Sleep Warm

Exercise said write about something you don't see yourself doing. It's dying on death row.

CHING...CHING...CHING...

This isn't the sound of coins, of making slow money. This isn't the sound of a stabbed Chinese poet suffering in a rainy gutter, his death rattle jangling one final fu he'll never finish.

No.

This is the sound of government-issued hog-ties made of steel chewing at my cankles like carnivorous worms. A ching for each year spent in this tax-payer-funded slaughterhouse. Fluorescent, indifferent, and tiled. A ching for each life I don't regret taking.

I haven't stepped on dirt in 13 years. I doubt I've ever stepped on earth. I'm dragging my feet like meat clung to a hook – cold, dead, red, and prepared to plunge toward the abyss. To hit the road to the forever dreamland. Two twin linebackers of the law lead me in silence; eyes like broken porno projectors, hands like boas. They don't blink, they don't speak, they only deliver. Like I'm a refrigerator. Like I'm mail. Like I'm product. I am product; spoiled product. I am mail; junk mail. I am a refrigerator; one full of rotten meat. Human meat.

BUM-BUM, BUM-BUM, BUM-BUM...

This isn't the sound of a V8 engine gunning for trailer trash enlightenment, of riding down a road of sandy leprosy. This isn't the sound of tribal drums, banged upon by a bony pygmy person.

No.

This is the sound of cardiac rebellion, of my heart about to burst from its prison as I'm about to burst from mine. It beats so loud I can hear its name on America's Most Wanted. It kyoodles to be freed, it screams for parole. But I'm the board here. And the board says, “Never.”

I don't utter a single word aloud. I keep my lips shut like a suitcase full of asbestos. I keep my tongue buried with sandbags. I keep my throat filled with classified ink. Voice redacted.

They'll make a note of my refusal for speech. They're always making notes. Jotting down every important and unimportant detail of every significant and insignificant thing. They have pens for teeth. Chomping on holy scrolls of institutional submissiveness.

The door to my throne laboriously opens. I hear it moan my name, decrepitly, with the raspiness of an endlessly aging wizard. I look up and see the glow. The aura of fate I've been longing to see, killing to see. My beaming destiny. My gleaming ultimate terminal. My throne starts to sing Dean Martin's “Sleep Warm” and it reverberates throughout the corridor, serenading all the trapped spirits. Those chings sway to a new rhythm, the bum-bums soothe for defeat, the suitcase lips open to a smile, the sandbag tongue empties itself and the redacted voice declassifies itself to whisper along the wonderful words.

Shiny spires stem from my throne. Chrome flowers sprout. Cushions form for my fat fanny. A golden toilet to soil myself in. The men push me down into my throne as if I'm too stupid to know what to do. It embraces me, envelopes me, tucks me in, loves me.

I murmur forward the final chorus: “Close your eyes now and kiss me / And whisper you'll miss me”.

They ceremoniously ask me for my last words, and I conclude: “Sleep tight, sleep well / Sleep warm”. My throne kisses me goodnight, then buzzes throughout my blood the closing musical coda as I sink deeply into my eternal slumber.

Let them choke down on some Dean.

Let them chomp down on bureaucratic paper what happened here today.