Showing posts with label suicidal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicidal. Show all posts

9/30/17

Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith


Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

5/3/17

Five of Swords, for all my death girls - Marty McConnell

Betsy’s in the second stall practicing
with a plastic razor, so I lie on the floor
to listen for the janitor, the cart’s

loose wheel squeaking our names down
the evening-empty hallway. the weeks
she was at Lutheran General, I didn’t

go to visit. but I know from her stories
what the doors looked like, closing,
how they strapped her to the bed
for her own protection. we’re 17

and I adore her despair. I think she’s shining,
fearless, carving herself a body that’s nothing
but light. on the way home, she lets me
drive. tells me there’s a trick

to disintegrating in increments subtle enough
not to trip the alarm wires, to hiding cigarettes
and death from therapists and parents and this,

all my girls have had down: how to go and go
until the night is too fragile or grimy
and then the fanfare, the wild dive

from the spire, the water tower, the clock
yanking its hands back, how to dangle
from the spotlight once everybody’s
watching. 1999: we lie on Angie’s futon

searching the phonebook for institutions
that will take her without insurance, curl
our bodies into still commas of want
to wait for morning. they take

her shoelaces, and her cigarettes, and I watch.
they give her forms and more forms
and I watch. they walk her to the room

with its single bed and single dresser
and unsmashable mirror and I ride
the long, high buzz of the door back

to New York. 2003: Georgiana is an expert
in suicide and poetry. her medicine cabinet rattles
like a jar of vengeful bees. she wants me
to find her. all our idols are martyrs, not one of them

a saint. her hair drops like cabernet all the way
to her waist. and how she needs me. my simple body
becomes bread in her mouth, I’m whiskey,
an obliteration who’ll get up in the morning

to call the hospital and make coffee. oh,
my pretty ones in love with the beast
of disappearing, there are many ways

to give birth. not one is without pain.
there are almost as many ways to die
as there are to love. tonight, I drink to you

who chose to keep going, who moved
through my body like a chemical
I could not keep. the night stands outside
like a hungry dog on an old chain, the scent

of lilies rising from the half moons of his teeth.
go ahead. tuck your babies into bed
and lovers’ hair behind their soft ears, as if
there’s nothing left to fear.

12/16/15

At Dusk - Gösta Ågren

I will be forgotten,
he thinks. Oblivion is
a deep mother. No one
will touch you there; no one
will forget you any more.

12/11/15

Richard Cory - Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean, favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

"Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines" - Stephen Chbosky

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it.

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.

Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.

Beauty: A Poem - John McDermott

A few months before
my older son took his life
he called home and told his mom
I saw beauty
and know what you and Dad
have been talking about.
I was up so late last night
that I looked out from my balcony
and saw the sun come up.
It was so beautiful that
I just wanted to tell you.
I love you, Mom.