For Mark

His home is always where he is – Beneath the trestles of clattering trains, he huddles in the damp & sandy wind, eyes across the ocean, sandwich crumbled, filthy in his coat pocket His home is just where he is – Now inside a box behind a dumpster in the middle of downtown nowhere, surrounded by the bizarre aroma-therapy of steaming, festering garbage His home is exactly where he can no longer go – Inside the placid, welcoming walls of the house where his sanity lives ~~~ He stumbles, aching, crying from his wretchedness, crying from his soul – His pants encrusted with what he could not leave behind, His hands clutching a desperately empty bottle, His hair in stringy, unkempt ribbons, slapping his face in the wind ~~~ He, trapped & terrified in a life beyond his living, seeks suicide by public transportation, wishing it could all just be over Wishing he could somehow force his feet to take his body into the path of the oncoming bus – But the driver will not mow him down, will not have him on her conscience – She refuses his anguished gift of responsibility & slams the bus to a squealing, furious, bone-shaking stop & screams at him "NO! I will not do it!" Sad, relieved, horrified, pleased, he views the scene as one more evidence of his beleaguered, hated, ridiculed immortality And laughs his drug-indentured way back to the motel which has a dumpster behind which he can once more box himself in until he thinks he can afford to take the public transportation system on again, And maybe this time, he’ll find his win, he’ll be successful And never have to live inside these walls of pain (again) which he only knows as home