DREAMS OF EXILE
I’ve been dreaming of leaving
Hopping in a car and heading West
With nothing but the clothes on my back
Cashing one last check
To Seattle where she waits for me
With open arms
Her pale skin
Emerald eyes
And faux-red hair
That dances round her luminous smile
Or perhaps to Canada
The land of nothing
Where I can leave everyone I knew behind
Make one last stop in Chewelah
Tell them all that I will return
And leave them waiting there
For the punchline to the joke without
Or off to Africa
I could fight for a warlord
Till I take a stray bullet and collapse in a ditch
Forgotten by all except the child who did me in
His ribcage poking from his taut skin
The gift of extra rations at the cost of nightmares forever
Wherever I go
It must be better than here
Greys and browns melting into an abstract mural
Of sorrow and despair
The streets as cracked as the faces of its residents
Or the dreams they left locked in their shed
A bear trap you can’t escape
Lest you chew off your leg
They say the grass is always greener
And of all the great clichés
I think it rings most true
As I dream and wait to leave this place
For a future so uncertain
It may as well be this poem
Or me
