Girls with Insurance

(the sadness will last forever)

I was born a chubby slimy snot near a prairie dog town on Route 66. My old man pulled over his 48 Chevy with my ma screaming holy murder in the backseat. Some Navajo women stopped and helped with my delivery. All of them shaking their heads in disbelief at all 17 pounds of me. A state trooper directed traffic around my dad and the two families from Gallup. Growing up I always had strange ideas, I disliked school or work, but had a gift of gab for the ladies. My ma entered raffles. She won a years supply of toilet paper, 7 ant farms, a pogo stick, 52 box kites, some old expired Jimmy Dean sausage, and lots of other strange stuff. My pa just let her live in her own little world, cutting coupons and collecting green and gold stamps. He built things from stone and drank Smirnoff 100 proof vodka, Ten Roses whiskey, and Coors beer. I practiced Spanish, so I could disappear into Mexico and eventually deal weed. I always loved to write down my thoughts, which led me to stories and poems. Like yesterday I saw this poor dumb son of a bitch in the grocery store wearing an Elmer Fudd hunting cap. In his shopping basket he had 4 cans of chili with beans (real fart blasters), air freshener (that would never cut the stench), a roll of cheap ass toilet paper (that wouldn’t fit in the wall dispenser and would leave shit and dingle balls up his butt), a jar of Vaseline (stroke action), and a Penthouse (at least he got one thing right). It made me think about Van Gogh, he may not have sold a painting while he was alive, but his last words were right on the money.

The world began again, or so I was told. We float here in the darkness—we’re told it’s dark, since we don’t have eyes. We amoebas were the start of existence. We changed, grew complex, acquired strange compounds. Eventually we sprouted fins, legs, even thumbs and appendices. We learned to walk upright. We painted the walls of caves, built cities and dammed rivers. We began to control things; we even tried to control ourselves. But certain things, things we couldn’t control, persisted. I can only speak as an amoeba, of course. I had no part of it. I was only the beginning.  The ashes of the last world—ashes that had been grass, granite, sandstone—made their own life. They were all that was left. They passed down their stories, their myths and consciousness. They are my family. I float here, and if I find something, I eat it.  I know nothing different. My children will be the same. Do you understand? The world is a single devouring mouth. We all must learn to be eaten.