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Suicide Back Pack |
For Lara
The sexy slide of your neck’s nape
Takes me to a perfect place
Where I must already be dead.
Your fingers graze mine with the grace of an undertaker
As I run my dirty fingernails up and through your scalp,
Tug a little bit
Because the simply act of gently pulling your hair
Reminds me of ringing mortality’s bus stop
And I get a kick out of waiting for whichever reclusive loony
Happens to hoof it fastest.
It could be you.
It could be me.
Maybe Snuffy, Hobbes or Harvey.
Just so long as these strings unhinge
And the bolts unscrew themselves
Because at the very least
This type of dying feels right to me.
Fantastic like a slow sip on my lass glass of bourbon,
Watching my final sunrise from the front porch
Of some single stoplight town
Where they give you half dead basset hounds
With the purchase of 2 acres of land or more
Because in this glossy world full of blockbuster tragedy
Sometimes you just have to kill a whole theater
Just to cry in peace…
…but of course I’m chiding myself because this whole approach is formulaic.
Color by numbers in a world barely graduated from black & white
And I’m tracing steps
Just to teach mortals to morons on Prozac.
I hope it’s not turning you anxious
Like a 3-pronged plug with only 2 holes to work with
Or worse yet,
That “no-good-feel-nothing”
That they’ve finally stopped writing about.
I want a real song written about me for once
So I’m prepared to drive you mad enough
To land your name on a flyer taped to a scaffolding
On the same Hollywood Blvd. we begrudgingly walk down
Week after week.
The same boulevard of celluloid deities I pray to
(between discreet acts of subtle puzzle piecing)
To send the tiniest shard of current into a nearly dislodged heart valve
And twist the frail driver of a Caddy’s steering wheel just 4 inches to the right
And jump that curb.
Plummet us permanently
Into a glittery window boasting impractical shoes,
Or a psychologically killing personality testing site
Or even a dusty perv closet
With its decades old collections of stale KY
And expired edible underwear
But these are tourist traps
And you’re a native
And we’re both 20-something homeless chic.
For us
Death waits on a stoop.
Cold and fast like a six-pack of twist-offs
Swigging deeper with every vocal regret,
Every laugh at life
So within the confines of every comfortable silence
I fall worlds first into the dark space of your kiss.
Closing my eyelashes like a casket lid against yours
Before that gunshot bucks through the back of my head
Sending all of me through all of you and into itself once more
As if our last act was to merge and form but one passing
Because I’ve found in a fantasy
Born of no natural light
That your gravel-splintered shoulder
Would be ultimately compatible
With my burned and bloody cheek
And my scuffed and grass-roughed kneecap
Could rest forever
In the outline of your thigh
But my childlike eyes
Would ride wide and amazed for an eternity
As the sexy slide of your neck’s nape
Took them to a perfect place
Where we were already dead.
copyright 2005
Sam
Skow |
