Thoughts on Travel

Wake up and see
smell
hear
feel
drink in the depth of this new old place.

Meet the figments of your imagination
Come to life, breathing
Puppets under their own control
Not your creations after all.
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Drive/Fly/Sail
Into mist-hidden worlds
Be surprised by the novel
Be more surprised by the mundane
They have McDonald's in Dubai.
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Reading is travel
But travel isn't reading
Places can't be better said
People evade description
Never encapsulated by a thousand words
Or even ten thousand moving pictures.
No edges to God's creation.
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Traveling is whispering our dreams in their setting.
The books we've read, in color and texture
The names we've heard now stare us in the face
Our mind's creation bent around reality
Beat from the formless into fruition.
And many surprises we find.
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Leave home
Find home
Make home wherever.

Leave family
Find family
Make whomever family.

Leave self
Lose self
Ever making new.
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I live in a home
With dusty darkened rooms
Hallways ignored
Wings unexplored

What grows in a home
Of drawn shades and gloom
Abandoned to mystery
Filled with Unknown

Darkness.
Spirits.
Monsters.
Creakers and clappers and bangers and scratchers
Noises with no known Name play their games
How can I sleep in this home all alone?

Unless I open doors
Carry a torch
Brush aside cobwebs
Tear open these dusty drapes.

I must fight the fright
stepping out of the light
Dark night be damned
I live in the whole house
Not just this small room
A prison if I make it so.


I swallow hard
Hand on the knob
Full of fear, heart racing.
No matter what jumps upon me from outside in the dark
I'm ready to embark

I open the door
Step out in the hall
Stop.
Lock eyes with a man
who looks like a mirror
Smiling
We stare frozen, squinting

The Mirror man laughs
I can't help but chuckle
We found each other not ghosts
Not monsters
No matter what the fear-mongers promised.
Brothers
Sharing a houseful of rooms
With countless others.
Who live just outside my door.