The Cave (You Can Always Go Home)

Another side of the same coin I keep forgetting

to bring you when I come out to curl up in the

shelter of my nostalgia. Almost seven years and

what I've learned is that I am the existential crisis

that swells up in me like a rain speckled wind

through the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts.

Once, I felt every detail of this place etched into me.

I ran the streets at night, alone, hopped the fences,

scrawled "ART WITHOUT SHAME" on the factory

walls. Malt liquor and porches, ping pong balls and

poisoned mouse holes, poetry and power lines. 

What there is now... a book with the same title
and the names all changed, shadows identified
by muscle memory, ghosts that speak in Latin
and don't wait for a response. Here, in this place,
in this moment that I think has happened before--

Yes. It has happened before:

We laugh the clock around, sip from the bottle,

delay the inevitable. In the dark we stand, brazen,

on the roof of our mutual alma mater, scraped

and scratched with trespasses, and drink

the yellow lights of the city, breathing vapor trails

and avoidance. I am not me, yet I will always be

this, and when we wake, it will be with aching

backs and a void within us: black like

the summer night and drunken with stars.