step aerobic platform

beneath her old bed in the back room

she might be able to return to herself)

Home is an energy signature,

stripped of the universal constant

streaked from orbit

trying to stop space from expanding

one micron at a time.

c. e. amato

4.11

3/30