Things Get Better

THINGS GET BETTER
—for Dan Savage

“You can't go 
home again” 
―Thomas Wolfe
You Can’t Go Home Again
_______________

Who wants to go back home—
back to that hellhole of losers?

They’re the biggest losers of all—
stop wasting your time even trying
_________________

Does it really get better—
like Savage says in The Stranger?

I doubt it, I doubt it seriously—
back home is just fucking hell
____________

Back home be str8t romantic love—
back home be a closet-case dream

So much for all that fuckin bullshit—
back home be just another name for exile
__________________

There’s No Escape from New York—
San Francisco or Los Angeles

No escape to Europe or some foreign land—
no home for lyricism, except yourself
___________________

Get selfish & real about it, that’s all—
back home to your own Destination

To your own youthful idea of 'freedom'—
all that’s self-sufficient about yourself
________________

Forget 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love'—
all that shit about some str8t ivory tower

Go back home to home inside yourself—
the country of the blind, deaf and dumb
_______________

Forget Fire Island and Key West—
all those gay mythological hangouts

Forget about Tennessee Williams—
Elizabeth Bishop, Miss Auden, Isherwood
____________________

They couldn’t get away from all that strife—
Anymore than you can, it’s simple

First, forget your mother and father—
you already lost them a long time ago
________________

Stop looking for peer group approval—
whoever they were can’t help you now

Save yourself lotsa time, ease the burden—
you don’t wanna go back home ever again
________________

All those old forms and systems of things—
once guilting & haunting you to death

They seemed everlasting but they’re always—
changing all the time escaping all of us
_________________

Back to the real home that’s really you—
your Great Escape into Time and Memory