Wednesday 9 January 2013

A home is not a house

The house of the novelist Hermann Hesse
near Lake Constance


a bench in a park makes a good house
cover the seat with a strong plastic sheet
and sleep under a blanket in winter
or sleep under the stars when its warm

underneath your house you
can stow away
gear
your plastic bag of bottles and bread

and the shoes
they gave you when you begged
you'll need to take them off at night
or else they'll give you hell in the day

that's when you need your best foot forward
to ride in the warmth of the underground trains
on the circular line
until its time to go back to your bed again

a bench in a park makes a good house
cover the seat with a strong plastic sheet
firmly tied at the corners


2 comments:

  1. Quite sad this Gwil. I think i would prefer the house in the photograph thank-you (my sleeping out days are long over if they ever actually were).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Currently there are about a dozen permanent 'residents' in the town centre park near the posh hotels - interestingly they live in a terraced row of plastic sheets, a kind of communal security.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.