Tyler R. Martin
I was suicidal long before I knew
That living was essentially dying.
I craved death from the beginning,
Tried to hang myself with the umbical cord at birth
β¦..To no avail.
I followed up by jumping off slides at the playground,
Jumping off roofs, out of windows.
Broke my arm twice, but nothing fatal.
The Almighty caught on to this when I was 12;
My appendix burst spilling gangrene
Throughout my body.
This is how I go, I thought, sick and tired
in a hospital bed while the Almighty has his laugh at
Making me wait so long.
And the Almighty did have his laugh, but it it didn’t
Come with my demise.
According to the surgeon, the Almighty had
Blessed his hand, his scalpel and my soul,
All of these blessings allowed the surgeon
To clean up my insides.
I awoke to pain and scars, but I awoke all the same.
Road rage at twenty, screaming at an asshole
From the Carribean in rush hour Manhattan,
Tried to run my Cadillac through a concrete divider.
I was outside my flattened Caddy smoking a cigarette
When the medics arrived, shocked they hadn’t
Driven up on a corpse.
They demanded I seek medical assistance;
By the third increasingly persistent request
I told them in no uncertain terms to fuck right off.
The Almighty once more had his laugh,
Leaving me with not a scratch and a whopping
Auto bill for my troubles.
Booze, pills, tasers, fights, tried them all;
Nothing seems to slow me down;
I feel I’ll live to a hundred, miserable, battered and broken
But not dead, no that’ll be too easy.
I must have been a cruel man in my past life,
Or maybe I’m just the Almighty’s comic relief.
bourbon, cigarettes and syllables 