no place like home

I click my high top
chuck
taylors together
three times and repeat

there's no place like home
there's no place like home
there's no place like home.

and suddenly i'm there.

I think of all the places I've
lived.

beat up one bedroom apartments.
sharing a room
in a flat roof duplex in the hood
of oxon hill.

renting townhouses.
apartments with roaches,
with mice.
with noisy drunken neighbors
above.

I've lived in places
where people have jimmied the locks,
trying to get in.

where the car has been keyed,
where the newspapers have been stolen.

fires, floods, the walls as thin
as paper.
busted ovens, rusted water in the sink.
noisy places
with the trash room
in the hall.

I've been next to the railroad yards
and heard the trains roar by,
rattling every dish in the place.

I've been
next to the racetrack and listened
to the call of the harnessed horses
as they circled the track.

I've been next to woods where
the homeless kept a fire going, next
to highways.
billboards, gas stations.

I've looked out my window and
seen hookers
plying their trade.

seen the mail man get robbed,
the milk man get laid.

but i'm not there anymore with
the rent going up each year.
new neighbors every six months.
foreclosures, evictions.

cops pounding on the doors
for dead beat dads and drug dealers.

no. i'm here. home at last.
nestled cozy in a house I've
longed for.
brick with wood floors, woods
and stream out back.

there's no place like home.
I think it's time for a nap.