Showing posts with label rage against the machine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rage against the machine. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Oregon Trail BY NATE MARSHALL

 Oregon Trail

For my great aunt & Jonathan Hicks

my first venture west was in Windows 98
or Independence, Missouri. class in the computer lab
& we were supposed to be playing some typing game
or another. the one i remember had a haunted theme.
ghosts instructing us on the finer points of where
to put our fingers. these were the last days
before keyboards as appendage, when typing
was not nature. i should’ve been letting an apparition
coach me through QWERTY but rather
i was at the general store deciding between ammo & axles,
considering the merits of being a banker or carpenter.

too young to know what profession
would get me to the Willamette Valley
in the space of a 40-minute period.
i aimed my rifle with the arrow keys, tapped the space
bar with a prayer for meat to haul back to the wagon.

this game came difficult as breathing underwater after
trying to ford a river.

                                        i was no good at survival.
somebody always fell ill or out into the river.
each new day scurvy or a raid was the fate of a character
named for my crush or my baby sister.
this loss i know, how to measure what it means
to die premature before a school period ends.

i can’t understand the game coming to a late end.
an elderly daughter grieving her elderly mother.
reading the expansive obit in a suburban
Detroit church is a confusing newness.

when the old do the thing the world expects
i retreat into my former self. focus on beating
video games I’ve always sucked at, brush up
on Chicago Bulls history, re-memorize
the Backstreet Boys catalog, push
away whatever woman is foolhardy enough
to be on any road with me. i pioneer my way away
from all the known world. i look at homicide rates
& wish we all expired the way i know best. i pray
for a senseless, poetic departure. i pray for my family
to not be around to miss me while i’m still here.
i want a short obituary, a life brief & unfulfilled,
the introductory melody before a beat’s crescendo into song,
the game over somewhere in the Great Plains.

i want to spare my descendants the confusion
of watching a flame flicker slow. keep them from being
at a funeral thumbing the faded family pictures like worn keys,
observing the journey done, the game won, the west
conquered.

Why is truth not allowed to exist anymore?

 Why is truth not allowed to exist anymore? Why is basic reality banned from our lives? Nobody believes in basic logic anymore! Truth judges...