Petroleum Pilgrimage

Steel beasts scream past. Your voice is drowned. You follow the sign of the scallop through rot and stone, through God's empty house, guided by a crumbling saint.

Canterbury is a long way away and a scallop shell your only proof of pilgrimage. Speed is the Holy Spirit, following the footsteps of saints across long dead landscapes.

Purple flags float amongst the ghosts of dead villages that never existed. Barbed wire unfurls wildly, observed by inhuman eyes as you hunt for pescatarian delights that cannot be delivered.

Violent energy across airfields sends you plunging into the sky, an unsustainable flight, broken by protest banners and words that are never enough.

Sneak past suspicious suburbs, each step a year. A pond supports farmers and fields fall beneath pastures and railway lines. The future is hot and wet and stormy and the pond runneth over.

Your life hangs from pylons, pulled through signs and voltage, brambles and nettles, trespassing on caterpillar tracks. A minefield. Lose yourself in the sea of steel.

A holy sanctuary greets you, scallop-encrusted, offering to cleanse you for a price. The traffic is a whirlpool of maddening circles.