There I was stupefied--, stuttering in the bleary day to day. A bottle of Kentucky gentleman drank me and that bottle was at the bottom of the bottle that was I. Crack and shatter! The whole sky is red meat evaporating into the ghosts of God. A tornado of sullen shadow wounded with blue shafts of blue sky milk light. I recall those old visions echoing in that special sentimental void. I hear that lonesome train whistle moaning near the Oostanaula river. I see an old fishing boat up in flames drifting down the muddy currents. I was a foolish childhood amongst below the shenanigan shadowy mountains which towered like worn down teeth above sugar valley. I hear the wind moan and call a stranger's name.

The shadow of Alan Jackson was following us. We ran through the woody tangled ravines. We broke into the fish hatchery drunk on father's whiskey. It was bad whiskey. We stole his pain pills. We watered down his whiskey with water. He was a fat slob son of a bitch of a man. We were his cops and he was no Georgia Hillbilly. He was some Tommy guy who came from New Jersey. In New Jersey, the law states all newborns must give a slice of their heart to the New Jersey Pine Barrens devil.

The fish hatchery was all weird concrete ditches. I watched Tommy fish. He hooked his thumb and yelped like the abused stray puppy he was. I was drunk. I rolled somebody's stolen glass eye right into the gaping mouth of a captive catfish. The catfish was meowing. I had to act and do something. Wouldn't you?

It was the middle screech of night. It was the middle screech of the day. We were not part of time yet. I could still call down the turkey vulture without getting into Holy Ghost trouble.

A man who looked like a decrepit Tim McGraw spliced with the DNA of a sinister Clint Black chased us wildly with his randy pick up truck. The sunlight poured down like a molten metal snow blizzard. I didn't care. My heart was a busted flat tire. Blood poured out of my eyes. We were the rainstorm of youth. The man was yelling at us about the Gulf War Storm. I yelled about our war.

We kept slippin and slidin. We made it back to the edge of the woods. The woods were dark and crawling with the whippoorwill sounds of teenage girls.

We ran through the pines and oaks. Spring was starting to be sultry, I suppose or was this a winter hen's claw? Were we just two cadavers? I ran smack hard into a barbwire fence- violence hurled down to the dead leaves covering sharp rocks upon the forest floor.

No one ever caught us. The dark man was gone. We became our own sinister dark men. I cut out my heart and fed it to a raccoon so to speak.

We went home. I overdosed on trucker speed. I saw some things. I thought I was seeing some things. I met my 13 year old girl friend of those far away times and we did fuck like two ducks under a semi truck.

I thought I was going home. There was no home. Home was a bad country music television corn pone porn Garth Brooks video. I was a dream in somebody else's body. I was a dream in a dead man's eyes at the Baptist funeral where the majority of the mourners are middle aged fat gaudy women in 1991 dresses with shoulder pads.

I did some things. I traveled into the Cherokee ghost world. I talked to the tall men who walked tall underneath the Smokey Mountains. I saw my ghost in the clear waters of cold streams and wept more blood.

I took the boots of Hank Williams off in that death chrome Cadillac. I did not put his boots on. I only stole his drugs and stole his shirt right off that scrawny cadaver's back. I heard Audrey Williams screaming. I told her to shut the fuck up.

I got in a fight with Johnny Paycheck on the Dukes of Hazard TV show. We made up and became friends. We cut Boss Hog with a knife then cooked up and ate burnt bloody bacon.

I woke up galvanized strangely from these visions and memories. I woke up with a fever in this disappointing cold cold heart world. Where have all the lap steel players gone? Though, like everything else I am only the substance of slovenly memory. SLOP

Like I was tellin the Lemon Kid the other day sometimes you make your own coffin in the earth with a tombstone carved stupid and you break both legs jumpin in and you can't quite get out and then the rain starts to holler down and then you remember to remember how much really Garth Brooks is Mr. phony with his Las Vegas Schmaltz. Too many folks try to make this whole world Las Vegas. My skeleton and my soul say count me ouT!

Down in this grave, you start to skin yourself alive through tha thin fat in tha flood filling six foot thunder grave and you're using the red handled knife you found across the street from the Federal Penitentiary 13 years ago.

So Mr. Satan, I'm ready. I hear your hooves gettin stuck in the mud on your way to visit this ancestral bludgeoned hillbilly tottering upon this thistle thrusting searing brimstone wafting world. I hear you howlin real good Mr. Ole Satan. I will play you a real good country song on the fiddle down in my thunder flood grave. We will have a business meeting.

When I'm born again as a time traveling ghost I'm gonna go burn down the shit house outhouse of your pappy and mammy and let them dogs run loose into the gone.

(end)