I could not talk him down, or
listen him up, though that is
what I was trained to do, tried to do
he gazed only at the street,
his final resting place, where
he would soon be
a crushed crimson spectacle
for greedy and empty eyes
whose mouths would tell
of his demise, but none
even knew his name,
I learned it was Everett, and
that he had three daughters
lost in suburbia, eons from this ledge
where he stood, and talked to a stranger
who was stranger than he
for I looked to the skies
above the humming city, as if
they would be my salvation
an airy home to spread wings
with angels, and glide endlessly
through blue heavens, but Everett knew
there were no winged saviors awaiting him
to grab him before his lonely leap
only the unmovable slab of concrete below
the craned necks of other flatlanders
who would watch his final descent
and not realize his brief eternal fall
through the invisible place between two worlds
would be the closest any would ever be
to freedom
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 12:32 PM UTC
I could not talk him down, or
listen him up, though that is
what I was trained to do, tried to do
he gazed only at the street,
his final resting place, where
he would soon be
a crushed crimson spectacle
for greedy and empty eyes
whose mouths would tell
of his demise, but none
even knew his name,
I learned it was Everett, and
that he had three daughters
lost in suburbia, eons from this ledge
where he stood, and talked to a stranger
who was stranger than he
for I looked to the skies
above the humming city, as if
they would be my salvation
an airy home to spread wings
with angels, and glide endlessly
through blue heavens, but Everett knew
there were no winged saviors awaiting him
to grab him before his lonely leap
only the unmovable slab of concrete below
the craned necks of other flatlanders
who would watch his final descent
and not realize his brief eternal fall
through the invisible place between two worlds
would be the closest any would ever be
to freedom
as a teen, I often equated death with freedom--seems I have returned to that theme here--Everett was actually the name of a person who was my roommate briefly who later did take his own life
Request permission to use this poem