I was dumb and I was young and I thought I was ready.

I thought I wanted it.

Society told me, from day ONE
          That I did.
Nature told me, from day ONE
          That I did.
I convinced myself, from day ONE
          That I did.

And her body said
          "Marshall, you know you want it."
                    And so I did.


For months after that I hated myself.
I wanted to carve out those memories
         With any knife I could find.
I had betrayed myself
          And no sympathy or empathy could find me.
I had prepared myself for failure and executed it beautifully.
I had obeyed the hormones in my brain
          And the actors on TV.
I had become a product of society and evolution
          And I should have been happy
                    But. I. Wasn't.
My dreams became nightmares before
I could even fall asleep at night.

I wanted to forget.
But it's hard to forget one's own downfall.
One's own betrayal.

The scar tissue on my brain
Brought back all the pain,
No matter how hard I tried to fight,
I kept bringing myself back to that night.

                                                  I want to forget.

To Tyler,

My bestest friend of all these years of developing youth and developing adult,
I will you my rifle. Produced under scrutiny, post-war, blued by Chinese furnaces and inspected by communist advisers. I assign this to you my friend in hope that you will recognize more in this object than its role in my suicide. Guns are not the enemy, only the tool. The tool of my execution carried out by the enemy, Our world. And Our society. And Our suffering.

This rifle, my prize. Is accurate. And powerful. And a threat to 5 lives at a time. A symbol of my free will, dissolved into the blood stains and skull fragments laced on its finely carved wooden stock.

In my life, I had loaned to you this talisman of my depression,
But now, in the wake of my death, you will see the weight of my previous actions. My prolonging of life and effort to resolve the suffering and dread I endure.

Tyler. *******. T-Swens. Sweeny Todd. Squidward. Twizzler. Squib.
Many names you have been known by myself and our peers, but erasing human choice and force, you have been known to me and my soul as a Savior of myself for far too long. You have been Beacon for my hope, Home to my catharsis, Shelter to my heart and Medic to my wounds. I love you as most one person can love another without supporting the same roof with the pillars of our spines. I love you as a brother and friend and father and son and twin soul and caring teacher and patient keeper. We are two peas as they say. We finish each other's thoughts. We read the same material and play the same games and breathe the same circles and eat the same vocabulary and sneeze the same curses.

Like two strings of ivy, supporting one another as they grow and twirl. We fight each other in attempts to suffocate our foefriend, at the same time as relying on our friendfoe for the support to grow higher and steal more light. I love you my ivy brother. And I apologize for everything.

Please do not take my death too hard. Mourn and grieve and move on. I was not a cinder block for your foundation. I was a twin building. Of sister architecture and of sister glasswork. We stood for not one score before my sore soul was stole by this full world. You will stand further. And I admire you for it, as much as I pity you for having to endure this slow acid rain and littering of broken cans and smoke rings.

Rest in peace for me, because there is no rest in death, you know this.

- Marshall. Jackledead. Pompous and loud ******* and drama queen. Forever friend.

Blended my brain and my eyes roll back and see red
Purple every night to escape my head
It's death.

Intoxicating these toxic thoughts escapes them
I'm trapped and hated
And I can't make it.

I close my eyes and I see her or a barrel
And it's terrible.

The solution to my life
Is to accept it as my vice
And accept that I'm not fine.

I am arms and I grasp
And they can't accept that
I'm crass
And my thoughts are black
I can't
Make up for the lack
Of passion
Society hasn't.