They came in a dump truck, bright
red with menacing hecklers hanging off
the running boards. They drove through
our driveway, onto our lawn sideswiping
our front door, then retreated up
the road leaving us with our jaws dropped
halfway to our laps waiting for the next
jackboot to drop. Having trespassed without
consequence, phase one of their terror
was complete.
Phase two: rumbling down the road
like a giant red Roomba piloted by a man
as lithe as a Batman villain in a red leotard.
It buzzed about our front yard like an
insect. Then Roomba man set the ladder
he projected from his pod onto our roof
and climbed where he was unwelcome.
We hacksawed at the base of the ladder.
We called the police. I woke without
knowing if they ever came.
Click here to read David Janey on the origin of the poem.
Image by Alexander Zvir on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
David Janey:
This poem originated from a dream. I often harvest the content of my dreams crafting poems built on my best recollection of whatever my subconscious presented to me while sleeping. In writing dream poems there’s always a tension between my desire to stick to the script of my memory vs. aesthetic and other considerations. In this case, the final product is very close to my memory of the dream. The location was the ranch house I grew up in. My efforts to process the tenor of contemporary life with daily assaults on privacy, bodily autonomy, and human rights are reflected in poem which evokes feelings of being intruded upon and violated in my once safe family home. The title came to me after writing the first draft. It is a reference to the famous poem, “They Came First” by the German pastor Martin Niemoller which condemns the complicity of Nazi era intellectuals, clergy, and others for not speaking out against the persecution of Jews, trade unionists, socialists, and communists. Other undesirables were also persecuted, but the poignancy of his confession remains. Sadly, with the passage of time the list of scapegoated groups by people in power has only grown longer.
David Janey is a Boston-based African American poet and essayist. He writes about racial justice, social change, personal memory & growth, and lessons learned from nature. David is an active member of the Bethesda Poets writing group. A recently retired university administrator, David’s writing has appeared in Mobius, One Art, Pangyrus, Rise Up Review, Solstice Magazine Features Blog, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and Wordpeace.
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