don't sign the lease before you count the cockroaches

we came into town on borrowed hopes

counting 37 cockroaches around the door frame

and the nights i slept there added up to much less

than two backpacks and a cab fare to the train station.

we came into town on misplaced roadmaps

finding misplaced words placed right in our laps.

call me crazy, call me nuts, call me what you will,

or don't at all, i don't expect you will.

we came into town at 90 miles an hour,

running away from ourselves in a rented car,

pockets full of credit cards -

and i remember reading once

a writer runs away from home expecting to find

    foreign lands and far away things,

but finds only thoughts of from where he came.

home

is where you know

how to buy stamps.

home is where you get the jokes.

we came into town on two hours sleep,

a brisk night on mullberry street

  checkerboard linoleum and counterfeit jazz

finding glowing sidewalks puddled in dollar beer

  old men making jazz tunes out of Billy Joel songs

and typical cabbies asking "now, why y'all wanna go there for?"

"i hope

i never see you again,"

        you said.

"i hope i never see you again, too,"

i replied.

and all i regret, all i regret

is my baseball glove, sitting on top of the bookshelf.

i loved that baseball glove.