Not far from here, not long ago,
lived a manic madman and his son, the mute.
The old man talked to God each night,
just through the radio,
until one day he lost the signal,
then he lost his mind.
He stayed awake all day, all night,
trying to tune back in—
to tune into the channel where
he first heard the voice of God,
a murmur through the speakers.
God’s frequency seemed gone forever,
and the old man despaired.
He descended to the basement,
and left his son up stairs, and by himself,
in his room, and silent praying,
for his father to come home.
When the old man found the channel again,
the voice of a sick God was on the line,
and said:
‘The child—he talks to demons now.’
The old man walked the stairs in quiet,
and stopped before his son’s cracked door,
to listen to the mute child mumble,
by the bed his hands in prayer.
The sick God in the old man’s mind,
he said:
‘A child who talks to demons,
must be punished—must be dead.’
When the child was sound asleep,
his father crept in quiet to his bed;
he took a pillow and he softly placed it
over his young son’s head.
He pushed down on the bridge of his nose,
until the pillow was blood red-
until the blood came from his nose,
his father choked him, and, when dead,
dragged his body to the shed.
The ghost of that young child
somehow whispered through the radio
and hid behind the songs:
his father, still alive, yet froze—unmoving,
and the young ghost sang the song:
‘Daddy, daddy? What did I do wrong?’
He repeated the question over and over,
and his father never heard.
And when the old man finally died
he found himself trapped in his mind,
in a dead shell could not move.
Frozen in the chair beside,
the ghost of his unhappy son:
unable to move or speak or hear,
unable to say “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”
With his son’s ghost right beside him,
he tried to say in vain,
yet knew his son would never hear:
The words he prayed for all his life,
just a simple, “Daddy’s here.”
The silent circle never ended;
they try to speak today.
Neither hears the other,
they shout forever anyway.
brandon the writer | author & staff writer for sir swag 