Oscar Wilde once said, "We kill the things we love."
So I have decided to devote time to killing myself daily
Self help books
And easy categorization

Oh the loneliness

Not everyone is lying
Not everyone is telling the truth
So I have decided to tell nothing but half truths and median falsities
You appear alien to me

Oh the loneliness

The human species figured out fire
before developing a frontal lobe
So I have decided to burn everything to the ground
And marvel at what has been done

Of all these crimes
Accommodation
I don't hear the train anymore

Either you watch for every train to pass and fall asleep
Or you grow weary of watching and give up
I mean you can't see or hear all the trains
Forever

We are a guilty bunch of humans
Observation, memory and adaptation our signature traits
Only to betray these constantly
No, I can't hear the train anymore
When I sleep

When I sleep
I can't dream infinitely

I can say a bunch of crap like true love means that interest will always be
But I wouldn't believe it
These couches get pretty comfortable
These rails get pretty quiet
One person always ends up wanting the other more
The best relationship in theory should be one grounded in boredom
Then every day would seem like a surprise
But I wouldn't believe it

No, I can't hear the train anymore
Of all these crimes
Accommodation
Sneaky repetition...this poem cannot
You know it is coming
It is sneakier than that
You know
Love

Everyone is good at giving advice
Yet seldom do you ever digest the situation
Others find themselves in

This experienced empathy is such a rare state
Or maybe it is because you are busy
Or just selfish
Then why is it universal?
You have the skill you just never use it

Survival
Maybe that is it
Cynical sure
But tell me another reason

Certainty
Maybe that is it
One viewpoint is enough to contend with
Without dealing with another in the same breath
All that thinking for other people while you go wanting
It sounds selfish, but maybe it is for simplicity
To be able to move in some kind of direction
Uncertainty is paralyzing

Life is one big finger trap
Constrictive and snared
Sensual and warm

I can’t figure out
If we are programmed to live
Or programmed to die
That is why suicide is shocking
An abrupt end

All this tension

That knee jerk reaction to grab onto something
When hobbling at the edge of a cliff
Fear is God’s checkbook
The finger trap is free of charge

It’s feverish
May heat nipping at
April chills

When your self
Is unrecognizable to immediacy
When the body is reduced to pulp
Full of bone, sinew and blood
These shape shifting moments
Force-fed
Settle in pits of stomachs
And pass through the bowels

Eventually

8 Blocks and 23 Carousel Horses
We called our cross country coach the Woolly Mammoth
Tufts of red hair coming out of his shirt from his back
These nostalgic legs chisel at the past and stop in front of a house
Not just any house
No it didn’t have the barbed wire that caged other memories in bitterness
This house was television perfect, where Billy Joel happily sang
You would take me to the local general store
(Just before they started to die out)
In one of those shell bicycle seats attached to the frame
Tina Turner would sing ‘what’s love got to do with it?’

What does love got to do with it?
Sex
8 Blocks over a valiant quest went on
It was called high school and it came much later
The Woolly Mammoth would lead the pasty hormones across the field
Beating the testosterone out of their heads
I bet no one would notice me now
An old man
I hope no one will notice me
Beating down nostalgia
I want to remember this town not for its Carousel Horses
One of the few places left with an original set
All plastic and froze
I want to take comfort in the chisel
As it reveals the horse
That shatters the pole

22. A poem incorporating the following: woolly mammoth, chisel, sex, barbed wire, shell, television (5 pts)

12. A poem using carousel horses as a starting point (4 pts)

There is a sense of entitlement when it comes to life
Once you have it and it is good
Or even bad
Instinct is to hang on to it
Those who know death intimately
Don’t try so hard to stay alive
Living to thirty years of age
Death came more often
Elaborate Sarcophaguses

4. A poem which references Egyptian burial rituals
__________________________________________

He rises like a dead fish after thaw
Suicide veins sit next to a syringe that flops
Fingers covered in ink as if they had touched newsprint
Apples rest in the grass from the apple tree
Bicycle chain rusts like the frame attached to it
As it rests taciturnly against the bark
A moth floats through forget-me-nots

32. A poem which uses the line “he rises like a dead fish after thaw” (4 pts)

33. A poem incorporating the following: suicide, bicycle chain, apples, newsprint, moth, forget-me-nots. (5 pts)