| Verse Libre in Two Parts for Joey and Rick. (RIP, gentlemen)
The Gift of Suicide Part One: Rick did it with drama and flair: Splitting hairs behind the community pool, endowed with fine wit, fury and potential. A divorce left him goal-blind, 5 years ago, so he went cruising online & purchased several pieces on E-Bay. .He utilized that brilliant mind to assemble the weapon of his own destruction, then blew it away. The fall from the house of Burgess though not as dramatic, is most recent: Joey left this life at 18. His Boy Scout knots clean and tied onto the antennae of his childhood home. Goaded, shamed, disregarded, he jumped. And he wasnt alone. They lightened the load, but left us with a sordid mental lunch box filled with grief & Why didn't I's ? Thats the gift of suicide. and theres a gift, no doubt: this final act lifts the burden off of them intact, finally: distributing it most evenly on the psyche of everyone nearby, in the room, on the phone, next door. PART 2 Moralists suggest: Its a sinners way to go. You might as well say that its a losers way you know~as if some Santa Claus-lookin-motherfucker is gonna give you a karmic bozo button for hanging in until the cancer-eaten, cardiac-arrested bitter end. And who knows? Perhaps we are mammalian lemmings in our shiny metal trailers and semis. Self- thinning the herd of people who feel too much, hold on to their pain..those who lack that extra layer of reptilian skin to repel lifes biological, nuclear & emotional weapons. The only other solution, is that army of medical clowns arriving on time with the ice cream and narcotics, some serious soporific shit guaranteed to keep another soul from taking an early dive off of the stage & into the footlights. Rest in peace, gentle men. Rest in peace, gentle souls. |