Cracks like a bullet hitting air but tumbles like a football kicked too hard in the head ripples like a river of glass crashes like a sunset into angry ocean.
Fifteen birds sing their songs before roosters ever crow, yet he owns morning. Prematurely. Announcing dawn. How you can almost glimpse his tail in his morning call. His arrow head and jiggly crown and dripping blood beard. What once cut wind now beats chests like mad children, wings folded, tucked voice framed in feather soft quiet of early dying night. He tries, fails, routes his troop of torn up vocal chords and evens the score again until his final crashing crescendo settles like a boot in gravel.
The sound is stickier than a tree. Hornier than wild goats. Ten hens are up already four eggs in the nest at four in the morning so he isn’t anyone’s wake up call.
Roosters don’t sleep eight hour nights. He knows every shade of filtered light. Watching the horizon hours already. Blinking steady, multiple takes, like in a movie set where the sun is about to be peeled open like an orange.
Ego is tricky business. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s an accident. It isn’t. Nothing in existence is. Ego especially. Self-belief. Confidence. Soul and body dance. Energy that is timeless, moving in a biomechanical cocoon that will inevitably break open too soon. And ego. Just might be the only shape the energy that is you knows to take. Self-belief. Soul-knowledge. An overabundance of spiritual confidence. Walking on coals. Stepping into the unknown. Ego allows you to break the thick mold of ceaseless self preservation. The little liar in your heart who tells you you’ll be fine. Go ahead and take off on an adventure. No one has landed one before. But then again, there has never been anyone quite like you.
It’s like the cape on a superhero’s back. It’s like their tight little red underwear. It’s like the only shield police officers carry are badges. Symbols. Ego was the only thing the Wizard of Oz had to offer the last four pilgrims to his temple.
Whatever it takes to get you to fake just enough confidence to put a foot through the door.
And more, eyes open, head forward, take on a world of villains who by all means are probably shaping their identity purely in unveiled attempts to antagonize yours.
You can’t adopt it all the time, and you definitely dare not abandon it either. Ego.
Being functionally egotistical. It’s like a raincoat. Just enough to persuade you to step out into the rain. But if you wear that raincoat all day, you can bet on sweat. You might have been better off without a coat at all. But you’re egotistical. Your belief in yourself is astounding. The whole wide world full with starving people. Every day they get a little thinner. And you. To them.
Look just like chicken dinner.
Ego should be light as feathers. Subtle as spurs. The spark of orange fire in the eye.
Everyone wants you for the worst of reasons. But that doesn’t exempt you from being.
Ego has every reason to stay quiet, sleep in. Stay hidden. But it doesn’t. No.
Ego wakes up and crows.
People say good morning.
Writer Actor Farmer 