home always from endings, more beginnings, more false starts, more sad finales, more twists, more turns. a kind of vicious unicycle on which we're perched precariously between heaven and that special hell where choruses of angels sing you can't and won't go home again. and yet and yet somehow some way a few manage somehow some way to make it back, stumbling, dirty, tongues bloated, black with hunger and thirst desperate, yearning prodigals in rags for them these found unbound and fortunate few a feast laid on a table golden and groaning rare victuals beyond imagining apples of their Father's eye heaps of chinese chow and lark's tongues suet pudding and chicken southern-fried. i don't know why things turn out the way they do why some get all the breaks and others spend their lives in listless wandering i'm dazed and confused like dorothy in the land of oz seemingly so far from home and yet only so far as my heart desires. of all those times when i was close so close i felt the breath of God and felt his touch in yours of all those times i think the best was after all the steam had cleared the musk had settled and across your sleeping face i saw a dream pass in semblances like ripples on a limpid pool oh i thought it's me he's dreaming of it's me he's holding in his arms my lips he's kissing my hair he musses with his long rough fingers i was there a long time watching eyes glazed like looking glass a fat self-satisfied narcissus drunk on dreams and mumbling no place no place like home. Roma June 2009