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