The idea that somebody
Can commit suicide
By somebody else murdering them
Is a weird concept
Suicide by cop
Presupposes that
A cop is merely a force
Of nature
With no personal agency
Like gravity
Like gas
Like the ocean
A cop just kills
With as much culpability
As San Francisco Bay
You can’t indict the noose
You can’t convict the gun
The tool of the suicide
Is blameless
I read a story about a guy who died
And then people saw the work
He’d toiled over his whole life.
It was some kind of art
And people marveled about
How this quiet old man
Had made such rich things
And never told anybody.
It’s a story people like.
We’re all clamoring for some recognition
That what we do in our respective laboratories
Somehow matters.
Someday people will know what we made.
If not in this life,
The next.
Eliot and I were convinced
That there was a time vortex
To the 1990s
At the Target on Ohlen Rd.
There was some weird energy
In the freezer section
That extended out to the street
Where you could feel that
Just on the other side of
Some cosmic membrane
Tupac was blasting
From low riders.
We went to investigate.
For some reason we went to
The Arboretum
To get money
And then we bought booze
From the Twin Liquor by the HEB.
We bought wedding cake flavored vodka
Because it was on sale.
We needed the booze to properly
Investigate the vortex.
Eliot was going on about gemmatria.
He said it was the secret to everything.
But it sounded to me
Like a way to drive yourself mad.
We found a patch of woods
To drink the vodka.
It was a beautiful spot
Next to a creek.
He was a very sad man.
I was not as I used to be.
I was living with the woman
I live with now.
He was battling literal demons
In the forest of the green belt
Where he lived.
We drank the whole bottle
And never made it to
The Target
That day.
Soon he would accuse me
Of conspiring with the spirits
In his head
To try to kill him.
I never heard from him after that.
The problem with epiphanies
Is they wear off.
By definition
Their magic
Must dissipate.
The overwhelming delight
Of understanding
Eventually gives way
To the dull thrum of living.
And you wonder
Is it better to know
The epiphany’s fleeting ecstasy
Knowing the hollowness
Once it’s gone?
Or is it better
To live in ignorance
Of that which
Now evades you?
Why do I feel the need to commodify my every thought?
Why do I seek the validation of likes for my work?
I hate this part of myself.
I want to create for the sheer joy of creation.
What would I make if validation didn’t matter?
The most annoying part
Of the pandemic
Has to be
The cloying
Saccharine commercials
Speaking in earnest
Vocal fry
With stock piano Chords
Fuzzy montages
“We care about you.
Don’t get out the guillotine.
Buy a Toyota
In these hard times.”
And then the viewer
Presumably damp-eyed
From all the corporate love
Buys a thing
Because “we’re all in this together.”
