Home

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

sipping on 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,

what 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);

while 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 only now that I realize, 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

full of strangers, I no longer know,

nor care too;

this place leaves me feeling 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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