Home

sitting in this greasy, all night, Michigan redneck café,

sipping dark stale coffee,

listening to the local philosophers as they eat their breakfast,

on their way to dry-walling and other assorted craft jobs,

indoors of course, getting too cold for outside work,

discussing the beating death of a Wyoming fag (their word),

and how the poor ole boys who did it will never get a fair trial

with all the negative publicity,

and what is this world coming too,

when you can’t even bash a few fags around

and get away with it,

after all, they was just having a little fun,

they didn’t actually mean to kill the little fucker (chuckles all around);

listening the thought occurs

that with just a different twist of fate

I could be sitting at that table

with all the other small town know-it-alls,

discussing world politics and Wyoming fags

and it is then that I realized I don’t belong here anymore,

just as the swamplands and muskrats of south jersey

do not belong here,

this place I once called home has become just another town

of strangers I no longer know

nor care too;

this place leaves me feeling so empty and impotent;

I think of my wife,

the woman who has been with me

for more years than I once lived in this place,

the woman whose touch still electrifies me,

the woman who has become my one constant,

my only reality,

the one thing I can depend on,

together we have built a new home,

free from family or friends interference;

she is where I belong,

she is my home.

.

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