A Song about my Split-Level House (which ain't no grass hut!)

Here, where anything is worth nothing,

I’ve done a lot of home-improvement.

 

After eating, I experience carb-coma.

 

As soon as I bought this place

stuff started to break.

Now I’ve lived here awhile,

the home-improvement projects

have their own file folder.

 

So the one in this house just hangs out—

aimless, in-and-out, in-between.

Typical places to live? Not me.

Typical cravings? Not me.

 

This ordinary  house

holds all of time and space:

the one who lives here,

plus everything else

that’s smaller on the outside than the inside—

all in 2,000 square feet.

Pilgrims on the Way know about this,

but the indifferent and bored wonder,

“Is that a new garage door?”

 

Upgraded or not,

an honest prodigy lives here,

where there’s no denying

that income tax goes up every year.

 

Just sitting here,

it doesn’t get any better than this:

below the swamp cooler,

a bird-house in the eaves.

 

Multi-million dollar houses

with swimming pools and 6-car garages

can’t match this!

 

Just sitting,

with my blanket over my head,

nothing much going on. 

 

So this suburban monk

has no problem being confused

and just carries on without complaining.

 

No point in setting the table

and waiting for guests—

turning the porch light on and off

and on again.

 

Huge, incomprehensible, unfixable—

can’t see around it, or through it.

The source of it.

Just

meet all the old folks who get it

and play Scrabble with them.

 

Get up on the roof and fix the shingles,

and don’t worry about getting tired.

Drop the caulking gun

let it slip from your sweaty hands,

and your hours on the roof

come to an end.

Empty-handed, climb down off the roof.

Walk around.

 

Innocent caulking gun, just lying there.

 

The swarm of words and little f-bombs

are just to give relief from exasperation.

 

Getting to know the one

who lives in this house—

 

There’s no avoiding

 

this skin-bag

 

right here.

(this little ditty may or may not be flippant, and may or may not have anything to do with the "Song of the Grass-roofed Hut" by Shitou)