life as a miner

It's hot, damned hot. I knew from the beginning of this week I would be in a foul mood. In turn I blame the weather, but as we all know, we ourselves are the predicators of our own demise. This evening I peered out of an opening in one of my crumbling walls. Out past the mounds of debris and carcasses stretched in folds, I looked at the place reserved for the birds. In contrast to the bleak interiors of my room, a loom from my mind that beckons, my tongue hanged freely out of the sides of my mouth, slobber having slipped off into the wind to take the rest of my voice that remains away.

I've been particularly stressful and done my best to engage the principle dealer of dread for so many years now that I believe it's beginning to taunt me by reminding myself of the reality of the situation I'm in. The rules are simple. You live once and you die trying to play by them but somewhere along the lines I came to thinking that the balance of life lies within the imbalance. One day I will be replaced or I will be killed because I knew too much and was therefore a form of contingent liability. So I live my life in fear. Strange for a creature that is I, that had dealt in terror for most of it. Every day an excuse with another exercise in my own hypocrisy. I will terrorize others in an attempt to abate my own.

Despite the stress of this position, I admit that there are others far worse off. For all those that arrive to life, only one of a hundred would get a posting. The rest get death. In my posting, I imagine I have others working under me. Plenty of them younger, stronger people that all covet my position relentlessly. The only thing that will keep me safe is the legendary cruelty that came with me. For no other creature in this world has taken more life than I. Not one. It has taken most of my life to come to terms with this. And in doing so realize that I will be killed.

Lingering in front of the opening, the uncanny ability of being able to solve those around, simply by watching and listening. There is nothing I fear more. Long silences. Sudden bursts. Bizarre conversation. The only thing. Such behaviors have resulted in long years of murder. That unpredictability that all maniacs possess. And it haunts me ceaselessly. Sliding away from the view through my crumbing walls, my eye shadows in it's known irony in the form of paradox. The paradox of what is good and bad at the same time.