suicide is painful

  my knees hurt. the arthritis foundation wants money. the surgeons. recommend i get a new job.
  my doctor recommends i go back to work.
  i cant walk around the block.
  one morning
  my knees hurt
  dreadful
  my moans dont wake the wife
  i call the mental health clinic
  its too early
  i push 1..1 is the suicide button
  the rest is a blur
  i am in my first psychiatric ward
  i cry cry cry
i cant see thru the tears
5 days 5 days 5 days
what happened to 72 hour observation?
i make friend. i love mentally ill people.
i demand to be released when a homicidal maniac enters the ward and takes my room
 i have to share a room with an apnea blast furnace
 i demand freedom.
  i wind up in the senior ward and i am medicated enough  to hijack karaoke night for two hours.
  i am singing ” white wedding” by billy idol when they pull the plug.
  retreat to my room with diaper man and a great wall of concrete feces
  all the smells the accompany white wedding diaper blocks of the great block of the senior ward and a mattress that smells like urine.
  i’m not bagging on seniors. one day i hope to make a psychiatric ward smell that way.
  the next day i demand to see the authorities and they are dismayed by the way i can weave facts and fiction into the kinds of headlines the might snatch some attention.
  i am returned to the ward from which i came.
  the whole ordeal was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
  i need pills and booze and i am much better at talking the talk with mental patients  that i meet here and there.
  i have a new audience.
  of course this is an outline
 a sketch from the bracelet makers everywhere

 

carry on

love is coming.
love is coming to a funeral near you.
lonely roads are lonely roads by definition.
no one else is there.
recumbent velocipedes/
now that’s a lonely road.
‘67 dodge dart with an eight track
RUN THRU THE JUNGLE
RUN THRU THE JUNGLE
AW DON’T LOOK BACK
ditches
cornfields
harmonicas
give me a taste
a taste of that strawberry hill
 a taste of that fidelity
innocent fidelity

hell

“torment” he said.
“you will be tormented for eternity.”
  i was astounded. “god has nothing better to do than torture me for eternity? what about juvenile diabetes?”
  his face got dark with anger “GET SERIOUS”.
  “I AM SERIOUS. MY WIFE WORKS WITH SICK CHILDREN WHO WON’T SEE THEIR SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY!  what kind of god is that?”

a leg to stand on

consistency
always central to balance
and it goes without saying
because it goes without saying
i might be a dick
but i always am
people take their time
and i let them for the most part
memorize the keys
and find them
or the phone in her darkness
speaking from 38 miles away
she stood firm on that leg
and met me at the aids clinic
met me at the dentist
met me hiding as i unlocked the door
to the apartment vomitorium
she stalked out when i told her 
i would be just one more guy
that she never really loved
she said that i could keep her daddys desk
and my son told me this
“there is nothing scummy about her”
in the days when his insight was golden
with another human
with another golden human