he went back out the sentence sounds
00:06
just like that a sentence to death and
00:11
misery with a desire for misery I’ve
00:14
sentenced myself yes many times to die
00:17
the pills swirling like a fistful of
00:20
little white pupils in awe of what they
00:22
can do in the body if I am alive now it
00:25
is because of how many times I have
00:27
failed my first night clean I wasn’t I
00:31
threw up in the street and stumbled in
00:33
late an old man sober thirty years said
00:37
give it six months if you don’t like it
00:41
you can have all your pain and misery
00:43
back but it was mine it was mine and I
00:48
could make as much of it as I needed how
00:50
much liquor can the body hold until it
00:52
leaves itself behind each week a new man
00:55
enters the room each week another man
00:57
doesn’t come back
00:58
what magic to walk through a door and
01:00
then peer again is inked in the Sunday
01:02
paper he went back out the sentence a
01:04
sentence spoken so often it becomes a
01:07
single word a spell an incantation of
01:10
disappearance the addict a magician
01:12
after all and you wonder where all these
01:14
men have gone but you don’t you know you
01:16
know there was no long winter out there
01:19
we dig through dead pines in search of
01:21
the bottom pain another way to fly
01:23
misery
01:24
another way to vanish misery it is the
01:26
prettiest word it flutters on the tongue
01:29
like sanada like overture like other
01:31
words that carry us into the dark and
01:33
then beyond it ten years ago I entered a
01:36
room full of men sitting quietly as if
01:38
they’re waiting for the last open chair
01:40
to fill now more than half of them are
01:43
dead what is a little more pain when
01:46
pain is eternal what’s a little more
01:48
music when the skull is a bell what’s a
01:50
little more knocking against its walls
01:52
when the body is a cathedral of doors
01:53
through which all the angels were
01:55
already fled listen can you hear it out
01:57
there the wind aching the golden rod
02:00
reaching up to the snow every house is a
02:03
church and you are never cold and the
02:06
dead are just parently beyond what you
02:08
can touch in every life you could have
02:10
had sings
02:13
you
02:14
[Applause]
◊♦◊
Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
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