November

We needed an awful big house to hide ourselves from each other

And that’s what we got in November of two-thousand-and-three.

Even my father struggled to say what those door ornaments were:

The mezuzah of the previous residents… Strange word on my teeth.

Where did they go? These strangers who left their house

Such a colossal mess? No matter, We would leave

It similarly destroyed in a few years’ time. The carpets

Cleaner, but the air noticeably staler, light bleaker.

In the fading light of November the walls glowed

With the warmth of a home, but it was false, wasn’t it?

Later I would light incense to cover the smell

Of the rot in in our hearts.

Left the window open to feel the cold air.

Born anew on the second floor, I grew out my hair.

On the city bus, like in Caladan, I paid my fare.

At the swirling hallucinations I would stare.

Such a psychedelic experience as Dune

Spun my teenaged mind into endless comparisons,

But I am no Paul Atreides, no Kwisatz Haderach.

LSD is no melange, whiskey no Gom Jabbar.

Explosions and smoke in the park during high summer,

Getting high on benches and shooting the shit,

The Maelstrom comes and washes away everything;

Leaves the detritus of suburban living on our lawn.

I wrote poems back then.

Maybe as bad as these.

I burnt them in a grill

When I was twenty-three.

Here, I’ll tell you something you didn’t know:

When you swing an aluminum baseball bat

At a CRT, the bat’s more likely to bounce

Than the glass is to break. I would know.

Echoes from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac

Futile gesture of impotent anger.

Get tired. Put away the bat. Cry a little.

Take a shower. Climb into bed.

What was that sound? Gunshot?

Who’s gotten into my M-80s?

But it’s only Joe’s old VW bus,

Which backfires from poor timing.

Talk about poor timing! But this family’s never been a timely clan.

Always late to the party of history, usually outside of the fringe,

Where we’re so easily mistaken for being part of the crowd,

When we are squares with fractals on the inside.

The sun sets behind the red mountains of the West

And shoots beams of light through the plastic chandelier.

Rainbows refracted upon the walls dance stiffly

In that house that never was much of a home.

We left its beige carpets intact, its tiles white and cold.

The beige paint on the cabinets as tacky as it’s ever been.

The breakfast nook looks out on the hot blue pool.

The coolcrete rough and broken beneath workboots.

We left its furniture indentations and wall dents

Its creaky doors that gave us away every Saturday.

Its vast living room decorated by Pier One

With things that we never loved or even could.

We left behind a mother who lived like an unwanted piano

Covered by sheets in an over large, dark and dusty room.

We left behind signs of a father—inscrutable man—

In the forms of liquors we could barely stand to drink.

We took the girl with us and who knows what happened to the boy,

The dog and guinea pig seemed to get along just fine.

The 17 palm trees still stand on the lot there,

The neighbors still mill about, cocktails in hand.

Had we ever lived there at all? After all the noise and sweat

Years passed, grades matriculated, seasons cycled and yet...

We arrived during an unseasonably warm November

But the November we left, I remember it being chill.

And thinking, had we ever lived there at all?