Poem in Lieu of Suicide

Wet pavement, jazz, some place to beat off.
Down the street traffic jerks and coils
like a snake. Behind the glare of neons

phosphorescent nudes unbuckle dumb
studs in peepshows, a buck for a bolt.
Drive on. Drive on past cops and fat-ass

wreckers sweeping up from a bone-cruncher.
Change lanes. Wipe it off. Change stations.
I have no copyright on stress but when

warts well up along my knuckles and sleep
eludes me in the quivering hole of night,
I hear the news, I hear it clearly.

Nothing special can be done for me now.
Momentum from a fiendish toss carries
me from deals to meals and on to trysts.

The sole supplication I bother mumbling
to no one in particular under yearly more
fetid breath is that things just turn out,

dear God, one humdrum way or another.
Flings peter out. It slips the mind how
I spend the nights. What hurts are

non-events, like thumps from the plastic
nipple markers I must cross to exit.
It’s time! It’s time to brake!