When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.

Call it what you want
I call it relief
I call it easing my pain
I call it ending my sorrow
You call it ******
When its actually called suicide
But its a last resort
To someone who has been through hell
Who can't cope with any of it
So call it ******
I'll call it a path to peace

On the way home
from senior school
you met Fay
on the corner

of the New Kent Road
and Meadow Row
she was dressed
in her school uniform

with a satchel
over her shoulder
a hand griping
the leather strap

her fair hair
neat and tidy
hard day at school?
you asked

as usual
she said
the nuns strict
and the lessons

mind stunning
and you?
a good dose
of brain washing

and the usual
morons teaching
you replied
pushing fingers

through your hair
taking in
her lovely eyes
the shyness

the way she stood
her small hand
gripping the strap
sed libera nos a malo

she said
what the heck
does that mean?
you asked

it’s from the Lord’s Prayer
Fay said softly
it means
but deliver us from evil

my daddy says it
often to me
you nodded
my old man wouldn’t know

what the heck
it would mean
if it bit his backside
you said

Fay laughed shyly
you liked it
when she laughed
like she did

it was like a small prayer
whispered
by a bright eyed angel
she looked back

at the passing traffic
the noise
the fumes
my daddy says

it’s a daily battle
against evil
he says one must
drive out evil

and the evil one
by punishment
she said
looking back at you

there’s plenty
of punishment
at my school
you said

not sure if it’s evil
being driven out
or the breaking of school rules
you said

do you want
to come to my place
for tea?
you asked

best not
she said
Daddy’s home early today
and he likes me

home on time
ok
you said
and you both

turned down Meadow Row
she touched
your hand
and you held hers gently

as if it were
a fragile *** made
from bone china
smooth yet warm

her fingers curled
around your hand
skin on skin
beautiful

with no touch
of sin.

In the pools of her eyes that meet the sun where she lies
on the beach.
A seagull cries.
And out of reach of the tide on the wide side of forty five
she makes me come alive.

In the dunes that dance where we started this romance and the
smell of the seaweed that gave us the lead to get away.
I remember this as if yesterday
And the memory drips like the melting ice of the cornets we bought.
Never thought that before.

I wonder if she thinks of me
Did she
Marry?

Did she call our son Harry?
(yes I knew)

In the scents of the evening air
It feels as if, she's still somewhere out there
Waiting.

In the sands through which I run my hands
I can feel her
but it makes me blue.
And I stop.

Topping the crest of a wave was the best
but only with her
I wonder where
She is now.

And the tide comes on in
I begin to pack away
The thoughts and the wishes
that were yesterday.
The seagull still cries
Maybe it's crying for me.

The world is lonely while they cry for help and
                    they reach their hands up.
In words, in books, in paintings,
                    they portray their loneliness hidden or blatant.
But even that isn't enough to highlight
                    the lowlights of our lives
It's in our blood, it's in our veins, our bones,
                    it's in the cigarettes that we smoke.
Which fills the air and wails out loud,
                    screaming a symphony of isolation.
It's hidden in the corners of the cities,
                     hidden in the tall green grass of the countryside
It's everywhere you look, in famous words,
                     in ancient books.
It fills your mind, it takes you hold, it's in the tiniest key hole,
                     but enough.
It's enough to spark a burning fire, to long for another's touch,
                     to feel desire
From another human being,
                     to share in what is the only thing worth keeping
Human company. We long, we dream, we scream for it,
                     and we hope it favors us too.
It's overwhelming, it makes me, it makes me long
                     like so many others
We are not alone in our loneliness
                     and what a queer thought that is

*“Wir können uns einreden, dass wir mit einem Buch nicht allein sind, wie wir uns einreden können, dass wir mit einem Menschen nicht allein sind.”

This long journey
Is well worth the trip
Because in the end
You finally find peace
You solve so many problems
That apparently you have become
The reason to them
You try to find
Things that will help you cope
With the struggles of today
With the pain of yesterday
With the fear of tomorrow
Not knowing what will happen
The path of suicide is long
Very painful indeed
But the reward of the knife
Pressed against your wrist
Cutting deep into the flesh
Bleeding the pain out
The feeling so welcoming
You do it again
This time deeper
Or the nuse around your neck
Slowly stripping your brain
Of the well needed element Oxygen
Darkness enclosing around you
Your life fading
The path of suicide is painful
But the alcohol and drugs
Make it so much less painful
The poetry helps
But still your problems grow
Till you finally decide
To walk the path
To watch the world destroy itself
By not allowing you
To be welcomed into its glory
So you walk
And walk some more
Endure more struggles
Till you secretly reach the end of it
The pain so great
The burdens even greater
The relief so quick
With the simple squeezing
Of an old dusty 45
Not used since the last kid walked this path
The choices to how you want to end it
All laid before you
Pick one and feel relief
End your sorrow
And deliver the awakening slap
Deliver the deafening and final scream
To release the built up emotions
Silenced with your choice of suicide
At the end of this path
The Path of Suicide

Sophie Syncope
suffocated

her sixth child,
placed the pink pillow

over the small head,
held it there, against

the struggling for breath,
until still, until dead.

Sophie waited, listened,
held her breath,

watched for movement.
None came; she removed

the pillow, stood holding
it by her side. The sixth

child lay closed eyed,
opened mouthed, small

hands in tight fists.
Sophie dropped pillow,

put child’s hands crossed
one over the other. Dead child,

crucified mother. Pushed
mouth closed, moved head

upright, steadied. She placed
her palms on the child’s cheeks,

felt smooth skin, knew
the stilled cancer within.

Cut short
the suffering,

snuffed out
the cancer’s route,

released her child’s spirit
to boot.

She had the lips that blew a kiss
to the other boys,
How I miss the joys
Of being
Her
Only one.
It should have gone on and on
But I am to blame
My loss.
My name is not spoken
She sees not my face.
I am that 'other man in another place.
A disgrace to her eyes
Too many lies
And nights on the tiles.

While she seems quite well
I languish in hell but the one that I've made
I disobeyed the one golden rule,
'Don't take your girl for a fool'

She saw through me
Now she sees through me.
I no longer exist.
So
It's back on the tiles
I'll get ****** and forget.
I bet the memory of her
Will not let me
Sleep.