Little suicide notes were written between the colors and brush strokes in the irises of her eyes.  Some short, some long, some almost never ending, and some simply only said goodbye.  Some warm and well crafted with just a dash of despair.  Others cold and cruel crammed with complaints and self loathing.  Some written by her own hand, others memorized from books and films and authors unknown.  Beautiful maladies of the outrageous fashion of lifeless death after death.  She too often wondered is it really suicide when someone is already dead inside?

Even with the glazed over dreams of death that swam in the deep black of her pupils, her smile still had an innocent charm.  A perfect balance of teeth and lips and soft pink flesh.  There was an eager patience in the tremble and quiver waiting in the promise of her kiss.  It wasn't of wanting or longing but the simple passion of knowing each  moment of pressing and locking and pressure brought her closer to her final breath.  She wasn't interested in the luxury of suicide, its flashy pearl whites or final big bang... she wanted to know the intimacy of the unknown, the brief warm flush of the infinite end of the love and despair of life.  To discover the kindness or cruelty of whats next.  Too often she pondered why does she see much more beauty in death than in life or love.

She smiled, some days... and it was a warm and inviting smile, beautiful in its own graceful way.  Thats how I remember it.  All I can see now, shining up through the dirt and her grave, is one last note painted in her dead eyes.

Some days you have to smile through the misery and pain and ache of it all.  You gotta bare a toothy mad grin and laugh at the horrible agony swallowing the world.  Its easy to be a doom sayer, a lunatic screaming about an unavoidable Armageddon, to look a stranger in the eye and tell them we are so far past the point of redemption that we're all just ******* ****** **** ******.  Its easy to crawl into the gutter with the bums and the winos and get comfortable with not giving a **** ****** about anything and everything.  Crawl into the bottle and swim in the whisky of heartless indifference, to become a ****** foaming at the mouth for the needle of the cruel uncaring blind eye of social disharmony.  It can **** you, all this sad weather news of bullets raining down stealing lives and breeding hatred.  The bad days of sunshine blinding justice with piles of money setting criminals free and killing the hearts of their victims.  Its a storm of vile human filth spreading like cancer over the whole stinking world.  It will make you sick if you look too close... but that's just it, we gotta look close.  We have to stare it dead in the face, smile at it, laugh at it... and tell it to go ******* **** itself.  We gotta stand up to it and fight it.  At the end of the fight we have to have more teeth and more bite than it does, its not a fight we can afford to lose.  Not if we want a better world for our children, a brighter future for love and hope.  Its hard though, its ugly, its near unbearable... all these bad weather days one after another with no sign of the storm letting up.  We have to bare the weight, we have to accept that we will probably lose more people than we will save... we have to push through the tears and our fears and our doubts and the constant feeling that we are fighting a losing battle.  You have to shout out your battle song of hope against the odds.  We're all going to die, but how and for what is a decision we all can make on our own.  Will we die in the false safety of our cookie cutter homes, slaves to the lies and the misery of the world at large.  Or will we take a stand and fight back.  Even on the days we feel like we're impaled on the devils teeth and our hearts and lungs feel punctured and we're spitting and choking on ***** and blood, we still have to throw ourself into the fray and smile and laugh at all the human vile trying to destroy us. We have to go mad, to stay alive, to keep hope burning in our hearts, and to fight back against the odds.  Let our fists fly and let those birds scream out **** **** ******* ******* to the suicide bombs and hate bullets spilling the blood and death of innocence and beauty.  I dream of a better world and give myself to the page and the pen and hope that we find unity through love before we find ourselves hanging in the noose that we tied around our own necks.

I  walked  under  clear  blue  skies.
My  feet  making  footprints  in  the  golden  sands.
    
I  shaded  my  eyes  and  peered  across.
At  inky-blue  mountains  stretching
Endlessly  beyond  the  vast
Expanse  of  water.

Seashells  scattered  at  random
Lay  embedded  in  the  soft  sand
Showing  off  many  beautiful  colors

I  sat  for  awhile  and  dozed  fitfully
Listening  to  the  soft  murmuring
Of  the  gentle  incoming  tide.

The  tranquillity  was  finally
Interrupted  by  an  excited
Yell  from  a  small  boy  fisherman
Who  had  hooked  a  minnow.

As  it  grew  cold  I  walked  on
With  a  clear  and  refreshed  mind.

Keith  Wilson.  Windermere.  UK.  2016.