2nd Annual Poems About Suicide Month

[tectak]

Where is this a joke and where is this real ?
How can you talk about ending one's life by self volition here you cannot end someone else's life this way
I have thought about ending my own life
I haven't done it yet, and hopefully I won't This is stating the bleedin' obvious

If you need to end it all then find help ...like punctuation. Period. You mean find someone with a big gun and a small conscience ?
Run to you find what you need Huh?
There is no catheters here are. What a way to go...or not go. Death by "self volition" catheterisation denial. That would sure piss me off
Those of us who know find our way or we don't It is called the anthropic principle, but is usually punctuated to clarify

Suicide is real, it ends the life of many poetsWell, that improves the gene pool. Lives
Cuts off their words and ideas Oh, please. Enough already.
Don't let it become a joke by being a prize
Human life is more valuable than that Without punctuation this is unclear.

PS you ever bothered to figure out how many of your entrants are dead by there own hand their. No. What is a dead entrant?

See what I mean? If you want to be taken seriously get serious. This kind of loosely thrown together tome diminishes your obviously genuine sentiment. Take care...get there.
Best,
tectak

[milo]

Where is this a joke and where is this real
How can you talk about ending one's life by self volition here
I have thought about ending my own life
I haven't done it yet, and hopefully I won't

If you need to end it all then find help
Run to you find what you need
There is no catheters here
Those of us who know find our way or we don't

Suicide is real, it ends the life of many poets
Cuts off their words and ideas
Don't let it become a joke by being a prize
Human life is more valuable than that

PS you ever bothered to figure out how many of your entrants are dead by there own hand

this doesn't seem to be a suicide poem at all to me.  Try to harness your inner emo.  Perhaps contemplate ropes, razor blades or pills longingly for a few hours and try again.

[rayheinrich]

Where is this a joke and where is this real
...
Human life is more valuable than that

This, sadly enough, is what they often write; just a day or two before.
(Though, all things considered, the herd does need thinning.)

PS you ever bothered to figure out how many of your entrants are dead by there own hand

Poll: Did you die by your own hand?

[ ] Yes  
[ ] No  
[ ] I can't press the keys, my fingers seem to pass right through them.

---

Urine-sane

Outside a piss yellow asylum,
suicide taints the sunflowers-
alas, the ochre canvases
that could have been.

Cunning poem.

Keep orig. including 'and'.
When you talk in the "real" world, do you drop your "and" 's??
F'ing poetry geeks, always trying to change the language.

...though just hate "alas".
While it was good enough for Yorick and Caesar; it should remain interred with their bones.

" Oft' " (speaking generally) is shriekingly edge-cut prescience.

Various ochre/ocher stuffs:

'Ochre' and 'ocher' are both accepted spellings.
   Ochre - About 10,100,000 google results
   Ocher - About 535,000 google results
So 'ochre' (sitting at 95%) is a massive winner in the playoffs.

Middle English - oker
Middle French - ocre
Latin - ochra
Greek - ochra, from feminine of ochros (yellow).

Ochre is among the most permanent of colors. It's one of the many
colored earths - a clay stained with coloring minerals.
Hydrous iron oxide imparts the yellow color and the anhydrous iron
oxide the red color. The amount of iron oxide (Fe2O3) in ochre is
quite variable. It may be as low as about 20%, going up to 70%.

Obsolete meaning: money, especially gold coin.


Ochre okra:


Ochre orka:

[Tiger the Lion]

Don’t hang up

 

If just tonight

I could fall asleep

to the sound of your voice,

I would swear on my life,

to never ask again.

[Erthona]

Nick wrote:

"Don't let it become a joke by being a prize
Human life is more valuable than that"

If you can't laugh at death, what can you laugh at. Laughing at something removes the fear of that thing. But of course here, we are not laughing at death, but at something else.

Dale 

Poets are the killers of sacred cows, as well as the barbequers  and the eaters. Tasty.

[rayheinrich]

Don’t hang up

 

If just tonight

I could fall asleep

to the sound of your voice,

I would swear on my life,

to never ask again.

This is quite wonderful.

[billy]

i cut my penis off
because it ached for you perhaps
i should have had a wank on your photograph

[Leanne]

It is abundantly clear that some people are entirely misunderstanding the purpose of this thread.  This is *NOT* making fun of suicide -- it is merely venting frustration at the rash of cliche-ridden diary entry woe-is-me poetry that shows up for time to time and causes seemingly interminable itching.  

There are some outstanding poems with suicide as the subject.  One of the very best here on the site is My Last Walk by Keith.  There is a world of difference between great poems like that one and the fairly standard variations on:

in the deep dark depths of the blackest hell
lurks the remnants of my tattered soul
torn by a million razors of crimson hate
and raped into unfathomable depression

i am screaming but
the box you put me in
has no ears to hear me cry
and my tongue is bloody
because i need to feel something

i don't know if i am insane
i can't tell through all this pain

© Shitey McEmo

For further discussion regarding the very basic tenet that "the poem is not the poet", please see this thread and also this:

Consider that the speaker/voice of the writing is not always that of the author, even if it uses an I. It is a mistake to assume that anything written in the first person is always autobiographical, and to do so can in fact offend. It is possibly best to avoid giving “life advice” in a critique, other than as a direct requirement for interpretation of the piece.

-- from our Critique and Feedback instructions.

Having said all that, some of the poems here in this thread actually represent pretty damn good poetry.  Who'd have thunk it?  Some, however, just don't.  I hope for the sake of the poets that they can tell which is which themselves, so they don't get all defensive.

Also, don't threaten to commit suicide on a poetry site.  That's just insulting.  Anyone who blames poets who are not directing anything at a particular person for bullying or encouraging self-harm is unbelievably unwelcome here -- because we have said, over and over again, that our criticism is for flaws in poetry, not flaws in people.  You are words on a page to us.  Deal with it.

[Leanne]

No, sorry. There are no subjects that can be off limit for an artist, otherwise we're just producing sanitised pop bullshit. Anything is fair game, handled well -- and the purpose of this thread was to highlight how subjects can be handled appallingly fucking badly.

We are not here as counsellors. We will moderate comments that address the poet assuming that the poem is autobiographical, and we will reprimand poets who take offense to comments that they believe are directed at them personally, because they have not yet learned to detach themselves from their poetry. Assume you were publishing in a traditional format. Would you write a poem as a suicide letter, have it put into a book, attempt suicide and then blame the critics of your book for commenting on your use of cliche?

[Leanne]

And mate, if you were serious, I would be perfectly confident that whatever was going on in your life was none of my doing and nothing I do or say would make the slightest bit of difference. People who blame a single comment or occurrence for something like suicide have no concept of the bigger picture -- a picture which we do not paint.

[billy]

i understand what you mean miles. i've committed suicide seventeen times because of these bastards.
fuck the big picture fuck suiciders and fuck dare i say it...you i have friends on here who suffer depression, who are bi polar who have been suicidal. i pm with them. i also joke and laugh about suicide with them. we are not telling people to commit suicide. we have no need to, they die a little bit with every poem, at least the people who this thread is aimed at do. as leanne said if people kill themselves it won't be because of this thread. it will be because of your cock knocking warblings that litter it lighten up and write a suicide note.

This is the last I have to say.  What if people do kill themselves because of this.  Are you sure they won't?  For the last time I am not asking you to be suicide counselors because clearly you are not.  What I want is for you to stopping trying to be one.  Wake up and see the big picture.

[ChristopherSea]

Where is this a joke and where is this real
How can you talk about ending one's life by self volition here
I have thought about ending my own life
I haven't done it yet, and hopefully I won't

If you need to end it all then find help
Run to you find what you need
There is no catheters here
Those of us who know find our way or we don't

Suicide is real, it ends the life of many poets
Cuts off their words and ideas
Don't let it become a joke by being a prize
Human life is more valuable than that

PS you ever bothered to figure out how many of your entrants are dead by there own hand

My entry is no joke, it emphasizes the tragic loss of one of the world's most brilliant post-impressionists. I am pissed that the poor devil pissed his life away! I can't even fathom how much further he could have gone. Read it again:

Urine-sane

Outside a piss yellow asylum,
suicide taints the sunflowers-
alas, the ochre canvases
that could have been.

Sorry Tom, Ray is making me restore the 'and.' He's throwing the illegal use of the archaic word 'alas' card at me!

Urine-sane

Outside a piss yellow asylum,
suicide taints the sunflowers-
and ochre canvases
that could have been.

[Todd]

Miles, thanks for the PM. There are good poems that cope through loss with humor. There are good poems that are poignant. Then there's a large bucket of worthless ramblings. None of which lead anyone to suicide. There is a great deal of "You can never understand my pain as I vomit onto the page."
Nick Flynn wrote an entire volume of poetry on dealing with the suicide of his mother he was a child. Here's one of his:

Even Now She Is Turning, Saying Everything I Always Wanted Her to Say

At the end there were straws
in her glove compartment, I'd split them open
to taste the familiar bitter residue, near the end
I ate all her Percodans, hungry to know
how far they could take me.
A bottle of red wine each night moved her along
as she wrote, I feel too much, again and again.
You asked how and I said, Suicide, and you asked
how and I said, An overdose, and then
she shot herself, and your eyes filled
with wonder, so I added, In the chest, so you
wouldn't think
her face was gone, and it mattered, somehow,
that you knew this. . .
Every year I'm eight years old and the world
is no longer safe. Our phone becomes unlisted, our mail
is kept in a box at the post office,
and my mother tells me always
leave a light on so it seems
someone is home. She finds a cop
for her next boyfriend, his hair
greasy, pushed back with his fingers. He lets me play
with his service revolver while they kiss
on the couch. Cars slowly fill the windows, and I aim,
making the noise with my mouth, in case it's them,
and when his back is hunched over her I aim
between his shoulder blades, silently,
in case it's him.

Nick Flynn

Here's another one by James Wright that deals with the topic at a slant:

In Response To A Rumor That The Oldest Whorehouse In Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.
I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.
I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?
For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.
And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

James Wright

As was said above: No topic is off limits. The goal though is to execute it well, while not executing yourself.

[Erthona]

your love is dead & so am i

i once feared Death
i once feared Pain
now that youve gone
i am a little insane
youve left
yet  
the pain lingers on
will you miss me when im gone?


Ha! Now I'm channeling my inner emu emo!
Finally.
I was feeling like I needed to kill myself for being such a failure.
 No more sleepless nights trying to decide between
a rope, a lead pipe, or a candlestick. Yeah!

@importunatepoet


dale


Poll: Did you die by your own hand?


[x] Yes   (several times and twice by my mother's hand, but I am still looking for a more permanent solution. Something that will go down easily so I do not have to keep dyeing by hand. Still I really love tie-dye.)
[x] No (do you mean by my own hand, like standing next to it?) 
[x] I can't press the keys, my fingers seem to pass right through them. (I'll never buy a keyboard at that magic shop again, but I am broke at the moment so I can't get a different wan. If it didn't become tangible at times I don't know what I would do.)

Thank you so much @rayheimelichmaneuver for letting me take your @pollsrus poll. I enjoy it so much being able to put my @astuteoppinons down in a list like @orderorderorder. It makes me feel all warm and @posttoasty inside...or @outside.

@sincerelyufuck,

@i'llneverbehappyagain   







 

[tectak]

Where is this a joke and where is this real
How can you talk about ending one's life by self volition here
I have thought about ending my own life
I haven't done it yet, and hopefully I won't

If you need to end it all then find help
Run to you find what you need
There is no catheters here
Those of us who know find our way or we don't

Suicide is real, it ends the life of many poets
Cuts off their words and ideas
Don't let it become a joke by being a prize
Human life is more valuable than that

PS you ever bothered to figure out how many of your entrants are dead by there own hand

My entry is no joke, it emphasizes the tragic loss of one of the world's most brilliant post-impressionists. I am pissed that the poor devil pissed his life away! I can't even fathom how much further he could have gone. Read it again:

Urine-sane

Outside a piss yellow asylum,
suicide taints the sunflowers-
alas, the ochre canvases
that could have been.

Sorry Tom, Ray is making me restore the 'and.' He's throwing the illegal use of the archaic word 'alas' card at me!

Urine-sane

Outside a piss yellow asylum,
suicide taints the sunflowers-
and ochre canvases
that could have been.

Yes...he is quite right, too. I only meant it was better than "and" . Just OMIT it.
Best,
tectak

---

Entrant entry 2.0
Status: Alive
Title: If ( I 've heard that before somewhere)


If I've heard that before somewhere

If I don't win
this contest,
I'll fuckin' kill
myself and
boycott it
next year.

terse hearse verse from tectak

[Erthona]

"terse hearse verse" That's it, I knew there was a genre that I had forgotten.

"and
boycott it
next year."

...and what about the year after that?
________________________________________
a terse hearse verse poem - for Tom

A recently headless horse
hijacked a hearse
to hauled himself to hay.
Suddenly, he stopped the car,
got out and walked away.

addendum:

"Well," said he, "I just realized that my profile no longer matched my driver's
license picture and I did not want a ticket for driving without a current drivers
license.  Hell, I've already gotten two tickets for pooping in the street this year."

[billy]

next week we will be attacking people who eat fish
if we're still alive.

[rayheinrich]

                               

                                                    < blood >

                                                i'm trying to get beyond          
                                                   the necessity          
                                                    of its flow      
                                                         
                                                  trying to leave          
                                                  its constant run          
                                                         
                                                  and linger on the      
                                                   
                                                        red      
                                                       
                                                   my closed eye          
                                                       
                                                        sees        
                                                       
                                                   when looking          
                                                    at the sun          
                                                         
                                                         - - -    


I posted this in Misc. as its main spot, but also posted it here.
If this is not cool, remove this one and leave the other.

[ChristopherSea]

                               

                                                    < blood >

                                                i'm trying to get beyond          
                                                   the necessity          
                                                    of its flow      
                                                         
                                                  trying to leave          
                                                  its constant run          
                                                         
                                                  and linger on the      
                                                   
                                                        red      
                                                       
                                                   my closed eye          
                                                       
                                                        sees        
                                                       
                                                   when looking          
                                                    at the sun          
                                                         
                                                         - - -    


I posted this in Misc. as its main spot, but also posted it here.
If this is not cool, remove this one and leave the other.

What about the other eye that is left open when you stare at the sun? Did it commit suicide?

[rayheinrich]

What about the other eye that is left open when you stare at the sun? Did it commit suicide?  

What about the other eye that is left open when you stare at the sun?
Did it commit suicide?  

Reference A:
One-Eyed Jane (vis-à-vis above image) - from the Wicked Travels of
One-Eyed Jane wherein the virtuous Jane Spiess becomes the malevolent
(and wealthy) One-Eyed Jane. (One-Eyed Pirates)

Reference B:
The Eye of Providence (or the all-seeing eye of God) is a
symbol showing an eye often surrounded by a glory* and usually
enclosed by a triangle. It is sometimes interpreted as representing
the eye of God watching over humankind.

Reference C (Lord of the Rings):
The Eye of Sauron** was a symbol adopted by the Dark Lord during the
Second Age and the Third Age. It was said that few could endure the
eye's terrible gaze. The Eye was used on armor and banners of Mordor
as a symbol of how Sauron "sees all" and was Sauron's official insignia.

Reference D:
Polyphemus - GIYF (or ask Leanne who'll probably suggest you should JFGI)


*From Wikipedia: A glory is an optical phenomenon that
resembles an iconic saint's halo about the shadow of the observer's head.
It consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of
which is red on the outside and bluish towards the center. The effect is
believed to happen due to classical wave tunneling, when light nearby the
droplet tunnels through air inside the droplet and, in the case of a glory,
is emitted backwards due to resonance effects.

**From One Wiki to Rule Them All (a website devoted to the works of Tolkien):
Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings, was a fallen Maia, the creator
of the One Ring, and the most trusted lieutenant of his master Morgoth (Melkor,
the first Dark Lord). After Morgoth's defeat in the First Age, Sauron became
the second Dark Lord and strove to conquer Arda, creating the Rings of Power
for this purpose. In the Second Age, he was defeated in the War of the Last
Alliance by the last line of defense: elves and men.