I don’t want to be here
I want to go back home.
I never will belong here.
My piece won’t fit this puzzle.

There is a little life here,
But it seems more like a death,
Stuck on a spinning carousel
With no brass ring to catch.

It feels just like a circus
Where everybody has a mask,
A 45 in their waistband,
And sawdust in their head.

I must step very carefully
In my egg-shell breaking boots;
I must never denigrate
This culture that’s absurd.

Guardrails all around my tongue
Hallelujah in my ears
To block what I don’t want to hear
Spouted out in endless rote

There is some sunburned beauty
To be found among these stones
But it comes at far too high a price
And I’m longing to go home.
         ljm