WEBVTT

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I don't often write
political poems

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and I didn't know I was writing
one when I wrote this one.

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It's called "Living in
Someone Else's House,"

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and it's about doing that for
many years of not having a house

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of my own traveling
around very much connected

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to the rootlessness that
I told you about before.

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But in the course
of writing the poem,

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I start to understand
that any time we're

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living in someone else's
house in the broadest sense,

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it's a political
statement of a kind

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that any time you're
uncomfortable in someone else's

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house, in a country,
the same thing.

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So the metaphor, I start
to understand the metaphor

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in at least a couple of ways.

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"Living in Someone
Else's House."

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"The house we never built for
ourselves begins to surround us,

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its foundation smelling
like old breath

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like what lies around too long
in the pit of the stomach.

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We are unable to sleep in these
houses made by someone else.

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These furnished
rooms we come to,

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these outposts and the
valleys of our expectations.

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Where we would
have windows, there

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are portraits of
landscapes, there

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are portraits of Windows
opening out onto landscapes

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and the doors open too
easily into the sunshine

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which is just a billboard in
the neighborhoods of the poor.

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In these houses, the
ceilings are so perfect,

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there's not a single
invitation to an angel.

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Our hope smack into them
and we are afraid to move.

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We find ourselves stuck to the
floor dynamite in our hands

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and our hands waiting for the
orders we wish we could give

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them."

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