I don’t want to live anywhere where they are killing me
1.
it’s crazy. most of us
kind of assume that where we are born
is home, where our first kiss was, learning to walk, literally,
throwing our first stone at someone in anger,
sitting at the table a mouth full of mother’s meatloaf
or was it strawberry pie, or even monkey bread—
those twisted strings of dough that were a wonderful
combination of chewy cake and sweet stuffing—
catching the bus home from school with friends,
the first drink, wasn’t it when uncle teddy
served you beer at thanksgiving, you were five?
like that, we think of that location in the mythic sense
the high drama that came later, the desperately sought
trysts, sneaking to liaison with someone you know you
ought to avoid, or the first time you got together
with someone whom you wanted the whole world
to know you were committed to being with for life,
or so you thought, how wonderful the world looked
as you lay dreaming on your back your head
secure in a special someone’s lap, or how short
the walk after the dance from the club to the parking lot,
what you wouldn't have given for a reprise of that heaven
the way a lover looks when their whole face smiles
just because you came around the corner with
a yellow tulip in your hand and a pack of almond m&m’s
secreted behind your back as you whispered
smokey’s ooh baby baby into an eagerly awaiting ear
actually those were the preludes—the real high drama
came some years later, the first time calling someone,
anyone, to come and get you out of jail, which you were in
for doing something stupid, something really, really
stupid, and then there was the accident when you banged
up someone’s new car, but those were just the breaks, not
the actual high drama of sitting sullen in some counselor’s
waiting room, your head thrown back to the wall
avoiding the eyes of your better half who was now
the loyal opposition and whose eyes were the same eyes
only smaller in the head of the child to whom you
could not some how find the right words to make sense
of this mess that was formerly your marriage
where these scenes take place, the parlor in which
a cousin's camera has caught you crying, the foggy mirror
where you examined yourself, one flight up in a total
stranger’s house and sheepishly you wonder what were you
doing in this blue tiled bathroom so very early in the morning
when you were supposed to be somewhere else—life is what
some people call this, and where you live your life, shouldn’t
that be the place you call home?
2.
the water. my god the water. the angry water
rain roaring sideways with the force of a freight train,
smashing your resolve to ride it out, or inching
down an interstate at two miles an hour so call evacuating
from the water. the dirty, angry water, running
if you were lucky enough to have wheels and a wallet
with plastic in it. the water. you will dream of
wet mountains falling on you and wake up gasping
for air as though you were drowning, oh the water
deeper than any pool you’ve ever swam in,
water more terrible than anything you can think
of, another middle passage, except this time
they don't even provide ships
I used to wonder how my ancestors survived
the Atlantic, Katrina has answered that question,
I wonder no more—there is a faith that is beyond
faith, a belief when there is nothing left to believe in,
no, not god, well, yes, god, for some, for many, it was
jesus, a few humduallahed, or whatever, but it was also
whatever that visited this terror upon us, and so
to keep believing in whatever, now takes something
the mind can not imagine, the realization that in order
to live you had to survive and in order to survive
you had to do whatever needed to be done, few
of us really, really know what we will do
when we’ve got nothing but have to find something
to keep us going, how you manage your sanity
in the water, corpses floating by, gas flames
bubbling up from some leaking underground line,
and you sitting on a roof and you just pissed
on yourself because, well, because there was
no where to go and do your business, five days
of filth, no water but flood water, no food but
hot sun, no sanitation but being careful where
you stepped, where you slept, where you turned
your back and eliminated, being careful to survive
twelve days later and you still don’t know where
all your family is, if you’ve got faith, you’re about to
use it all—is this some of what our ancestors saw?
3.
it is over a month later and you still can’t walk
on the land that used to be your backyard,
they treat you like a tourist, you can only
be driven down your street in a big bus,
you can only look out the window at what twisted,
funk encrusted little remains of all you ever owned
and some kid with a gun won’t let you go
to get big mama’s bible
this shit is fucked up, that’s what it is,
fucked up and foul, the smell of a million
toilets overflowing, of food that been rotting
for days inside a refrigerator that became
an oven because the electricity was off and
the sun was beaming down ninety degrees or more
and the worse part is that none of what you
already went through is the worst part, the worst
is yet to come as government peoples with
boxes and things they stick into the ground
tell you that even if the water hadn’t drowned
you, something called toxicity has made it
impossible for you to stay here, they are
telling you it is impossible for you to stay
in the house that been in your family
for over fifty years even though it’s still standing
it’s impossible to live here, and what shall
we call this? what shall we tell the children
when they ask: when are we going home?
4.
I don’t want to live anywhere where they have
tried to kill us even if it was once a place
I called home—but still and all, my bones
don’t cotton to Boston, I can’t breath
that thinness they call air in Colorado,
a Minnesota snow angel don’t mean shit
to me, and still and all, even with all of that,
all the many complaints that taint my
appreciation of charity, help and shelter,
even though I know there is no turning back
to drier times, still, as still as a fan when
the man done cut the 'lectric off, still,
regardless of how much I hate the taste
of bland food, still, I may never go back,
not to live, maybe for a used to be
visit, like how every now and then you
go by a graveyard… I am not bitter, I am
just trying to answer the question:
what is life without a home?
what is life, without
a home? and how long does it take
to grow a new one?
—kalamu ya salaam