Dark and dreary was the day. The misty swarm of air ‘round his farm clouded his mind. The burly man stood etched and lingering amongst the forest spires. He stared absentmindedly as he always did across the dilapidated plot of farmland, crows creaking and cackling. It was the ominous power of daybreak. Grass grew up in patches, dry and matted to the weariness of the ground. Every day he worked moment after moment, stranded on his land, not knowing of anything outside but his own southern sounding drawl, his whiskey, and the command of his own territory. His hands were musty with the smell of dirt like a graveyard digger. He pants, he pants.
Stood as a tree tall and pouting in wreckage, he stood like a ship in its barren depths. Always a notice was being nailed to the door of his mind. But he couldn’t figure out just what it could have read. A message for his lonely soul. Living by himself in the deep southern groove, he had only need for his freedom away from the torment of everyday molds. There working the land which he owned, he was in his tranquil prison of freedom. He was swallowed with depth, the burly brute. His only memory was sitting upon his rotten corpses of vegetables. Always on his farm, always in alarm. He was a whittled memory in the woods of his own mind, in the reality of the backwoods of a south dirt road. He pants, he pants.
He shudders, a glimpse of his face appalled with intruders of crows, but never had he seen an intruder of man, no. Ah, he catches and snatches with his grubby dirt stained claws. He sits willingly listening…always waiting, for something to appear. He waits reigning over his plot like a prisoner under Locke and key. The Locke in his head keeps on turning slowly. The iron fist keeps on grabbing at his sanity and his isolation, twisting and stabbing at him like a wild boar; constantly disturbed, constantly perturbed. Agitating the wilderness beyond, sweat burdening the white shirt clinging to his flabby body. He grips his ax, eternally gripping the ax with his calloused hands till they are reddened and sore. It pleases him; redeems his existence. He pants, he pants.
His expressions were pinched with the gravity of admiration for the land which was his only reality. Extraordinary to see a large man sheltered amidst a tattered white barn with only the obsessive care of the cradling of his dead crops like newborn babes. He sat in the ruins of the stained earth, which should have no less likely been watered with the tears of his loneliness and betrayal which he had been put through by everyone his whole life. The shroud of mists dance upon one another, seductively groping the scorched earth that makes up the soil of his veracity.
As he slept upon his barrels of hay, what springs upon the barrier of his senses, but a deer. It shutters and jabbers, whines and sneezes. She falls down amongst the rotten crops, the bugs devouring, raping, tearing the flesh of the ripe, of the mutilated white pumpkins. He pants, he pants.
Taking up his ax, the blade shines through the clumps of dirt splattered on to it with foreboding indiscretion. The blade, he always held for fear of intruders. But never had he seen an intruder of man, oh no. He sensed as he worked, what was behind him. He peered to see stationed in between the thorny bushes, he, a figure robed in crimson red moving eerily. It had the body of a man but the yellow eyes and protruding, piercing teeth of a wolf. It turned slowly and sinisterly in a ghastly flowing motion. Its sharp eyes stuck out its tongue waggled its visage turned slightly mangled. “Dark was the night, cold was the ground” and suddenly he awoke. He pants, he pants.
Arise yet another young day, but never has he seen an intruder, oh no, not until now, and so a stranger did appear. Through valley fields, the banjo twanged. A man of a darker skin happened upon, singing merely a song of force and wit, of truth and trouble and sorrow which seemed fit. He traveled lightly and picked up a small vegetable from the burly man’s ground, sinking his teeth in like a hound. And up came the ax that thrust the ramblin’ man to the ground. The burly bald man felt a violent fiddle shutter through his veins. A twisted and tortured squeal grabbed his heart, and once again he took up the ax, a stream of light shining down upon the spine of the blade. He pants, he pants. Hacking and chewing and munching away at the soul of the state of nature that the man stole. The world he knows nothing of in a serene pace, only alone and forgotten, he likes his space.
Oh, I don’t love this world so cruel.
