4th Annual Poems About Suicide Month

[Todd]

It is now time for the "4th 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.

It seems somewhat fitting to keep doing this after NaPM is over and many of you are creatively wrung out (and yes I know I started it one day early--I'm probably that creatively wrung out that I need to ease into it).

[just mercedes]

Chateau Taxbreak




This casually structured wine
uses grapes plucked at random
in the searing heat of midday
by fugitive illegal immigrants,
then crushed under the bleeding feet
of certified Mexican indigents
and aged in grubby plastic vats
for weeks at least, we suspect.
Characterized by perineum colour
and sweated foot notes with a spicy
semenal finish. Ideal accompaniment
to suicide.

[rayheinrich]

                old pond
                i jump in
                sound of drowning

[billy]

cut me
do i not bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[just mercedes]

Almost Poe



Blue hand, no hands.
The fountain is France.
You wrote that insane artists
were your lovers;
it’s all heat. I’m not jealous,
half worried about the girl
who wakes in the morning
and is dead. But listen
I was the best female poet,
published “She’s mad
magic, no lie. Her fire touches.”
Graphs had more -
I’d sat and listened
on a bench by a bridge
over a river, crying.
Night wept for lovers
hurt and forgotten. I never
heard again. Suicide
would probably
be like this.




(an erasure poem made from Charles Bukowski’s An Almost Made Up Poem)

---

And one by a friend - let's call him Victory Gin - who did commit suicide.

A Sonnet to Suicide

A higher mind is open to the sky,
But heaven slams its gate with thunderclap:
Snotty nimbus echo the blasted cap,
And throw down lightning when the blown out eye
Offends no more. A hateful rain, like lye,
Pours from the ire: Mirrors the wrinkled flap
Of plum; mixes the scattered pit, with slap
Of wet-on-wet, before the bloating sigh...

The rain will never stop, the earth will flood,
The ground will turn into a soggy slime
Where slugs and roaches rule with putrefaction.
It seems the brilliant ones prefer the grime
To dismal skin; they find the world distracting --
BANG! -- Heads flare off a barrel: Mind in mud.

---

Another lost friend



Sonnet for Sandra


The halo round the half-moon splinters ice,
a gelid gleam that glints on sea-borne spume.
The howl of stray cat fight cuts through the night
as if the sea is screaming at the moon.
.
The skeletons of driftwood twist and writhe
in shadow dance, though they themselves are still
and all my dead tonight return to life
as morepork’s warning call flies from the hill.

The crumpled sheets of night festoon the floor,
they’re stained with pain and dreams of dead friends lost
and suicide’s allure slides through the door
with guilt and freedom arguing the cost.

The hardest part of night is yet to come;
in darkness to believe there can be sun.

[billy]

Hi JM do all your friends top themselves...just asking, enjoyed the poems

[rayheinrich]

Here's one by a friend who committed suicide:


God made the angels
And sent them from heaven above
He made lots of different angels
And sent them here with love


But he made one special angel
And kept her on one side
And every time he looked at her
His heart filled up with pride.

Because she was so special
He had to give her  life
So she was born into this world
And grew up to become my wife


Heaven’s very best angel
That was sent from heaven above
Is the very same best angel
I call my wife, and love

I will always love you,
You’ll forever be mine
Then our spirits will be together in love
Till the end of time

            . . .


(It was a double suicide.)

[just mercedes]

Hi JM do all your friends top themselves...just asking, enjoyed the poems

A lot of them have - maybe it's because I'm drawn to edgy people. I hope it's not me. 

[Lizzie]

What am I supposed to do with myself now?!?!?


NaPM is over. It left me
all alone and empty
like a lover who was kind
of an abusive dick.
My family hated him
because of all the time I spent crying
and fussing over his needs, tending
to his every whim. I told them
I'd cook again one day,
but he and I were true chemistry.
Now my heart is broke in twain,
my eyes cry tears just like the rain.
There's nothing but a hole inside
where the poetry used to reside –
there's nothing left for me to do but
die, die, die.

[billy]

can't be you, i'm still here

Hi JM do all your friends top themselves...just asking, enjoyed the poems

A lot of them have - maybe it's because I'm drawn to edgy people. I hope it's not me. 

[rayheinrich]

can't be you, i'm still here      

    Stop pretending, billy's never existed. "He" is actually one of addy's multiple personalities.
    In reality, PigPen consists of only three people: addy, Leanne, and mercedes.

Hi JM do all your friends top themselves...just asking, enjoyed the poems

A lot of them have - maybe it's because I'm drawn to edgy people. I hope it's not me. 

    It's not you, it's your poetry. (Not bad, just too strong for edgy folk to handle.)

[Keith]

Returning

Pebbles laid out, a cold carpet
of reality beneath my pale feet.
My clothes looked like someone
sleeping as I glanced back.

I woke with water, its grip tugged
at my legs, hungry for my taste
understanding my intention, calm
eyes carried me deeper.

I could feel the pressure feeding
on my chest, breathless
as I began to trust her.
What took you so long she said,
throwing her head back, submerged.
Only surfacing to pull me under.

[Todd]

Many Reasons With Poor Execution

Hannah Baker made a mix tape
so we would know why.
She didn’t use Morse code
on her dad’s walkie-talkie. 
She bypassed 8-track
for an all 80s response to death. 
If we still didn’t listen,
she’d make sure other people got copies,
and they also wouldn’t listen—
which was the problem.
The tape would be unplayed
in their glove compartment 
next to the one from 
that person pretending
to be their friend, like they all do,
when it was really
a pyramid scheme for selling 
insurance or antioxidants.
Even if they wanted to listen,
who owns a cassette player?
Hannah Baker made a mix tape 

so, that we’d want to die too.

[Keith]

Diamond mines

Bare feet, his only clothes stained
mother, father knelt like crops,
he walked the field until he found one.

[just mercedes]

@Todd - thanks for that, I didn't know about Hannah Baker.

[Todd]

@Todd - thanks for that, I didn't know about Hannah Baker.

I read the book a few years ago. I hear the TV series is good. One of the problems I have with it though is they probably should have adapted the technology to something more modern (probably something online with video). This strikes me as a good idea the author had back when cassettes were the thing and it never adjusted for time. Oh well, back to death.

[just mercedes]

Paula and Michael’s last dance



His music turns to colours in her head.
She tries to find her way into the light
where time is fooled, and lovers dance, though dead.

She can’t believe he left her. From her bed
she plays his songs so late into the night
his music turns to colours. In her head

she knows exactly how her man was led
so easily, his drugs of brief delight
where time is fooled and lovers dance. Though dead

she still remembers every word he said,
recalls his touch. Now no one else feels right.
His music turns to colours in her head.

She understand she has to cut the thread
that binds them still, let love fly like a kite
where time is fooled, and lovers. Dance, though dead

for her, lends grace to her slow dying. Bled
of life she lies and in the fading light
his music turns to colours in her head
where time is fooled, and lovers dance, though dead.

[dukealien]

Café Purgatorio


Tomorrow I shall drink fresh coffee
cooled by a rising moon or two
white-gold sun beneath my feet
black sunspot-grasses whispering
between my naked toes.

Then I shall eagerly descend
to hang about the Wood of Suicides
time on my rotting tree to contemplate
my little crime’s purgation
that I climbed and knotted willingly.

At afternoon, anticipated fall
into flaming jazz gymnasium
where conscience exercised by hortatory demons
builds hard sinews of regret
sweating fat rationalizations.

Then masking night, mere cruising
for a kindred soul - that’s worst
searching endless void
and never finding, tortured nervelessly
by thoughts of you.

Thereafter coffee, barefoot sun
a good-behavior break because it’s true
that freed of my contempt and undermining
just as my pompous final note declared
you’re better off without me, dear.

Haven't quite got into the spirit of this thread - but here's an attempt, as it were.

[Keith]

The platform is empty
as I stand in the rain,
my feet lined up with the white line.
I can see the lights of the Intercity
from Edinburgh, she never stops
a mad Celt weilding an axe
charging at the south.

I step out into her screaming mouth
through the windscreen
over the driver
resonate on chrome poles
slapping down newspapers.

The platform is empty
as I stand in the rain,
my feet lined up with the white line,
I hope they feel me this time.

[Leanne]