Poetry: Anywhere Is Now Nowhere

Anywhere Is Now Nowhere
by Debra L Scott 9/27/2011

Five countries, four continents, twenty-two cities
And those are just places I’ve lived
Not counting vacations work rescue ministry revolution charity family
jump-in-the-car-and-see-how-far-I-get-this-time.

My ancestors sailed boats that took months weeks days to get anywhere.
If you were still alive at the end of the journey you stayed put for a while and made rules laws countries
And restless children who moved west because there was always a free land if you
went left far enough. Then you had carts horses wagons shotguns and a pig.

Me, in just one day I can make a new life anywhere in the world.
I share the wanderlust of grey-beards kerchiefed wrinkled faces babies tied in blankets children running milk filled bosoms.
I want to see everywhere anywhere step in a jet plane pack the car head for the hills beach city mountain desert island places where I can’t read the signs.

But. Anywhere is now Nowhere.

I spend my days entombed in the one place left to me.
All my adventures are consigned to spacesuit tourism;
I am alien on a hostile planet.
Don’t eat the food don’t sleep in the bed don’t walk down the hall don’t drink the water don’t breathe the air don’t wear the teeshirt from the souvenir store.
I am allergic to the world.

I don’t take in the beauty of life anymore.
I scan for breath stealers heart stoppers rash makers stomach smashers bowel loosteners.
I keep my double barreled pistol of adrenaline in the holster of my garter
and carry air in my pocket. Pink white yellow green blue purple round oval square tubular snake oils rattle around in my bag.
Masked gloved clothed shod in a special costume dance people look up down side around but definitely not AT me.

Toting my soapbox of “handy information”, I am ready to deliver a long winded speech to these guilty sinners who hold my life in their latex-gloved hands wielding rubber bands like thumbscrews

I wag a finger of rebuke at the child with the red balloon:
“Don’t you know you can kill someone with that?”