The Road Home

I dove deeply
Immersed within the undercurrents
Of Salt Lake City’s belly
Sharing the umbilical cord of humanity’s PVC
Breathing patterns engraved divinely
Upon each threaded strand of DNA
Connecting each individual to creation’s
Sidewalk leading back to the beginning
Of the Earth’s immortal gravity
Gray spaces crack tired bones
Holding body’s cold
Cement square blocks rest
Backs holding bricks with weighted packs
Deseret 20 degree thermometer
Sweaters offer little protection
From the freezing arid weather

Misty breaths test temporal matter
In fact, is it possible that this homeless state
Of existence is simply divine perception?
Life’s wisdom in parables taught
Through the wandering ascetic
Asking humbly
To prolong his journey just one more step
The golden rule of measurement:
Treat the least of these, my children
This day as I would treat thee
It could be you or me
Circumstances projecting your course
Into homelessness

Sleeping in between dreams
Perceiving the road ahead as an
Unforeseen uphill struggle
Dreams bridge the gaps
Of divine existence
Against material essence
The accumulation of which can’t be redeemed
Once we have left this earthly presence

For every sentence
I recite
An endless road combines
Each step I’ve taken
Behind this punctuation point
I wish I could say I’ve never
Aimlessly wandered
My marked size 8’s
With agony gripping
My feet until humility forced
Momentum to slow my gait
To a crimson stop

But once upon a time I
Sunk my soles to murky puddles
I seeped footprints beneath dreams
The moon pushed hope unconsciously
Navigating dark intentions
Rip tides pulled my stance
Firmly hitting bottom
On the sidewalk alone
Surprised I landed stranded
Isolated
Alienated from the gateways
Of social pleasantries
Without a home

Hindsight 20/20 vision
Meditates upon past alley ways
Still recalling feet I haphazardly
Found myself creeping
Steps I mapped guiding police tape
Constellations nailing chalk lines
Flashing reds and blues
I’m not talking disco lights
This crime scene became my life
This whole poem is true

Yet this story is only
One sideline of the trail
Acquired through
Alchemical experimentation
Exploring realms of experiential knowledge
Distilling qualities of age
And continually stumbling over dual feet

I think the phrase referencing
This phenomenon is a demolition ball
Train wreck colliding with societal flaws
While heavenly goalies cheer “score one”
Team Me vs. Them
But then, again
Life is all perception
Perceived by that who is perceiving
Alley way circumstances
Found white and black trails
Blazed in my behavioral orbital motions
Perhaps I happened upon
A Big Mistake
But then again
I see wisdom achieved through
Taking responsibility of the demons
Chaining your earthly existence
To the lowest common denominator
Naming them appropriately as the angels that
Showed you an opportunity to transcend
Reaching beyond the causality
Of individual potential and breathing
Life’s momentum ascending
The levels of awareness
Somewhere upon a perpetually moving line
One step after another
I realized this eternal path is my road

I scaled mountain depths of Hell’s caverns
Transcending evolutions through reincarnating
As understanding
Wisdom
Compassion
Breaking chains against weighted balls
Sisyphus pried manholes off gutter drains
Previously paved with metal and tar
Holes became faded scars
Prometheus rose from the ashes
Rebirthed from the heat of demons
Piling one on top of another
The minions became ladders
I climbed
One foot above the other
Raising the Devil’s
Horns to angel wings
I healed wounded landmarks to road signs
Signaled by past pitch marks
Stolen ashes created my Phoenix
The source of Heaven and Hell
Is all the same
Only the perception
Of the one who perceives
Is the origin changed
So I ask myself
If I am always on this Road
And my eternal body is in perpetual motion
Am I ever going to get home?

My arm stretches a beggar cup
The Buddha notices poverty
I rest in the alley
Way of sickness
The Buddha passes and sees
An opportunity for compassion
And healing
I lay in the path of death
The Buddha looks and sees
Humanity suffering
Within the darkness rests
Life and death, bardo between
The cracks of homelessness
The light within existence
If you see the Buddha
On the side of the Road
Ask the perceiver
Who perceives?
Perhaps all of this
Is simply me
Dreaming
The Dream
Endless searching
For my eternal road home



Ami M Hanna