Sunday, March 13, 2011

My house is a tenement,
open to any and all for a minimal fee.
The chimney is ashen packed,
clogged by years of misuse and neglect.
The bathtub doesn’t drain,
the toilet runs,
and
the hall light turns on, sometimes.
but you can sleep

there,
or there.

There, there is where we kept my great-grandfather,
when death was rapping.
It’s where he drew his last breath.
There, there is where my father took a shot into the ceiling.
He said he was only faking.
There, there is where I fell when I couldn’t stand any longer.
I woke up with carpet spine and wet feet.
And there, there is the closet we used to keep the ashes of our dead,
until we emptied them into the Pacific.

But there, there is the couch reserved for
heavy heads and turned out, spit out youth.
There, there is the counter where we all
sit and sup and revel.
There, there is the place where I sleep and hide
beneath blankets and the chorus of breaths
being drawn in, in and out in each room.
There, there is the shelf where we keep slides,
documenting the lives of wanderlusts past.
And there, there are the guitars and there is the water.

Play,
drink,
eat,
sleep.

My house is a tenement,
open to any and all for a minimal fee.