We have no Home [poem]
Loneliness increases exponentially
according to the vastness of the crowd
which is surrounding me.
A cast of thousands
sends me underground
while being with a carefully chosen few
still means that I with graciousness withdrew
to lick my wounds
(which were extensive
notwithstanding
it may seem like nought to you
but my threshold for withstanding
seepage not appropriate to
[as it may well be judged by you]
the social situation’s light demands
is lower than my friends can understand).
For behind the plastic party smiles
I taste the rancid rennet of some
complicated bile —
not to mention taking on
the yearnful soul of everyone
who looms into my sight
like a softly psychic sponge
(not the crude synthetic type
to clean your car or kitchen wipe
but one which on the rocks is bred
in fissures on the ocean bed).
The thing which shocks me most of all
is the way so many (not quite all)
seem so secure in this strange world
as if they feel that they belong.
One wouldn’t think that they were
only ohsobriefly passing through
(for that is what we’re here to do
whether or not we like that view).
To see their knees so smugly
t u c k e d
beneath the table of this world
(usurped may be the proper word)
is like a cuckoo doing its strut
while perched upon a pipit’s nest
a stupid smirk spread on its beak
and not just that: A puffed-out chest.
under your feet is what?
some earth
{maybe some green stuff in between}
a carpet’s weave
linoleum, parquet, neoprene?
We think we stand on solid ground
That’s not what I have found
while on my tour around this hunk
of cells we call the world
If only we could see the way that
everything is scattered
so to speak
not all in one thick joined-up piece
(the brain’s white lie
not solid state
and blue is not the sky)
So when I’m fully on my own
I never feel the dread of being alone
(appearances are nature’s little smirk
and wince and shug and very often sigh)
but put me in the milling throng
then fleeing fast becomes my song
and mingledom my stumbling-stone.
For everybody’s pent-up pain
pervades my path
[as easily as rain soaks into earth
regardless of the aftermath]
invades my throne
dissects my fusion to the bone
The upshot is:
We have no home.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Naked Troubadour 