Save me

 

Sils Maria 60 x 50 cm acryl/oil pastel on canvas c/o Karin Goeppert

KEVIN

                                           “Which way I fly is hell…”

I always thought murder

would be your fate.

Not the serial sort, but rooted

in animal rage. Pitching

legendary fits on your parents’

front lawn, weeping,

facing the crime scene you grew up in.

Fists clenched, arms at your sides,

walking in place, cursing your father’s transgressions.

We only found out later what

he’d been doing to your sisters.

A time of drought and baseball in the street.

Kids waiting for the ice-cream truck.

Barbecue smoke drifting over back fences.

Then you would explode out the front door.

People stood on their porches

as if a parade, all its floats on fire, were passing by.

I almost expected hesitant applause.

Sartre called self-murder an act of bad faith.

Certain experts

in the human condition

claim that it’s a coward’s last act;

others see it as a final

gesture of self-indulgence

(amazing what an array of shallow

fuckwits can come up with) as

as if suicide were an orgy

in an opium den—but what if

stepping out the front door

were the equivalent of soaking

your nerves in acid? What if

traffic signals

issued intolerable

commands? What if the last time

you made love to a woman

she ran a credit check before undressing?

What if the only possibility

to rest easy,

in the end, was never to wake up?