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Your Words, Your Voice

So it finally tracked you down.
The sting, the rush, the nods all caught up
Added up
To three days alone with no resurrection.
The cross to bear was all yours,
All ours,
Now.

Your words, your voice filled my life for over a decade.
They played in my car, my room, my head off and on.
I grew up under your influence.
I tried to sing like you when I was alone.
I tried to imitate that low, bellowing agony,
The screaming madness, loud and angry.
It was rough and beautiful like a slit wrist in warm water.
You were black magic to me.

I ate a “rotten apple” today.
The realization that you will forever “stay away” tastes nasty and stains my mouth.
And the “nutshell” is that brilliance doesn’t always make you brilliant.
Needles and damage can’t even capture my thoughts today.
Yes, your pain was self chosen.
Truly, you are now “the man in the box.”

Your voice is crawling out of my speakers on this gloomy Sunday.
It dances and weaves slowly, thickly through the smoky air.
This beer is the first of many toasts I will make to you throughout my life.
Here’s to talent.
Here’s to waste.
Here’s to a soul misspent.
Here’s to “just a taste.”
Here’s to pain.
Here’s to rage.
Here’s to the insane.
Here’s to a modern sage.
You saw your own end.

Today is truly the beginning of a Mad Season.
It is the beginning of another hero lost from my world.
“Lifeless dead.”
I think you knew more than you let on.
You knew the risks and rode the horse bareback none-the-less.
It was always your choice.
I wish it would have been mine.

 
The thought that you will never write another lyric
So that you can wail it out into a dirty world
In an effort to cleanse the sins
Absolutely
Kills me.
I never got to see you live because
The addiction limited you.
I feel betrayed.
“The River of Deceit flows down”
And the polluted veins finally made their way here today.

One night, on the verge of madness,
Lost in addiction,
You made me realize the price.
You made me understand.
Your words,
Your voice,
Kicked me in the heart.
“Slow suicide’s no way to go.”
I kicked it all and came out on the other side
Clean and stained.
Alive.
I have always owed you for that.
You told me to “Wake Up”
And I did.
Knowing that you never will or can will always haunt me
Like your words, your voice.

In Memory of Layne Staley

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