Personal Responsibility

[The Honeless Beard]

((Dougie Sharpe, poor linking specialist))

He knew that someone, somewhere, was logging the number of words he'd said on air, excitedly adding a tally mark to a blue lined piece of paper for every collection of syllables he forced through dry throat and exhausted lungs. Someone else was calling them lame and a loser for doing it, but that someone else was glued to the scorecards and stat sheets, the kills-by and kills-from and debating heatedly over what counted as an assist. Still others were deliberating, debating, shifting rankings in Top Ten lists and unsubscribing from channels that said one contestant was way better than another, or reblogging a gifset of the most beautiful criers in SOTF history, with lavish descriptions of tear tracks and glittering lashes in the falling snow. Someone would upvote an opinion piece on how the show edited women, someone else downvoting a deconstruction and dismemberment of the human rights involved in the farce. News blogs would be showing grainy photographs of family members, some mother would be smiling, a father crying alone, brothers and sisters whispering in the dark and clutching each other's hands because one of their own wouldn't be showing up to eat, a grandfather darkened with despair because just last week their flesh and blood was performing a perfect solo at music recital and this week they're dying as a part of public entertainment, a boy's brother watched from a prison cell, thinking twelve, yellow, regret, a mother wishing she'd said more to her son a father wishing his son said more to him another brother staring at a blackboard trying to think while a purple beanie filled his mind and all of this all of it built and built and expanded and contracted and beat at his chest clawing screaming shrieking in the howling winds and brutalizing his lungs and body as his legs propelled him further and further into the ice and snow a beeping piercing his conscious mind and maybe he was the problem, maybe it was him who was fucking sitting here criticising when he never fought for anything, never admitted love for anyone, watched a friend die and two lovers reportedandGodwhyweretheyHERE whywasanyone HERE and

Suddenly
it
all
stops

with a bang.

Dougie Sharpe: Deceased