Plath did it with gas
at 4:30 in the morning
what a time to go
just after the soul’s night is darkest
sealed the doors to her kids’ room with wet blankets
placed her head in the oven
what a way to go
her last breath oxygen-less
kneeling down on the kitchen tile
not hysterical at all
probably as calm and determined as she’d ever been
maybe delusioned into expecting breakfast
or dreaming of bumblebees on Johnson Avenue
while the trash trucks hummed and sighed outside
shards of gobbledygook and palindromic names threshing her memories
no longer crawling underneath houses to drown in sleeping pills
a more direct approach that doesn’t cry for help
or hurt
anymore
Hemmingway ended it with a twelve-gauge
a felo-de-se just like his old man
put a bullet through his head with his favorite shotgun
in Ketchum, Idaho
nowhere left to run
some say a rope will snap quicker what’s left of you
not so
not so
the noose might fail
or a beam might break
leaving complications of the senses
or bewildered drooling
I knew a guy who tried 4 stories
but gravity let him down
so he went up to thirteen
a popular number for jumpers
the sirens sang him away in roughly 15 minutes
there will always be mothballs in the brain
a spate of rash decisions
that won’t make it far enough
to try keeping on for size
some say pentobarbital will do the job
but take too much and you’ll sick it all up
too little and you’ll linger around like rotten cabbage
leap into fire
get dashed by flames
remember
there are gray jays pleading in the basement
and the water’s too cold for the mess of a drowning
besides suddenness might come on too slow
as taking cues from Spalding Gray or Hart Crane
is not for those of the wavering or timid sort
knew a kid who used a dead-end street as a drag strip
in his parent’s brand new Honda
thought the brick wall at the finish would do the job
crashed the thing through doing 70 and sailed it into a pool
but he was foiled by the car’s safety features
the airbag made sure he was laid up for 6 months
recovering his miserable self
one must be sure to be thorough
and fortify one’s spirit to be hasty and cocksure
at the end
when that gorgeous green window lifts
to reveal the hidden components of necessity
and you sip the tides from the lunatics and the bums
and the lawyers flash smiles like tossed gold pieces below your calloused feet
like bird feed
which was incurred during flush times of survival
while there were still a few horses left to bet on
while time marched instead of nose diving
one must respect the ones who are left behind
a mush of reminiscing
a curling spit of sun
charred descendents of other scars and fleshy misgivings
a respite is not enough
look
there is no training ground for hesitation
a white-winged dove will not swoop down to the rescue
and angels have more important matters to attend to
like saving whales and planting the seeds of next year’s harvest
so
don’t grow too fond of farewells
circles mend their own bends
even if darkness lowers the boom
perhaps a burial ground for the static-brained yawns of bored evenings might do
or a leper colony for jealousy
sometimes mercy will not strain
not even for a quality individual
like yourself
a girl who once lived upstairs
sliced her wrists both ways
and bled into bathwater
until the super came breaking in to see about a noise complaint
seems she’d been blasting the radio the whole while
the unfortunate bastard bandaged her up and called the paramedics
who arrived too early to save her
so she went on
until a bottle of tranquilizers found her stomach
and then a bottle of cheap vodka
which finally finished off what she’d never wanted to begin
her bed held her shape for almost a week
before they found her
lying there prone with hands outstretched
as if posing for a crucifixion
smiling at what she’d done
Wallace Carothers
the inventor of nylon
mixed his cyanide with lemon juice
in a cheap Philadelphia hotel room
to work the trick quicker
endurance and willpower
strength and hope
things to say on a string of petty days with nothing to be tied to
just one after the next
clomping along
in a business-as-usual clump
but somewhere
like a crane fly skimming frost flowers in January’s meanest
or a sky glutted with the bent-paperclip shapes of birds
a newfangled buffet car for the freshly dead is rumbling by
and there is no place to put the things one might miss
on a cold day at the end of November
no place that’ll hold what remains
and it is just this now
that matters
in whatever capacity we might have for imagining it
like eating an apple
or forgetting to close the garage door
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