Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Kit Kelen #591 - home and away



591
home and away

it’s like this
here you go
and there you are
all clichés other way around

travelling
you’ll eat dogs and rats
take wooden nickels

you’ll know where to be
a month ahead or back
it’s written in the tickets
it’s tracked along a map

how a sun shone to me
it’s as if lived how wistful
every way I went
and never found the voice

packing unpacking
a way through security
what curious metal in me
things never guessed

but you’re the hunter
garb limited to tell
bring back the pictures
haul the great sack

mainly I watched movies on the plane
the sorrier for yourself
less sympathy you get
and anyway
not here to receive

keep posting
how you were a master thief
and dipped in the kaleidoscope
drove the nutella truck
all over Africa

it’s the one lie
in which I’m pictured
one lie to drive us on

well to begin
I was nobody there
but a bent head swells out of its hat
a title earned gives bears barnacles
and you sit to fill out form, pay bill

every aircraft’s subtly different
now each town’s the same

politics!
I knew I could never return
knew there was no safe where-to-be
it’s humans fuck up democracy

work’s the thing gets up your nose

so time came panting up to me
and I rubbed time’s chest
it rolled around and made to fetch
turned over again for more
might it have turned on me
bore teeth?

returning is to master time
to be where the world groaned once

there’s a little bird right now taps on my window
just mid-poem, yellow breast
one’s tempted to think it won’t know what it’s doing

the date dissolves where hours take up
then you are among the uncounted
you’ve become the unannounced

and study in reflections
like the pond is landed
weeds flower to point

something might be snake draped
but no risk it’s your dinner

and so now lost to rooms and books
and stanzas
and in lines like this

grow to be anonymous
then there’s no one to cut down

so giants hurl their boulders
you can still smell the dust
but you’re away to sea
that’s how you live forever

it’s always nice to sneak off the map
wonders here are what you make

now I am no one here at home
lighter and lighter I float

and here’s a goodnight kiss
that’s the best
you’d never know the world was turning
but stars come out to show

it’s only at home you can really be lost

please remind me where that’s at

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