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I hung myself today. Hanged? Whatever, point is I hanged myself today and I'm still hanging.

I feel fine. Just bored. I keep hoping that someone will come home and cut me down but then I keep remembering that if i knew someone like that I wouldn't be up here. Bit ironic, right? Or is that not ironic? I read somewhere that, like, anything funny is, in some way, ironic. But I don't know if it's funny or not. I don't think my brain owns "funny," you know?

I feel taller. I like that.

I've never been away from my shadow for this long. It had always clung to my feet, parting momentarily for a quick dive into the swimming pool. But never for five hours. I like it. There's three feet of space between my two and the floor.

I wanted something this morning. I may be stuck. But at least I'm three feet closer to it.
I wanted the book to engage a wide variety of tones and feelings – from seriousness to silliness and from elation to melancholy. This particular poem is from the perspective of a man who has just hanged himself. I thought it was interesting to write a poem from the perspective of someone who has just hanged himself and is pretty nonchalant about it. That someone is /not me/, and that’s half the fun of writing – being able to put yourself in foreign situations and see things from others’ perspectives (and to empathize with them). The poem is definitely dark and a little unsettling but the page before this was a poem about flies buzzing around dog poo. The world is full of dark and light and I just wanted the book to reflect that :)
On a Wednesday morning, clear and calm,
                     I went to Astor Place
and had a gypsy read my palm
                     or maybe just my face.

She said my heart was heavy
                     and my head was stuffed with lies.
But things like that weren't on my hand,
                     they hid behind my eyes.

The room is dull and dank and cold but at
least I have a hand to hold.
The nuclear winter fell on this place,
This broken desert glen,
And whale bones serve as carcass homes
For the very last of men.
Oil runs like blood,
Across the broken, lifeless dune.
They siphon it from ancient cars,
And howl at the moon.
Corpses rot abandoned,
With an X upon their palm,
Irradiated from the night,
They call the Night of Bombs.
One man who lives forgotten,
On the taste of human skin,
The man exists in all of them,
The evil deep within.
He tells me that I’m beautiful.
That I’m good at what I do.
He tells me that I’m worth every cent while the clock ticks to two.
The mattress is up against the window.
The door is locked x3.
I sit and watch as the smoke floats and drifts around me.
I use my magic words.
And I do my hair just right.
I’ll make a bunch of money if I can make it through the night.
The drugs make it bearable.
So my body hardly feels.
This is my reality now. This is what is real.
Makeup painted on my face
And Fishnets up my thighs.
I tell him that I need him, right to his buggin eyes.
His pipe and rock are on the floor.
So I watch where I walk.
When he gets it in his system I can hardly even talk.
The paranoia eats his mind
As the clock ticks to 4.
He locks us in the bathroom, so no one can see us anymore.
The last of his drugs are gone
As the hour comes to 5
He tells me that I’m beautiful. That I make him feel alive.
He drops me off at home
And thanks me for what I’ve done.
“Last night was great.” He says with a smile,
“I Can’t wait for the next one!”
I'm floating.
The ocean mist in my face,
The sun in my eyes.
I feel nothing.
No pain,
No suffering,
I'm away from all the lies.

My cloud floats
Away from the sea,
Towards mountains
And forests;
I get lost in the trees.
Lost in a world
Where no one hears me scream.
Lost,
But found.

I step down,
Feel the earth,
Taste the air and the breeze.
I run far away,
Away from the trees.
I see where I've been,
Where I wish I could be.
Maybe, here,
I can be my own tree.

I stop growing.
I can't hear the world,
It doesn't need me anymore.
Somewhere distant,
I hear someone open a door.
My name is called...
I walk into the cold.
Put on a smile,
Play fake happy.
I'm good at doing what I'm told.
He’s no longer responding
It’s perplexing
Because no one knows why
Yesterday he was doing just fine
And in this room it’s frightening quite
Because everyone knows he’s about to die
His mother angrily yells at the doctor
While she stands over his bed
Why! Why!
My baby
This is my son
And he’s not going to die
Devante Devante
I can hear her repeating my name
But the sounds of the world has finally gone mute
And the lights of the room ceiling
Slowly
Fade to black
And if you crying over my shoulder right now
I’m sorry
I tried to fight it
But I just couldn’t fight my way back
I was to lost
Let myself be overcome with pain and misery
Unhappiness was my purgatory
But at what cost
My life
Yes my life
I gave it away
I’d do anything just to feel a little less
It’s why I injected myself
With an illegal amount
Of morphine
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