Sunday, April 11, 2010

suburban snowglobe

I crossed a barrier when I left home
the world looked so different from inside
that suburban snowglobe of a town

I won't try and say I'm from somewhere
cold or hard or mean or dirty
I lived in nice houses and knew little else

Now I've seen the homeless sleeping
on trains while I come home, nails
long as cockroaches and filthy rags
and cardboard house their lives.

I've seen the countless families
with daughters held on father's shoulders
mothers with babies in their bicycles
and children with dyed hair looking to rebel
the elderly gaping in curious terror

Mountainscapes and skyscrapers
landfall and rising tides
cheaper lives, rising fuel prices;
to live (or die) in this city is to be
stuck blindly in the eye of globalization's
viscous spinning writhing whirlpool

I think back to the 23.7 percent of myself
I was 10 years ago, and I realize that
To leave home's naïve, happy bubble
was to shatter the snowglobe indubitably

and like a futile play at reassembling
gummy glass and confetti water
it will never look the same again -
its best left tossed and half-forgotten
in ink-black oceans of memory
and the shouldering supports of my
identity
.
.
.
yet as always beneath the surface
the past creeps and broods
as if to tell me:
"there was a life before Tokyo"
though as the days go by
I feel less like I was
and more like I am.

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