The Suicides

We went to the club and I waited near the dumpsters
watching Julie talk to the candy-bar boy.
He said, "You should have brought a better-looking friend."

At the door the bouncer pointed to my jug of water
and smirked. I threw it into the bushes.

Inside was a magic pulsar fungus
of bodies, a fecund honey-sweet hive
of the beautiful and the lithe.
Plum fairy lights and cubist strobes
and the anonymous thrum
of sugary teen bait bass lines
the vacuous zero calorie pop
that makes you wish for someone else's life.

A girl called Liz recognized me and smiled
and we started dancing
apart but aligned
like shy, off-season christmas trees
Liz pulling me back from the edge
with her pixie hair and lemonade eyes
the room whirring like a blade
I felt my Great Disgusting Ugliness
standing by to take another beating
but it was off taking a little smoke break,
while I bounced around
to Just What I Needed.
Julie was against the wall making out
but it seemed calculated and cheap
like she was accessorizing
and I was supposed to 'watch and weep'.

The next day Julie called me at the crack hotel
to say Liz had jumped in front of a train.
I just hung up to take the bullet like a man
and swallow my pain.
Then I vomited all over my rented bed
and tried to clean it up with baby wipes.


The first time I saw a boy try to hang himself
was on the lawn of our performing arts high school dorm
he failed
and had to drag his blue-faced corpse through the dining hall
amid the roar of hushed gawks
stares so harsh they carpeted the cafeteria
in a thick blood-purple ooze
the color of the blood that he failed to lose.
Outside the window was a statue
called The Elephant erected in ode
to a girl that had succeeded
in doing it right, and earlier that week
someone had pointed to the words "Help"
gouged into the armrest of a plastic orange chair
with the prongs of a fork, saying "it was her".