Who Is Misery Esprit?

Misery is like a younger version of your inbred third cousin’s senile step-grandfather, or some other crazy old fart in the holler, usually nude, scratching his pants for a living, in a bramble covered, see-thru, slack-shack in Klickitat; the property festering with feral jackalopes and swarthy VW-sized wild turduckens prowling among Buicks on blocks, broken flasks of whiskey.

You know the guy. Displayed on mantle, taxidermy bull elk he didn’t kill, mounted to the disembodied grill of a ’62 International Travelall, which he did. He collects prison cards. 

The kind of guy with a sawed-off shotgun for a leg with a tennis ball attached to the muzzle, a second ball on the muzzle of a not-sawed-off shotgun modified to a crutch, and a third ball that enjoys peering out from his summer shorts. He’s got a black velvet portrait of Queen Elizabeth II deep throating Warhol’s banana, We’ve ALL met that guy. 

Eloped with an Irish Setter, but when she fell ill with consumption, he ate her and their hybrid human/canine family. He’s always babbling rapids of interwoven circulatory-conspiracies and frantic pedantic prose. He’s got a big nose, midnight lawnmowen’ wearing Lederhosen.

You’ve seen guys like that guy.

The kind with the Spam can ashtrays and masking tape cardboard windows. Always up at 3AM making moonshine from Urine, Tattooed like an Egyptian crocodile, Twisted cartoon balloon poodle veins popping, binge watches an ever filling cuss jar full of quarters, rides a solar unicycle, owns all of Bernie Sanders’ speeches on vinyl.

He’s always tweaking some fangled electronical gadgetry, a wind-up radio, or satellite dish crafted from a turducken hood. Has a real garden grave. Built and rides an impertinent Jumperoo in the barn, has a black Sharpie sticking out of his brain—too risky to remove, you know the type. You’re familiar with that ilk. 

He’s got a hamster ranch, an ant farm, cockroach Habitrail monorail, all in the comfort of his moldy, discolored kitchenette. Wipes his forehead with buttered toast, you know exactly the kind of guy I’m talking about.

How does a man become this?

Who cracked his existential eggs? A peculiar suffering? An undisclosed loss bolstered by bitterness?

Humbled by daybreak temples? 

We’ll never know

But we know this

Misery is a lot like him, only way younger

He’s still got a ways to go

Like an aging Limburger

Misery is a work in progress.