1-28-91 Laundry

L.A.

How can a home be a home
When you’re just passing through?
Give a name to a place
I spend more time elsewhere…
Now I can belong home
In every parking lot I wake in
Not this place where chores abound,
Where desperate faces mistake me for him;
Packs of battered vermin wait
For something I’ve never waited for.

I still look with love and pain
Clutching my soaking clothes
Playing pickle between a dryer and a parked car
These shattered remains prodding paper and lint
Looking, searching, dying for leftovers
That no one would want but them…
My fear of harm replaced by a mirror
Me crawling on a carpet, looking, searching, dying.

Can they feel anything anymore?
Even I felt from time to time
Love’s nagging glow caress my neck
Run it’s digits through my hair, never judging.
Why now it changes
Even grows in new directions
My submission makes it so
To accept it on levels beyond prior reach
When grabbing never really worked
Giving in and letting it wash over me
Not afraid to drown, die or feel.

To be broken by a piece of paper
Touched by all around, quite strong now
Honor and honesty share many of the same letters
Love comes unexpected, my path clear
I need not know what lies ahead
Only to feel
at home
with myself.