Analysis of 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.
Scheme | X XXXXXXABCXC BDXXB CC XCCCXX XCBX XAXXXXEXEDXXXX BAXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111001 111011010 10100101000101 100111101101 101001101010101 101011010111 11101010011 0111010110 1110111101010 1111110 111010011001110 01000101100101100 11111010 1111001010 0011010100 1111010101101 1101111111010 11110011010010 1011010 11111010 101111101010 111110110110100 1111111010 11111110111 110101011001 110101101011 11001010010010 1000101000010 0111001010 1011010101 10101110110110 1001111111 1011100110 0111001 01101011001 111101111011101 11011111101 111010111111 10100100101111100 111011111111 1101010001101 001001000101010011 011010011 111110100010 1100110111110 101001001010010111 010010101101 10 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,256 |
Words | 430 |
Sentences | 25 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 11, 5, 2, 6, 4, 14, 5 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 218 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 51 |
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Written on 2015
Submitted by Drone232 on June 18, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:09 min read
- 4 Views
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"Oregon Trail" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/130250/oregon-trail>.
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