Home to Wherever

I think not the elephant in the room
but the emptiness in the air,
the crater in the centre of town,
the total, glaring want of care
(& to tell you the truth I rather prefer
Main street that way though what
remains upright does seem lonelier –
starker, like a mortuary).

Your boarded windows are eyelids,
unseeing orbs flutter behind:
“That is not dead which dreaming lies.”
You have the likeness of a friend:
were your every brick to turn to sand
I would recognize you.

There are cities like sicknesses – to remember
fondly, time & space wasted (or spared?) on the
uncomfortable dullness of necessity.
Language shatters on the tarmac into idioms
& we take the favourite pieces home to
wherever.