My First Poem Ever (Unless I've Got Repressed Memories of Public School Composition)

The day started out poorly. I couldn’t even sing along to Gerry Rafferty, I was unmoved by his sax solo. No car accidents into town, no realizations of my greatest fears: parking garage assault or malfunctioning elevator maiming. It could have been a good day but it just wasn’t going to be, so I set about my work methodically. My boss drove in from her summer home and got to the office rather late, so we had only a short time to review and get our cases out the door. I corrected a handful of my own mistakes, read an e-mail response on a time-sensitive case and sort of freaked out – panicking out loud from my office to hers. She barked at me, I teared up, and it was the end of the world. She remembered I am “sensitive” now – poor dear, I was so sane and solid for our 3 years together back at the turn of the century – & put her hand on my shoulder and told me to relax and smile. “I can’t” was all I could choke out.

I navigated angrily through the city – my city – to pick up M at his office and half wished I could run down some wayward pedestrian, then I could just go to some minimum security women’s prison, but probably not – and we had nothing to say to one another the entire ride up to the NH border. We stopped for some groceries and he said “I love you.” while we were selecting cereal. Inspired. I told him he wasn’t going to love me so much if I ended up back in the hospital, leaving him with 5 kids and his own satanic employment.

I wanted to get drunk and have sex. Death had been on my mind all day, hovering at the edges of my consciousness, and I couldn’t think of anything else. Maybe I need to pick up cutting. He was too tired for marital relations and I am dieting, so that left a bathtub. And, miracle of miracles, my brain composed a poem while I sat initially boiling, then stewing and finally relaxing in artificial grapefruit bubbles. Although artificial is probably the only way grapefruit bubbles come. So, we’re cool, Body Shop.

It’s suicide, so fair warning of anything triggering. I only have 1 trigger so it’s hard for me to know what triggers others, if suicide menaces you, STOP HERE. This is so stupid. But I’m going to publish it anyway.

A spider’s sphere

Untethered thread

I wait for it

To curl up dead

The sphere is creased

But cannot hide

A snuggly nest

For suicide

Don’t touch, don’t move

It’s delicate

Wrong signal call

The blood will let

Look closer now

A bridge, the rail

A pile of pills

Overturned pail

The cats, they know

They watch the sphere

The rest suspect

But not to fear

Inside the sphere

The image shifts

Great hills of snow

In measured drifts

It melts, of course

It always does

And pines and seeks 

For what once was

But nothing now

Irrelevance

Looms overhead

Electric fence

An emptiness

There’s nothing there

In blacks and greys

No colors fair

No sun, no pulse

Illuminates, 

Livens this sphere

It suffocates

No in, no out

Just trapped inside

Welcoming grasp

Death’s charms abide

Inside the sphere

All’s plain to see

Outside the sphere

It’s only me

A mind burned out

A heart forlorn

A soul battered

And cruelly torn

Mostly self-taught

This mental mess

Carefully wrought

Dark eloquence

Rattle that gate

Or climb, perhaps

But weakened still

No more relapse

Into a life

Devoid of light

In shade or hue

The weight of night

It’s there, of course

Beauty to spare

Can’t penetrate

The sphere’s black glare

A tiny tear

A quick landslide

A shattered sphere

Love, Suicide

 

Pretty miserable, huh? So I had gone to bed but could not sleep. I sat up & stared into space and then picked up my cell and logged into wordpress. And then I saw the post that I will reblog when I am not about to pass out. But thanks to Dotty Headbanger for saving me, if only in spirit, tonight. Fuck I’m tired.