called home

today i’ve lost

something called home

i didn’t lose my way

i just couldn’t get in

couldn’t bring myself to

frozen on the doorstep

guts gripped in a fist

lungs cast in concrete

there was more at stake than just pushing the door open and step in

before today

i felt right, there,

and safe

life throbbed at the fingertips

i felt i could bloom

and sleep

and be myself

for the first time in many lives

i had never known

a loftier home

vast luminous rooms

vaster than galaxies

brimming with starlight

each with a melody

woven into its fabric

walls pulsing radiance

of all the homes i had known the only one built out of solid soul

but today i am not alone

there are other visitors

guests to this home

uninvited by me

grim indistinct figures

but i understand them also

it’s a good home

well worth returning to

if i could, i would go back

in time and dwell there again

but these sombre meteors hurtle right through me as if i weren’t corporeal

they bring shadows

that colonise light

tentacle space to them

rip time off the walls

obfuscate the soul

in a mantle of flies

i no longer feel safe

i am no longer welcome

sleep evades me there

sadness claws me back in

trust manhandled in every room

and flies by the millions

today i’ve lost this place

i once called home

as i fall back through space

remembrances larsen

clamour through and die again

as i pass by, hollowed out

atom after atom

dispersing one into aloneness

the darkness around

once again so familiar

that home had so brightly lit

that my entire visible universe was known and charted and i could acknowledge it

and slowly, so very slowly

sounds muffle eardrums pressured

heartbeats gain intensity

fill in every moment

between the seconds

become the seconds

bloat until all matter

blend through them

sealing the loss

deep inside

once and

for all

so today i’ve lost

the world called home

so many yearn for

so many die for

it’s sad

it’s a shame

it’s gut-wrenching

you name it

for i have stopped trying

i would have stayed there forever

given the chance

but it’ll be nice to see

the stars from earth again

each galaxy like houses in winter

when one can see through the lit windows and see worlds there happening

fleetingly from the pavement

once again spectator

smiling at happenstance

riant silhouettes

stark in their happiness

it’ll be nice

not to have to bear life’s hurdles

it’ll be nice

to be left alone

not to be slighted

it’ll be nice

it’ll be nice

to find nice things, again

so as not to lose one’s footing

it’ll be nice

the way back is long

longer than i’ve ever walked

but it’ll be nice

after today

but today i’m inconsolable

as i’ve lost

someone called home