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

 

hell 2

  it was a grey haired bar. all the cocktail waitresses should have had grey hair. they had become a bit long in the tooth for the profession, but they had a place at the grey haired bar.
  economics and sports were discussed over bourbon and beer. wine flowed from little bottles and breathed the air at the grey haired bar.
  confession had left a bitter taste in my mouth. i had really expected to feel better afterward, but i guess i should not have confessed my bitter feelings about religion and god in general.
  the bartenders name was Vicky. she had back problems and a prescription for vicodin.  i ordered a rusty nail and two vicodin.
  “I’m out of vicodin” she said. “i have these little morphine pills. 15 milligram”.
  i dont know anything about morphine.
  “gimmee two.”
   she gave me a handful.
   “no charge. i don’t like them.”
   i wrapped them in a napkin and stuffed them in my pocket.
   i like my rusty nails light on Drambuie but i didn’t complain when Vickie put too much in the first one. she must have remembered on the next three. they were great.
  i was on the Internet soon enough, looking at morphine pills. conventional wisdom had me squirting powdered pills mixed with water up my ass. I’m talking way up my ass.
  ‘PAST THE ANUS.”