Home --- this is the poem I performed (with some corrections, adjustments and embellishments not featured in this text version) at the Just Poetry Slam last night. I went first, which is always a nightmare...



You’ve never really known love until

You’ve seen your own eyes, so still

Reflected, brilliant, in your child’s gaze.

And in these eyes within that gaze,

The maze of your crazed universe is at peace

And love is all that remains.

I held my stare, scared that even this light might not tell me where to go

To extinguish all the pain, delusion and anguish that impaired me so…

But as I came to, I breathed my answer:

Maybe home is where



The sun was blazing in our backs

As we set sailing to the West,

And we left failures and solitude, sadness and all the rest

To build a home sweet home away from all the drone.

Bundled in a cozy blanket by the fire,

Hunting game and cutting chunky meat to dine on,

Jumping in and out of rivers, climbing tall branches

fixing small lunches, digging long trenches, taking our chances…



I just thought he’d been out berry picking…

There! He’s screaming, sinking, flailing!

I rescue him.

He’s cold, I hold him tight.

He panics, yells in fright,

“I don’t wanna go back home! I hate home! It’s cold and dark and empty!”

And in this moment, our bodies clutching,

I realize that my mind had devised a disguise

And divine that my heart should define the answer,

Love! Love is all we need, and I breathed,

Maybe home is where the heart is



Indelibly, I etched this mantra thick

And deep, the soul-filled air exuding strength.

And every moment stretched beyond a flick

And of sleep, hugs and kisses all, we drank.

I cooked for him, and sang for hime,

And gifts, games, walks, sights, love and more love,

I showered all on him.

Jumped around, acted a clown,

Gave him piggyback rides, matched his strides,

Whispered funny things in his ear, pretended to disappear…

No two days could stay the same.

My love for him is all I could claim.



They say it’s the worst pain anyone will ever suffer…

He lies there, frozen, neither dozing, crying nor posing.

As I hold him, tired and sinking, fire is dwindling, ire is swelling, I die and…

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!



Crass calamity, crafted infamy, blasted enmity,

The last ignominy of passed infirmity!

The fates be warned, awake and learn:

I fake a mourning to bait and fool you!

For now I see through it all!

Home is where the heart is given up!

Death and suffering is just math and cluttering;

One thousand deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy.

Call me bereft or sadistic – all that’s left is this strategy.

Laugh at me, clap for me, I don’t care,

All I see is you and me, him and her.

Surely you’ll understand why I have succumbed

And become comfortably numb…

The price of love is your heart – I am now debt-free!

The vessel has been emptied and turned upside down;

All grace and misery burn or drown as far as I’m concerned!

And if this gathering wishes,

This can be the end of my tale.



Why not!!

Why!!!

Because I’m empty!? What’s so wrong with being empty!?



I have heard the words, and now I see,

Empty though I thought I was, in truth,

I was full of thoughts of heresy

(What is more heretic and uncouth

Than conviction that I’m in control?)

Life was never where, but how I seek.

Souls are never solaced when unmoved.

All we learn from what our lives enfold

Comes from scorching heat and breaking cold,



For then alone we truly turn to the One…

The One we call the Friend,

The One we call beauty, transcendence, God,

What else?



So…

Maybe home is where the heart is given up to the One