Down the rabbit hole
like Alice
who doesn’t live here anymore because
the Queen of Hearts is after
that blonde bombshell and her tea-totaling friends
ready to make mincemeat pie out of the lot of them
I’d better make a plan
in case I find myself
piggy-happy contented
with my life on the other end of the spectrum.

But how could I
find a more wonderful land
that features co-workers
who are pleasant to gaze upon
with rose-pedal breathe
and personalities that would make Jesus jealous?

I know
a universe like that
must be possible
somewhere
but not in the here
and now
or beyond the rainbow
that Dorothy so wanted to visit
before she became
the alcoholic
sex-addicted
emotionally abused crooner
Hollywood threw to the gutter.

Perhaps there is no
dimension of time and space
that leads us to the promised land
Martin Luther King hoped for his people.

But we must keep looking
no matter the pain of travel
along the rocky roads and sheer shorelines
because one day we’ll find our home
and the paths we’ve taken to find it
will simply slip slide away
like vanilla ice cream running down a child’s face
until it hits the corner of her mouth – and yum
we’re in Kansas again, Uncle Ben and Auntie Em
we’re in Kansas again…