Dirt
Is this thing working? Is this thing on? I don’t know if you can hear me but the ringing in my ears sounds like Christmas mating with a cactus on a blistering August day in Topeka. That’s alright by me though, it makes drowning out the voice a little easier; not perfect by any means, but shutting him up is good for the soul. And trust me, my jambalaya needs tending to. With me so far? Is there anybody alive out there?
Now I’m sorry if I ramble, walk off the deep end, go to feed the dog and come back with a Buick, you know, if I start screaming, “I don’t have a message, I have a need,” and it really sinks in and says something to you that neither of us were expecting, and let’s face it, neither of us wanted to hear. But here we are. So hear here.
Also, I don’t know how well you know me, but this isn’t really my sort of thing, opening the potatoes and peeling them in front of the Pope; I’m a private fella. But I’ll do what I can, since you did ask, I’m pretty sure you asked but we’ve got this far so small details burn up in the fryer. I can make out the tones of my voice, reverberating off of these, what I have to say, are dazzling coffin walls. They really outdid themselves on my behalf and…well, I might just be mad, perhaps. This is mahogany draped in the finest, well, you get the picture. Hope you’re still with me, partner, it’s a train I can’t bear engineering alone, new tracks and all.
He always said I wasn’t good enough, and he was probably right, but also I was probably just a bit better than he gave me credit for, that guy being me, and the credit, not much but enough should have been pinned to my chest. I’d wake up like that you know, just thinking. My brain hadn’t even registered that I need to scratch my ass yet but that old mind of mine would sure on be telling me I was the black sheep, the fool, a windmill on its side facing a storm-less summer, plenty of cliché crap like that and I’d just sit there, not scratching my hindquarters, assuming the best of his worst was the least of what I’d deserved. It was like having a rabid prosecutor performing a song-and-dance for a jury already in agreement, mouthing along the same damn nonsense he was condemning me with like they’d all just left a revival meeting. Preaching to the damned, I suppose.
I should have shut him up sooner, the voice, the bad drug, the walking through fields of freshly broken glass, the suffering I put myself through just to convince myself that I was right…that he was right; that I was wrong.
Too late now though, seeing as how he shouted from the rooftops just how vile I was to a crowd already nodding along, watching my snapped neck sway back and forth in three-quarter time.
He’s quiet now though. I have had, and in this luxurious mahogany, am finally, for all intent and purpose, well, damn it, I’m enough.