On the road to Slaughterville, not as bad as it seems.
On the road with you, and the shadow that is me,
Hard won miles that take me away from them and their choices,
Is that not the goal, the finish line, the victory? Escape.
This fine night, this fine Oklahoma night, amongst rustic views,
And free from my pressing world we drive, with windows down,
With tongues loosed, with souls light and carefree, Hard sought peace
Is never where we want it, don’t you agree Kelly? What if we had turned away from Slaughterville, away from this razor sharp epiphany? What if these miles had been has-bins, the cruelest irony? But you call me to the road meeting rubber and the quickly passing asphalt. There were fireflies that night in those dark fields, behind my eyes, burning like but not as embers from the fire. Burning away memories and expectations, not unlike these incendiary prairies Kelly. They burn because they are consumed from wind and spark. I burn because my myopia was nearly fatal. Did your soul cancer perish in fire that night as did mine? Not from words, not from deeds, not from Normans sprawl, or from the eternal clay plains bathed in our headlights. The choice to turn towards Slaughterville, the choice to turn away, the choice to turn in spite of gravity asking us to stay. It wasn’t like the journey cured, that these rotating tires mended or that my life was anything more than the next billboard, the next masochistic armadillo. Change came because change is unavoidable where expectations cease and hurt is forgotten. With the summer wind, with the humming radio, and with expected ruin just ahead. What else but demise could lie in a city so ominous, like a frantic reaper amok in the fields of our better reason. Hear me then, and heed this then, do not fear what lies ahead, in Slaughterville’s lawns and parched Main Street. We would never know it for we never knew the full length of the journey. The destination was second, not one could fault us if our epic arc ended in meek retreat. This traipsing off was never about us was it Kelly, but about the chance to bolt from earthen orbit and set path for a city so far from where we had come.
So with hushed tones, with vibrant but muted memory I can lay claim to the road but not its termination. Like the lighting bolt we were against the never wakened farmers realms along the way this night, that perfect free night, we were sojourners. A phoenix, blazing newness, hearkened me forward even on the road to Slaughterville.
