The Just Ride Out
Photo by Breno Machado on Unsplash.
They called it incursion into irrational zones.
We called it dancing.
A protocol was drafted—
Standard Operating Procedure 12.3:
In case of spontaneous ball lightning, initiate denial,
preferably quiet—never viral.
But no one could net them,
the just,
when they slipped the grid
and broke through the veil.
The U.S. military launched missiles—twice.
Nothing but confetti.
A nuke was triggered in sheer frustration;
it bloomed like a wilting peony
and left the generals weeping on Zoom.
They didn’t mean to cause a scene.
Only—Dionysus poured.
And when Dionysus pours, even the bureaucrats stutter.
Even the clocks forget their numbers.
Even the algorithm blinked—
glitched once,
and fell into a loop of joy it couldn’t explain.
We reviewed the footage.
Not them—the ones who stayed:
The real estate priestess in yoga pants,
her Labradoodle leashed to a mortgage-backed gem.
The cul-de-sac warlock polishing his Tesla.
“Alexa,” they cried,
“Explain transcendental them.”
But the screen stammered.
A rooftop, flaring.
Bare chests. Eyes lit with old prophecy.
The lens trembled.
And then—they lifted.
Chariots—not golden,
but blazing white with crimson flame,
inscribed in tongues no scroll could name,
drawn not by horses but by hearts
distilled like wine from the world’s dark arts.
The Just—yes, with capital J—
had waited in silence far too long.
They’d punched the clock,
filed their quarterly virtue reports,
tolerated influencer theology
and ethical oat milk courts.
But justice isn’t branding.
And virtue must ferment within,
until the grape becomes a hymn,
until the current flows between,
gods and man,
and what you are dissolves in what has been.
Dionysian wine—it’s not for sale.
It overflows.
It rings the bell.
And all are one, and all can tell
who’s rising from this world’s shell.
Out west,
an old god wandered barefoot,
his breath the perfume of vineyards forgotten.
He didn’t livestream.
One myth said they rode out
to resurrect the Earth.
Another said they left
to dream it into birth.
The Director’s Memo read:
“Charioteers reassigned to the wedding banquet.
Dress accordingly.”
He was last seen whistling in a field,
naked,
writing hymns on the side of a bull—
and later, bedding cuties behind the vineyard wall.
And now—
we do not wait.
We uncork our silence.
We drink up the hidden,
we draw down the night.
We speak through the vines that bend toward the light.
Dionysus still pours—
and the river runs right.
The Just are rising again.
You’ll know them by their works,
by the wine on their breath,
and the thunder they send
from a thousand wheels
tearing holes in the end.
