Tell Me When

When can I finally leave this place to my back?
When can I let go the years learning to tolerate the
word home, it's mere utterance sloppy and loose on my lips,

A raw sarcasm that burns in a spoken heave
through my throat? When nostril hairs singe at
the word neighbor, when an ear-full of every passer-by's

love of music set to eleven drowns any thoughts
of listening to the quiet pages of my note pad scratch
its resistance to the dance-writing of my ball-point pen in

an ever searching waltz of prose and epigrams,
when I drag along my wife and kids (be it willing or un,
I can't be sure), my sanity, my misery on a bus full of resentment,

when I know the trailer park ambiance
around me makes me feel like an emigrant on
my own street, when the sickly yellow street lamp

outside taunts my dim optimism of a
fenced in piece of Americanan, when the word community
is said in the same manner as one might mention the word cancer...

When.