4 Hour Hard On

SUICIDE
(c) 2008 by John Bennett
All Rights Reserved


The people who can't stand it. Who put their hands over their ears and say, "No, no, no!" As if it were being done to them. As if the act knocks the legs out from under their pet theory on happiness. I wonder about such people. About their stern disapproval. Their "life is precious" escape clause. There's no love in their judgment, no compassion; just indignation, which is a form of fear. These are the same people who see racial undertones in the most innocuous places, as if a person who is Black or Asian or Latino is exempt from life's vagaries and cruelties, as if a person of color is by default blameless, something other than human.

There have been times I've hurt so bad inside I skirted close to suicide. Once, 25 years ago, sitting in the cab of a friend's truck, I said I wanted to die. He was sick of listening to it and whipped a pistol out from under his seat, handed it to me and said, "Go ahead then, blow your brains out." I couldn't do it. But when he emptied the cylinder of all but one bullet, swung it closed again and twirled it, I put the barrel in my mouth without hesitation and pulled the trigger.

There are a lot of ways to commit suicide. Back in that same time frame (it was a particularly bad year) I walked, alone, deep into a black Philadelphia ghetto at two in the morning, an act some people might argue was tantamount to suicide. It was a hot summer night, and people were out on their porches and congregating on street corners. I met a lot of eyes, and none of them had that "life is precious" look in them. My eyes were my passport through a neighborhood of statistical high crime and suicide.

After about an hour of walking I came across a cheap hotel, a borderline flophouse, and went inside. A heavy-set black man in an impeccable white suit sat behind metal mesh and bullet-proof glass. He glared at me and flicked on an intercom.

"Yes?" he said.

"Do you have any vacancies?" I said.

"You got to be kidding," he said, his amplified voice echoing off the paint-peeled walls and tile floor of the small lobby.

"I need a room," I said.

He studied me for a minute and then said, "You're fucking crazy." He got up, pushed a button that sounded a buzzer and unlocked a door, and came out of his bunker.

He took me to the second floor in a freight elevator and showed me a room with no lock on the door.

"Okay," I said.

"That's $20," he said. "Up front."

I fished a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to him.

He stuffed it into his pocket, and then the look on his face changed. "Listen, man," he said. "I don't need no one killing themselves in one of my rooms."

"Don't worry," I said.


I woke up the next morning with sunlight streaming through the window and a cleaning lady mopping the floor around my bed.

"Get your sorry white ass out of that bed so's I can finish my work," she said, and I did.

People who don't carry enough pain to understand suicide are dead already.





And now,

cleansing breaths,

Tai Chi and Chai Tea
in a Garden of


s o u n d

Can’t Make It Go Away
By Humming Flintstones

Dee Jay he shot

that Motels song
thru my head;

--my time, not

l o n g

but swell how I ain't
dead,


for
today,


O n l y

The Lonely,


O n l y

The Lonely…

~~

Daddy was a Marine,

my Moms a majorette,

Why can't I seem

to makepeace
w/ either

either?


--and yet


O n l y

The Lonely


O n l y

The Lonely


can play…

~~~

Gonna be awhile in here; might as well
GET TO KNOW ME!!... Make a smile appear
-- like pearl in Prell shampoo, homies!


HURRAY!
HURRAY!

O n l y
The Lonely

Can Play...

~~~

Ever get a Motel Song
stuck in head allday?

Well, it’s there
where she be-

l o n g

it's up in there
to stay,


--now
you and
me we

gone

p l a y ;)

Three Poems
by smithpeter
Copyright (c) 2008
All Rights Reserved



BIG DROP

drop the pill to watch it roll away
drop to your knees in front of strangers
intent on the action figures
not spilling a single gui drop
drop my pants for me
drop your jaw, it's real
drop the curtain
"may I place this deep in your folder?"




HAIR CHICK

Hey, it's Valentine's Day!
I can look at that hair stylist's ass
Walking down the hall dumpster bound
If I want to, after all
It is a perfect heart shape

If she worked for my boss
She wouldn't be wearing
Those tight, high waist,
Thigh clinging,
Erection bringing,
Cobalt hued jeans

I asked her to trim my mane
Three years ago, chickened out
-Quite a fuss over a hair cut-

She must be miserable with that
Bubbly baby and husband
Muscled, beaming, smoking in bed
Next to her exhausted smiling body,

His brand: "AfterAll"

His slogan: "After Anything, AfterAll"




SLAP ME AROUND

insert things
long seedless cucumbers from Canada
stainless steel eggs from San Francisco
emails from men you know but
I have never met

insert things
like your fingers
don't exclude your long
painted tip nails
and that hand grenade
you keep hidden
under your trench coat

insert things
as long as they fit
one way or another
all slick, all happy,
all yours