exile

'I would be in exile now but everywhere's the same...I want a ticket home.' Phil Ochs

Who exiled us, and from where? What did we do to deserve this bleak Babylon? What trumped-up offense triggered our desolate banishment? We have became exiles on Main Street, as well as Maple, Cypress, Poplar, Oak, Pine, Walnut, the whole slew of tree streets. And all the lanes and avenues. Exiled. Our offspring became a diaspora scattered to the winds, and for what and why and to where, for that matter from where. We are refugees without a country to escape from or to go to. No St. Helena or Elba as Napoleon had. You begin to accept it all as part of the punishment, the scheme: the burning sands, the foreign language, strange fruits, the treeless hardscape (despite those arboral street names). Nixon in San Clemente. Santa Claus at the North Pole. Jesus in the tomb. John Gotti in his cell. Jane Fonda in Hanoi. We fear traipsing the sands again, before our calluses have formed anew. Exilia in Exileland. And who were these residents who were here when we arrived? Were they exiles long ago? No passports, no direction home. No appetite any more for going back, as if something is there for us. 

Who will read this message in a bottle?

And then what?