BOOK III. ETHICAL SUICIDE ARTIST

SARCOPHAGUS

If eyes are windows
To the soul, notice
How mine have lost light:

Someone who once lived
There has long since gone
And the fool forgot

To leave the lights on.

SIAMESE DEATH

I know it
kills you
to see me
like this:
dead to you,
dead to me,
and dead to
the world.
And now I
cannot even
begin to tell
you not to
worry. It
is you who
must die
seeing me
like this?
While here

I am
long dead.

LOSER

My life is
a laundry
list of ifs
and buts and
could have beens
(If only
I had it
but God knows
I don’t. I
could have been
this. I could
have been that).
Too bad,
suicide
could have
been a neat
epitaph.

AN EXCUSE SLIP

To whom it may concern,
Please excuse me for
Having been absent
For the past thirty
Years, which is the rest
Of my life, anyway.

Something happened on my
Way up there, and now
I am somewhat stuck
Here doing time for
Some crime about which
Nobody is saying.

Not that I cannot go
Any time I damn
Well want, which could be
Today or any
Day of my choosing,
But that, somehow, I can’t.

Which is what really scares
Me, in the first place.
In the second place:
Am I still wanted
Just in case I do
Get out of here alive?

I cross my fingers now,
Hoping for your kind
Consideration,
Even as I sit
Here, cord around my
Neck and gun in my hand.

WHEN I DIE

You can serve beer,
if you like.
I wouldn’t mind.
Play poker,
if you like.
I’m not partial to
the game, anyway.
But skip the biscuits,
when it’s time.
They are for those who
have given up the ghost.
Whatever happens,
tell the priest
to make it short.
The audience shouldn’t
be kept waiting,
and besides
the pay is the same.

When it’s time,
you can serve the priest,
if you like.
I wouldn’t mind.
Pay the audience,
if you like.
I’m not partial to
biscuits, anyway.
And besides
the game is the same.
Whatever happens,
skip the poker
or play it short.
The beer shouldn’t
be kept waiting
for those who
have given up the host.

ENTROPUS

If I say I owe you my life, it means
You have saved me from some imminent death.
But I am not quite through with dying yet,
Meaning I am still too far, a distance
Still too late— that is, from early wither
To total particle breakdown, granting
That the process is assumed as largely
Irreversible and, therefore, tending
Towards disorder, as is the case with
Most systems isolate— even if, to
You, I might seem quite too close from saving.

BLUE THROAT

Because he has once thought of dying
Almost to the point of doing it,
The subject of death, when it comes, no
Longer draws him into days of deep
And dark brooding: He has learned to laugh
More, enjoy himself more, coming out
Of it with a renewed sense of life
That seemed even fatal for one long
Considered to be almost monkish.

And that is why he would say nothing
More for the evening, or if he did,
It would be in that absent-minded
Way of his, as though he were someplace
Else, in a timewarp perhaps, or some
Old abandoned satellite within
His mind-elaborated cosmos:
There— where once he did die, only now
He has come to dig up the body.

DEATHWISH

If,
in this
sentence, I
dash—
to you,
will you
open
your

[bracket]

without
asking
me to
die
at
every
period

PARTHENOGENE

Curiosity will kill you,
You know that much. Yet even
The trees that seek the sun know
They must break dirt. Besides you
Thought the warning was meant to
Tempt you, or why else would they
Bother? Reluctantly now,
Perhaps scared of what you might
Discover, you open the
Bureau, as if drawing a
White, withered child out at birth.

PEEL

Because I
Choose to die

In pieces
Like puzzles

Peeling off
A picture

Death is child’s
Play compared

To life which
Requires a

General
Sorting out

And fitting
Of bruised ends

ANNEX

I imagine you
Imagining me,
Floating inside one
Of those old glass jars
You keep in a row
Outside the window: