Home is a perfect place to get away from the world

It is what I expect heaven to be like

but I get bored easily

and wonder what I am going to do next


I run my ambition past my mother

She is 71 and tells me that I am in a good place

“Just stick with it.”


Most of the time I am melancholy

and I question myself

but there are times when I feel like a god

and my mother always tries to bring me back to earth

she succeeds, like gravity, or some stabilizing force

but I want to stay in orbit



Now

I’m playing her old piano

she is always trying to sell

She moved it outside

and the ivory keys came unglued

You have to pound them

to make any sound

and four keys 

won’t play


People come around

to look at the piano

Never for themselves

but always for a friend or girlfriend

“Will you move it for us?” They ask.

“No,” my mother says. “You have to pick it up.”

They never call back

And I keep playing it

into the dim hours


People walk our street

and I know they’re listening to the sound

Chopin

Titanic

Downton Abbey

Mozart

But our hedge divides us

from the neighborhood

and I can hear their feint footsteps walking away


The emotion in the music makes me feel intense

passion grips me when I play certain measures

when the Titanic is sinking and people are drowning

or when the colonial forces are fighting the British in an epic battle


I’ve always liked movies

I raised myself with them


I keep pounding the piano

I want to exist

My mother spoke to our neighbors yesterday

“Do you want to have our piano?”

“Why?” They ask. “It makes such beautiful music.”