A Poem - No Home

Where do I put this dust;

without a mantle

and the yellow paste of nicotine

to hold it fast?

Walls and windows cling to me,

Desperately;

Like a name to a place or a face

Or like my love is stuck to you.

The brown bristly welcome mat tells me

The universe is not a home.

As do the locks, the lamps,

and the chimneys.

My coffee stains and I

Would have no place to leave our mark.

Words would make no sense.

The dog would just go anywhere.

What a stupid thing

to think the universe is anything but a cold dark other.

What else could it be?

There are no floors and no ceilings.

Breakfast and the cycles of love and hate

Are left, space less.

As if God had nothing to say

And the trash had nowhere to go.

The preachers that say,

“the moss on the house won’t need washing”

They lie.

It was cholera that built these walls, not love,

And I won’t give them up.

Published in Ink In Thirds June 2019

the a list