3rd Annual Poems About Suicide Month

[Todd]

It is now time for the "3rd Annual Poems About Suicide Month" at The Pigpen, where we ask you to FIGURATIVELY slice a vein and pour out your depression onto paper (or make it up as that's what writers do).

Use this thread as your cathartic release.

[dukealien]

Attempt


Sometimes it seems the best that can be done,
Is leave a life become intolerable,
Or at the least, to make a credible
Attempt to die, to be ignored by none.

It’s safe, your car against a tree to run
(But not too fast).  Pills few or tolerable,
Will seize attention, help’s reliable -
Cut shallow, fall short, misdirect the gun.

Now, suicide’s a terminal solution
To temporary problems.  But you’ll find
Attention you get, clinical, risk-daunted,
By your brief gesture’s more life’s amputation,
Than fresh start.  Your attempt, short-sighted, blind,
Gains help you need, not sympathy you wanted.

---

(An old one - note the inversion, bad meter, implied contractions, and shaky rhyme... but not a subject frequently contemplated.  When you have a gunroom full of means, the idea seems a bit trivial.)

[Tiger the Lion]

Slowhand
 
Sunday nights dig
the deepest depressions.
You wallow with pigs
all week, and if you can’t find God
by the Sabbath
all goes dark.
 
I can’t have them know, so I do it slow.
 
I call in sick Monday morning,
half-cook a full pound of bacon
and wash it down with Guinness.
We used to draw smiles
in its creamy foam.
 
My goal is seventy cigarettes
today. The bourbon helps— especially
the first litre. By noon I’ve thrown up twice
and there is a dagger in my gut
that no cop or kin could lift prints from.
 
I can’t have them know, so I do it slow.

[bedeep]

Sisyphus Tries To Kill Himself

I. Just.
Can't.
Get there from here damn it.
Every time I try for the crushing blow
the damn rock rolls sideways
or I'm too slow getting under it
and so, too weary to heave
a relieving sigh
I make my way back down the mountainside
to roll the boulder back up it one more time.
No one ever told me
it's harder going downhill.

[Leanne]

Too young, too innocent
Too eager
Words that meant nothing
And became everything
Too late

Wanting to own the world
Yet being sold
A piece of soiled carpet
From the floor of a global
Mystery

The call grows louder
The tide grows stronger
The heart grows weaker
The hand grows firmer
The hide grows tougher

Now nothing penetrates
Now nothing
Is all


*I left the initial caps in for ~emphasis~

[just mercedes]

vintage




This casually structured wine
uses grapes plucked at random
in the searing heat of midday
by withered crones, crushed
underfoot by certified
Mediterranean lepers
and aged in grubby plastic vats
for weeks at least. It is characterized
by perineum colour and sweaty foot
notes with a spicy semenal finish.
Ideal as an accompaniment to suicide.

[billy]

cut me
do i not bleed
tooooooooooooooo deathhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Leanne]

The pen is empty
nobody's posting
feels like a morgue
and here I am, ghosting
in silence -- just me
and billy

I never felt more
like ending it all

[ellajam]

Awaiting The Knife

I am a fish caught in a net stretched
across the river;
I can swim along it but never through.
I used to throw myself full force, repeatedly
with an aim to split a hole
large enough to escape through
intact, smooth scales slicing
through rushing waters.

Bashed, an ineffective battering ram,
I loll in the net, softly chewing at its strands.
While some fray, I am going nowhere,
my worn teeth no match for the tightly woven threads
that leave my mouth too sore to feed.

I can just barely sense the sun on the surface
above me, above this frigid layer I will not leave alive.
I wait for the heat to drink this river
until it exposes me, drawing what is left,
shriveling this scarred skin, finally through.

[billy]

i'm not that bad surely

The pen is empty
nobody's posting
feels like a morgue
and here I am, ghosting
in silence -- just me
and billy

I never felt more
like ending it all

[Achebe]

The pen is empty
nobody's posting
feels like a morgue
and here I am, ghosting
in silence -- just me
and billy

I never felt more
like ending it all

tugs at the heartstrings  

[Todd]

Suicide Pact

A finger pushes
a row of dominoes.

[Todd]

It is the Story of Those Who Live

The last time he saw his mother,
she was asleep in the car,
as red-cheeked as a painted doll.
His Father lifted her arms, and moved
her head to pose her, but she
was too tired to wake up.

[Leanne]

i'm not that bad surely

No, it's more that I'm mourning the absence of Tom.

[Todd]

Husband’s Deposition: Accidental Suicide

She’s always been kinked like a grey hose
in fifty or so places. I thought marriage
would be the steady back and forth
of a lawn sprinkler not pressure
washing a fence. It got so I had trouble
even turning the water on. I found
the two of them coiled together
tied to the bed, doused in kerosene,
gone all flambé—must have been friction.

[Magpie]

Her Birthday Surprise


This year he made
an extra effort
for her birthday.

This year he wanted
it to be different,
something to remember.

While she spent
the day at work
he would carefully prepare the scene.

So when she got home
the first thing 
she would see

would be him;
dangling
lifeless
from her beloved chandelier.

[billy]

i wonder if tom took the thread to much to heart and actually did the deed

i'm not that bad surely  

No, it's more that I'm mourning the absence of Tom.

[Leanne]

In the dark
all blood is black
and sweet like the berries
in an alley I used to know

The veil of death
is ash in my mouth

My skin is too cold
there are no lamps
and the bell
jars

Look at me, I am
a psychoplath

[ellajam]

In the dark
all blood is black
and sweet like the berries
in an alley I used to know

The veil of death
is ash in my mouth

My skin is too cold
there are no lamps
and the bell
jars

Look at me, I am
a psychoplath

Good morning.

[Leanne]

Fuck Plath.

Yeah, I went there.