Another day, another dollar wasted on soulless estates — grand staircases, marble fireplaces, triple-pane, bocote framed windows remote-controlled, and I shudder. Oh brother, home theater, dishwasher does laundry and also cooks dinner. Automation saturation — domestic overstimulation. No, not for me; not a house that talks at me, but a home that speaks to me, that holds the key to long-since dormant memory.
Tell ya man, if I had a million bucks I’d construct a house that smiles, (only one you’d see for miles), with bay windows where some angling vines lazy hang and rolley-polley cat deigns to greet morning sun. Out front, a walkway made of stepping stones, couple garden gnomes, some junipers to wake the nose. One car garage, two cars in the drive make room for a hoop where little ones strive to reach the rim. “Never mind, let’s just go in.”
If I had a million bones, I’d build a home where you could roam — no socks, no shoes — spread out your toes. Blue shag carpet everywhere: ‘neath Grandpas squealing easy chair, (though it’s too late to find him there), up and down the narrow stairs where sneaky Saturday morning feet creep to TV hijinks while parents sleep.
Baby! A cool mill and just think — a bathroom bathed in pink, from walls, to floors, to tub and sink. Tiled in towel bar, tiled in soap dish, tiled in toothbrush holder dangles five brushes. Races to the toilet and fights for the mirror, every year clearer another bathroom is needed, or is it, indeed?
If I had that dough I’d make it so the deck would stretch from fence to fence. Charcoals briquettes reach steady glow, just as guests begin to show. Labor Day, graduation, Uncle’s seventieth celebration — any/every/no occasion upon pine boards, beneath the oaks we sip, mend scars, and soak in stars, stoke the flames til embers char. Start the cars.
Gimme that cash and I’m attaching a dial-tune radio just below walnut-stained cabinets. Static interference on the AM station, no cause for frustration as I dust Grandmas’s baubles on the sink window sill. Their refracted light spills out like rainbows she’s haunted, as the broadcast plays on, just as she would’ve wanted.
God, please just lend me the green and I’ll store every dream, every faint recollection within this hallowed collection of plaster and studs; so that memory may flood ‘round each battered corner and wood-paneled hall. So that walls may radiate truth, from the shadow of those passed, to the ears of my youths. So that the clock may halt, rewind, or vault on ahead. And I’m alive but I’m dead in this home built of ghosts and sensations, visions and vibrations — a gilded mausoleum to house generations.
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