“I Lost an Ear, Nearly Lost My Mind, and My Dog Was the Damn Hero.”

“I Lost an Ear, Nearly Lost My Mind, and My Dog Was the Damn Hero.”

- By Felonious Academic

I once overdosed hard in my bathroom, patheticly slipping away like fog in the sun—just another body folding up doublejointed, suffocating under the weight of my bad choices and worse luck. While I was off chasing some kind of dragon to oblivion, my dog, poor bastard, was staring at me like I’d lost my damn mind. Then, in what I can only assume what was either a desperate attempt to wake me up from my nodding stooper or a midnight snack gone horribly wrong, he snapped and tore at my ear like it was a goddamn chew toy. That moment wasn’t some poetic tragedy, though i later wrote a poem on the disaster, it was raw, ugly, and a downright ridiculous event. Blood gushing with madness scattered upon the toilet seat like a man pissing with bad aim , me half-dead, and a greatdane with zero bedside manners. If that’s not hitting rock bottom, then hell, maybe there’s no bottom at all—just one long, brutal slide into the absurd.

After resuscitation the hospital patched me up, my doctor looking at me like I’d lost more then just a goddamn ear, he said, “Go follow your dog around when he craps—see if you can find that piece of ear.” Like I wasn’t already living some twisted episode of a bad reality show. Trying to keep it together while playing detective for my own missing flesh—just another chapter in the novel of my spiraling life. Not too long after that day this poem followed.

"EAR TODAY GONE TOMORROW"

By Felonious Academic

I overdosed on a Tuesday —

face-first into the ceramic grave of my bathroom floor.

My pants were halfway down.

My soul was halfway out.

And somewhere in between death and digestion,

my great dane decided I was a snack.

He bit my ear clean off.

Not outta hunger.

Outta boredom.

Maybe love.

Or maybe dogs just get curious when their owners turn into furniture.

I woke up screaming.

He wagged his tail like it was a damn party.

Blood. Drool. Revival.

At the ER,

some tight-lipped doc said:

“You’re lucky, son.

Shock to the system saved you.

Though you might wanna follow your dog around a while —

he might shit the ear out.”

Ever trailed a dog through the yard,

hoping to find a chunk of yourself in a pile of warm regret?

It’s humbling.

It’s poetic.

It’s America.

I never got the ear back.

But I got something better.

Perspective.

Scar tissue.

A loyal animal with a taste for self-destruction —

just like me.

Now I carry the ghost of that cartilage like a trophy.

And every time someone asks what happened,

I say:

“My dog bit me back to life.

What’s your excuse?”