homesickness

i live with my mother,

in a sort of halfway house arrangement,

after my separation.

& in here or while i’m here

life leads to extinction, not distinction,

not to recovery or discovery

but to further mockery, depreciation.

i help my mother out, when i can:

with the trash, with the dishes,

with some of the chores

that i’m well practiced in.

it’s the least i can do, she tells me.

i listen to music in real time,

to some jazz whenever i’m alone,

whenever she’s not home

& i feel like pampering myself:

for i don’t want to increase my nuisance,

as it is,

for in her rightful eyes i’m no longer a child,

i’m no longer a college student

with a future, with a right to experiment.

chest pains or muscle pains,

or merely complications of the heart,

of some other kind,

i inquire with myself thinking of the awful

experiences in emergency rooms,

with insurance companies,

as i play the good doctor & perform on me

an ECG or EKG

& i luckily or conveniently

come out of it with a clean bill of health.

it must be stress, separation anxiety,

i tell myself in passing.

hard to swallow the order of the day,

to equate owning with owing,

to infuse words with meaning, with helium,

with something other than your own bullshit,

i write to myself in shorthand

as another weekend comes to an end,

as i reimpose, for personal reasons,

a gag order on the past, on what’s brewing.

my car is in need of repairs

& gas prices are going through the roof,

& another snowstorm is headed our way

as a prelude to the rainy season.

isn’t it comforting, i ask my mother,

that the world too is falling apart?

c. a. campos, 2011