At The Bar Again - Prose Crown Poem
While taking a piss in a bar’s restroom,
I stare into a thin weblike crack above a urinal
and think to myself that if I were to vanish from
this world and disappear into that crack, say crawl
into it by somehow miniaturizing if I condense,
the odds are good no one would notice I was away.
In fact some, if they noticed my absence,
might feel an odd, inexplicable sense of relief. Say,
some might even feel a bit of contentment, pleasure.
This is true. The world is better off with some
people gone. Our society will not measure,
or distinguish lives of bread, from lives of crumb.
Some people truly do not need to be here.
In fact one of them, me, will disappear.
In fact one of them, me, will disappear.
I could easily just go. Zip up my shorts
and just go. First I’d finish up my beer
of course. Maybe stay a little, watch some sports
Then I’m out of here. Take a cab.
I don’t have many personals I’d like to take,
and of course I wouldn’t tell my dad he’d just blab
about how I’d never really gotten a break
like someone successful in show business.
No I’d probably just go nowhere fast
like my career in the register business.
I used to be in customer sales though. It didn’t last.
But that’s all done now. Here’s to people thinking I’m dead.
Or maybe I could actually die instead.
Or maybe I could actually die instead.
It wouldn’t be to difficult I don’t think.
All I’d have to do is blow a bullet through my head,
or I could easily stick my face in the restroom’s sink,
clog the drain, run some water and drown.
Well actually those options wouldn’t work because I do
not own a gun, and there isn’t a gun shop in town,
and I don’t have the guts to see a drowning plan go through.
What I do have, is a knife.
A deluxe folding pocket knife featuring a 2.8 inch blade,
(it was a gift from an ex-wife)
and carries a quick open thumb stud that I paid
over seventy dollars for give or take.
I wonder how much it would really ache.
I wonder how much it would really ache.
Would it ache as much as being born?
It doesn’t seem wrong when I wake
up each day to my own screams. Torn
each night by the guilt of my own failure.
The life I chose for myself, one my father
didn’t want for me, the “your
mother died because you never bother
to listen” life, a life his father before him probably didn’t
want for me either. But sometimes the choices we make
are guaranteed failures. Sometimes they aren’t
even choices at all. I can’t choose to wake
just as much as I can’t choose to be born. By
what I know, I know I can choose to die.
What I know, I know I can choose to die.
Because life is pain. Anyone who
says differently says a lie
and is trying to sell you something. So
what do I do? I leave the knife in
my pocket alone. No use killing myself in a bar.
Bartender might actually think I hated his gin
so much I went and slit my throat. Far
to messy. No I’d prefer to be a bit
more eccentric. Funny that you’re
nobody ‘til somebody kills you. It
is a sublime feeling of being sure
of something, suicide. I have power, control.
I can feel something beating, my heart is coal.
I can feel something beating, my heart is coal.
A black, charred lump, easily consumed by
flames of jealously and revulsion. Weathered coal,
shattered, cracked, and grounded down to fuel me through my
days of insults and calamity. It comes from
the fossilized remains of an amorphous organic childhood,
trampled by a dinosaur of disappointment, topped off with some
of its smelly ass ancient dino “hope” shit. Should
I run out of fuel, I chisel off a bit from another’s heart,
usually from a relationship or friendship.
Mine is a shard of coal, piercing its emotions or part
of emotions through my chest. digging its chip
into the edges as I breathe a silent noise.
Death is an escape everyone enjoys.
Death is an escape everyone enjoys
to wish on those
everyone annoys.
Thus begs to suppose
that those annoyed detest
their birth’s causation
explained as the best
of a bad situation.
My body is nearing sixty
as my mind is nearing eight.
A slit throat sounds nifty
while drowning in a sink ain’t.
These are my thoughts, of dread and gloom
While taking a piss in a bar’s restroom.
