From the time when only men wrote about road trips
I squeezed myself into the narrative,
these winding roads my only companion
on this journey where mountains meet sea,
home neither ahead nor behind me
because it is a thing I carry with me at all times
& that is something which cannot change
any more than the migratory bird can change its flight path.
I revisit homesteads I passed through once
& in so doing pass by houses of the holy
lining rural routes on either side with their tidy facades
and biblical reasoning for paving over native lands,
promising sanctuary to anyone but women and children
because the order of the beast
is maintained only for the beastly rule that built it.
Ghosts of my future sneak up from behind,
the ghosts of my past still ahead
waiting as I travel down this lane
to a home that was never mine
not by title, not by birthright,
not even by DNA encoded in a golden band.
And yet these ghosts rattle their chains,
sandwich me between them
in a battle forcing me to see
they are little more than
digital apparitions
I cannot slay with my blade
or any other analogue device
proving once again no sword can vanquish
that which is little more than a projection of ourselves.
And the beastly rule
that renders the migratory bird flightless
brings charges against the displaced children passing through
when the only reason we stopped in the first place
was to defend them against the beasts in analogue armor,
protected in their pageantry as they try,
convict
& sentence us for indecency
because of the language we used
when all we were doing really
was speaking in tongues
the analogue of which
is a two-edged sword.
The spirit of a one-eyed man
watches from the kitchen he built by hand,
his eye taken by a storm as unpredictable
as the ocean with a wagon chain in its hand
leaving him to spin fables about unruly mares
and their well-placed kicks,
passing on a legacy of chains
as invisible as those ghosts rattling them
while waiting for me in the lane
waiting
waiting
to challenge me to a battle
no one else can see
a fight with swords and wagon chains
and raging oceans, with only
the order of the beast in
those tidy houses of the holy
sitting in gleeful judgment
having tamed the mare
but not the ocean
knowing full well,
all it takes to start the storm
is a single well-placed kick
and if it keeps on raining
the levee will break
eventually.
Leaving the art
of writing about leaving
up to the men in search of territory
not yet claimed by the beastly rule
while the women left behind
begin to suspect the best route
is that of the migratory bird,
claiming nothing while changing
the landscape with their very appearance
predictable to anyone paying attention
and terrifying to those ruled
by the order of the beast
because
as any ghost will tell you
appearance is everything
to those living
behind tidy facades
wearing analogue armor.
© Adrienne Veronese
Halloween 2019
