Escape Route
Today I am tempted
By unknown roads.
Can sense that dark animal
Curled against the thigh,
Now circling my hips.
He bites his tail,
Cold claw at the throat.
A screaming ripple of flesh
Cries out,
Take the wheel –
A hard left.
Find the open space,
The winter fields,
The blank page.
They’re closing in,
And these snaking lines –
Red and white lights –
Reinforce this lesson:
That only fools
Fail to plan
An escape route.
It is in my mouth
Like cotton,
And tightening,
Tightening –
Covering my eyes,
A cool slithering at the temple.
Hissing, whispering.
Bent promises
Drip from forked tongue –
A twisted request –
The façade that conceals
The demand:
Submit.
And who am I,
Anyway,
To question this authority?
But it rankles,
And it splinters,
And it festers
Under the skin.
Still surface belies
Swollen blood rivers
That rage beneath.
And in one
Blue moment,
The brakes give way.
So gun it for the open prairie,
Find an empty highway –
Holy,
Desolate,
Spilling like an open vein
Toward some final freedom.
