Cozy Walls

Cozy Walls

 

Home is where the deadbeat father

is absentee

and the drug addicted mother 

cannot handle kids who are 

innocent victims 

of a parlay for which they had no vote

 

Home is where the paint is peeling

the yard overgrown

the trash can by the garage filled

with needles and hypodermic sins

of the present

 

there is heart somewhere far off

maybe in a desert of abandoned sand

a lone cactus is a voyeur

the kids are on an interstate

of collision heading nowhere

everywhere

and somewhere 

a place where survival of the toughest

rules

a heart where there

was never a home.

 

erin-cilberto

6/27/25

Reviews

[FlatDaddy]

What a trip, Jacob. My house was never that bad, and I never had a peeping cactus, but we lived over our mechanic landoard's garage where he worked on cars all day, and our bathroom had floorboards one could see between to the cars and people and fumes below. Ah, what fun times! You brought it all back, but yours makes mine seem like heaven now. I would never have survived it. You use such beautiful language to describe true hell. Brrrr!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Thank you for sharing that, FD.
j.

[Desert Knave]

It truly is an accord to which the children never have a choice. Thought-provoking words here. ~Jim

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Thank you for your words, Jim.
j.

[Relic]

"Children of the night" they call them in California and probably elsewhere. Songs have been written about them. Life becomes a struggle when there's no parent there in body or mind. I've seen it. They were dropped into a world where survival may mean giving up dignity or bonding with the worst the world has to offer. I won't go into the sex trafficking.

Good one, J.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

But it is there and it is a sad fact. Thank you, Relic.
j.