Poet: Scott Poole, Portland, OR
Small Doggies Single Poem Feature #8: Scott Poole, Portland, OR
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Right at Home
One night I crept into the house
while it was sleeping,
but it woke up.
It walked down the street
and tossed me
onto a neighbor's lawn.
It stumbled off drunk
and other houses rose
and followed it.
People and cats were
scattered everywhere.
Protests formed. People yelled.
Cheerleaders threw tomatoes.
Ferrets ran wild in the streets.
A mean article was written,
"Buildings Couldn't Care Less."
Churches dissolved and fought
with concert halls and pool halls.
University buildings wouldn't
talk to the dorms. The dorms
wanted to become whorehouses.
The whorehouses left for
the desert in shame. Convenience stores
ran till they were inconvenient and
wouldn't listen to their parent companies.
Mansions divided and turned into hundreds
of beautiful shacks. No one got laid.
It was all asexual as far as the eye could see.
A forest demanded its trees back,
but when log cabins arrived,
it changed its mind by turning yellow.
All the mountain lakes were crammed
with houses on vacation.
No house wanted to be in the city.
Porches were left behind. People
left sitting on them didn't know
which way to look to be seen.
Scenery, which had been forgotten,
gently became more seen
and turned sunset red with pride.
People tried to sneak back in
but the houses always ran off.
They tried to chain houses
to the ground. But the chains only
drug the lawns along.
People sat on the houses
looking for things to eat.
Houses ate other houses.
Great battles raged and some
set their houses on fire
and sticks battled each other to ash.
Soon the houses were all gone.
People lived in more
and more elaborate tents and soon
you couldn't tell the difference between
what they were wearing and what
they were living in. If someone was lying
on the ground, it was customary to say
"You look right at home."
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Scott Poole is the author of three books of poetry, The Cheap Seats, Hiding From Salesmen and most recently, The Sliding Glass Door which was released in the Fall of 2011 from Colonus Publishing.
He is the House Poet for Live Wire!, OPB's weekly radio variety programme. Currently, he is a software developer by day and poet by night. Thankfully, neither occupation requires a nametag, a paper hat or wearing underwear over tights.
Scott was a featured reader at Portland's own Small Doggies Reading Series PDX014 in October of 2011.
This poem was originally featured in Small Doggies Reading Series Chapbook #4, available for purchase here.