On A Suicide
55
On a Suicide
The rooms are quiet now
Since the shouting ceased.
It seems they tried to wake him
With his name shouted in his ear…
Wake! Wake! Your life is slipping
Past you and you do not detain it.
He lies there with his head pressed,
Prayer like, into the floor, unaware of this.
With the fifteen… white, powdered drops,
Down his throat.
First one; another… and then,
Tiring so soon of what would become
Deadly repetition; the thirteen,
Flung in even deadlier fashion after it.
A most worthwhile hub
For all those who have read the above and enjoyed it; to all those who have been disturbed by it; to all those who are ambivalent about the matter: if the person or persons so described or alluded to had had the ear of a friend, a stranger, another soul, to listen or to enquire, perhaps, only perhaps, the course taken would not have been such a lonely one.Or not taken at all!
I most strongly suggest that the following hub, by WriterOnLine would let just a little light into your, or their, possible darkness.
"Are You OK?" The Question That Could Save a Life.
- "Are You OK?" The Question That Could Save a Life.
You wont find many depressed people casually bringing it up in conversation, much less telegraphing any suicidal intention. In fact, there may be no signs at all for you to spot; beyond a feeling that somethings not right. But thats enough!
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Didja like it?
Oh! You must have, you've voted. Thanks my lovely friend.
I'm sorry I didn't make it clear Ian. I liked it very much. I have a cold and it is making my head ache so bad that I am not thinking clearly. I may back out a bit for a day or two. I just do not feel good.
Go to bed. Drink lots of liquids. Take lots of Vitamin C.
Bark at your family and be thoroughly unpleasant. It's the only chance you'll get.
No one is nasty to an unwell mummy with a cold.
Ian
x
Hi Ian,
A sad poem for sure but a very good one..Love the video..to feel so hopeless..You captured the darkness for sure..
Love,
Sunnie
i almost feel like doing a hub on the song,,, but it's been done so many times.
Thanks for coming. I hope it wasn't too gloomy for you.
Good poem, but very sad. The despair they feel before committing suicide is heart wrenching
Voted up
Terri
Thank you, Terri. I appreciate your visit and your comment. Thank you for coming and taking the time to read and tell me your thoughts.
Suicide is insidious. Like creeping doom. Almost everyone I know has been stalked by it at least once. The emtion was captured perfectly...
Yes suicide is the grim reaper standing in the shadows extending his hand, he knows you will soon be his and he coaxes you and takes your soul away, one shallow breath at a time.
I felt his sting under the bottle of Jack who was my King one time in my life, when I lost everything, my wife and kids, home and dignity along with it. The Reaper almost won, but I was pulled back in by a force unknown by me to this day. Blessings be that which gave me hope and a future....Yes sad for Billy and many like her....
Augustine, it is insidious. It is almost a welcoming spectre...
Oops. This is a possible lines from a poem on the same subject.
Thanks for dropping by, my friend.
I contest you statement, Saddlerider. You have not lost your dignity as far as I am aware. Or if you thought you had lost it, you had simply misplaced it somewhere and have found it and wear or proudly around your shoulders again.
You stand proud and head above most people in this arena, and I know you are revered and admired.
And by writers of great worth.
Hello Ian, we all have to box from different corners in this writing game, so gloomy is allowed, respected and marveled at. Even if it is darkly sad. Cheers mate.
I can be light hearted, Keith, but your witty verse patterns and amusing observations are a goal for me. Thanks for the comment.
You dipped your pen into the well of sad emotion and scribbled a shadowy tale of cold tile pressing against cooling skin.
A brilliant observation, and amazing imagery, Mike.
I bow to those few excellent words.
I dont know what to say
But I'm sure that will, eventually.
Thanks for dropping by, Steve.
This is a pit of utter blackness. I've only once come within it, but something whisked me out of it assuring me that if I were willing to give up life, then there was probably nothing worse I could do by continuing to live it. Odd juxtaposition of illogic, but somehow it seemed incredibly logical and freeing at the time. I'd been convinced "it" was hopeless and I was hopeless. So the odd reasoning that anything I might actually do from then on had to be a step up, with almost a free pass! I guess it was a spiritual turning point. As I recall it was about the same time i wrote my poem "I feel I've been doing my raindance in a planetarium". . . Perhaps that's what leads to suicide, the feeling that it's all a sham - beyond just hopeless, - well into meaningless? Anyway - enough of that.
I'm quite impressed with your ability to paint with just the right amount of dark grey words, withholding flourishes, magnanimity or any tone of hope to interfere with the sense of the message, and yet the stark brevity gives such clarity even to the dismal, mottled effect. It's impossible to come away from this poem unscathed. Shudder.
The music rings the final death knelll. I'd never heard this before.
Oops - that was a resounding knell - l , - wasn't it?
A very sad but meaningful poem.
I have to vote up and also look forward to reading many more by you.
Take care
Eiddwen.
Nellie, I am so glad you have looked at it so closely. But, my Dear, you have allowed me to peep into your inner soul on occasion, and I am amazed that you only contemplated the thought (not the deed) once. Some fool, known to you so well, attempted to grind you down , but you are made of sterner stuff. More fool that person.
I love you philosophy concerning the "step up". Staircases are either leading up or down, it just depends on which way one is looking.
Write a hub on that, Nellie, as only you could.
Thank you, Eiddwen. Or "Diolch yn fawr," as my mother would have said. Unfortunately, I can hardly remember a word of the language.
Please come again,,, and again, I thrive on encouragement.
Ian - I wrote a reply for here, but I'm not going to post it here for several reasons. Maybe it's a hub in the making or just a private reply to you. Thank you for your comment. Big hug.
I'll look forward to reading it, wherever it appears, my friend.
i have wondered about publishing this poem for so many months. I know there must be someone out there who has lost a loved one through this act, and the thought of opening wounds worried me, but I also thought I should share it.
I am surprised that you did not know the song, 'Gloomy Sunday'. I am considering writing a hub and sharing what I consider to be the "saddest songs".
I'm honestly not a gloomy person. The reply I wrote about my one brush with it was actually a very positive and even upbeat writing, though with much introspection - more than I felt appropriate to put on your comment thread.
It's the way I am. I can't help it. My feeling is that ALL emotions must be fully experienced - no matter how dark, depressing or hopeless. But the thing then is, - to let them run their honest course without getting attached to them, and to let them go when they've run it. Often people get caught up in the drama of it - begin to let it rule. I'm not into letting even the joy "rule" - it's not natural either. For me, it's just in being fully alive and aware as one's life and responses happen. Getting too bogged down in any of them prevents the healthy flow of all of them.
But if I have my 'druthers' - I tend to the joy more than the gloom. It just seems so - cosmetically practical! :-) - So to seek out gloom isn't really my thing. I just don't resist it when it happens and am empathetic with it when experienced by others. There are some beautiful expressions of it, especially musically and poetically. They keep one grounded so that one doesn't drift off over the rainbow or somewhere. I like it here on Terra Firma too much for that, with its rainbows AND its tornados. And great writers and other kinds of artists have always latched onto the potential emotional power of the dark and gloomy, perhaps more than the joyous and sunny. I like it all and don't latch on too much to any one element. If I seek anything out, it's not the gloom, though - :[)
Hugs, dear friend.
That sounds so rational. I will delve, and although I am on obsessional person in many things, I get a bit tired when people "bang the drum" about any emotion.
Your word "druthers". Is it an Americanism, or does it come from Li'l Abner? I seem to remember Pappy Yokum saying. "If I had my druthers".
I have always liked the expression, and few people I know can understand it. I loved that comic strip. The stage musical and the movie just couldn't really emulate that wonderful little "village".
And it was so politically incorrect, wasn't it. I seem to remember a group of Easter Europeans... that would never do nowadays in the UK. One has to be so careful of what one says.
That's why I love Hilda P-F; she doesn't care who she offends (There's a little bit of her in me; or me in her there).
You have the ability to bring the harsh truth to light in the form of an aching melody that will forever be sung amongst hearts.
Lovely words, Qudsia. I appreciate that. I am honoured.
This feels like a modern day anthem for today's doomed youth.
I have been in despair many times in my life ... and it has been hardly bearable. How much more unbearable it must be for someone who gets to the pitch of taking their own life, TL.
Saddlerider ... thank you for your searingly honest comment. I am in awe of anyone that can pull back from the brink of total loss as you did. A hero indeed.
Agree about the modern youth, Angie. I wonder if Camden is large enough to house the whole nation of Goths who want to live there are sing this song.
Mind you, if I had been a joiner, I think I would have joined the Goths at that age... but only in the winter and the colder months, I spent too much time as the Bacchus in the Summer to worry about such things.
I suppose there was after dark, but whoever saw a Goth with a great suntan?
Now that is good. I'm not saying nuthin about my personal stuff :) But that is a good poem right there. I don't like black and dark things, being so bright white and green myself these days, but I did like this poem of yours.
Fast becoming one of my favourite poets in the whole wide world, you are. I've read the work of three others now, so that's quite an extensive list ;)
Lx.
Linda, I think I like the black and the dark and all the way through the colours to virginal white (Turn of phrase) but the gloomy stuff is easier to write your pomes an syuff raver dan da 'appy stuff, Innit.
Thanks for the visit, and keep me top of your poets' list, and I'll try to make the placement worthwhile.
Ian
x
You are so right about political correctness and its absence in earlier writings. Li'l Abner - along with most comics and many other forms of entertainment - was far from politically correct. The very premise of it wasn't! It poked fun at many 'sacred' subjects!
I've simply heard "druthers" during my life and hadn't given its origins much thought. I'm not given to adopt such dialects in my normal communications except for fun. I do like (or 'cotton to') the term 'fixin' to', meaning getting ready to do something & I think "y'all" should be in accepted usage. haha
"Druthers", though, is rather typical of the kind of idioms one hears in southern and/or southwestern US & possibly in other areas such as Appalachia. I find it interesting that many of such dialects came over from old countries, especially Olde England, - with the early settlers - and then were twisted & adapted to fit new life challenges. At first, among common folks, there was little written communication, even a lot of illiteracy, so that pronunciations tended to mimic the inflections of the vocal exposures previously heard and then passed along in similar ways. I would suspect it's been that way in early histories of any grown civilization, in fact.
In any case, I was prompted to look into it and thought you might enjoy what I found. It's rather colorful:
'IF I HAD MY DRUTHERS'
Meaning: If I had my preference.
Origin:
This is an American phrase and not used widely elsewhere. People elsewhere in the world might want to know what druthers are, as the phrase conveys otherwise. Druthers is a shortening of 'would rathers'. The phrase originated in the late 19th century and is first cited in the January 1870 edition of Overland monthly and Out West magazine, in a story called Centrepole Bill, by George F. Emery:
"If I was a youngster, I 'drather set up in any perfession but a circus-driver, but a man can't always have his 'drathers."
Druthers, as opposed to its earlier variant drathers, is traced back to 1876 in Dialect Notes:
"Bein's I caint have my druthers an' set still, I cal'late I'd better pearten up an' go 'long."
Vastly disappointed of Norbury-sur-Mer, says he would have loved it to originated with Al Cap.
Now where in my fevered mind had that name been hiding for so long?
Talking of Language, I learned on Saturday taht the word Ye (as in Ye Olde Shoppe) which is an affectation in this country to make one think that the Shop has been here for centuries - Ye Olde Cake Shoppe, is not pronounced "Yee", but it is pronounced "The" or "Thee" as there were no diphthongs in Old English, but there was a letter which looked like a "Y" and was pronounced "th".
NOW ISN'T THAT INTERESTING????????
So one could have written, "Over yere, over yere" as in America's best-known World War One song, 'Over There'. ('Over Yere') Written by George M. Cohan.
We learn something every day... well I do.
A powerfully written verse highlighting the pain that surrounds suicide, a great if tragic write!
Thank you, nighthag. I somehow knew you would appreciate it. Thanks for your visit.
Its a terrible thing to ever want to give up your own life, to not care so much that we give up everything. Really good poem here.
Thank you for your comment. It is a poem wrapped up in an incident wrapped up in another poem. Thank you for coming, Nikki, Your visits are must appreciated
Hi Ian, Checking in to let you know I am still alive. I am still feeling terrible but starting to get better. Love ya
Sometimes a cold can be fun. I used to like having a cold. It reminded me of being coddled and taken care of by my mother and early nights and all that stiff. The last two colds I had; over a two year period, seemed to forget their mission in life.
I hope yours behaves or just buggers off and leaves you to take care of your family and wait on them hand and foot... that's what mothers are for!
Everyone else has been sick before I got sick. I took care of them and now they ignore me or come up with things for me to do. I just want to be left alone and fed once in a while. Maybe get some medicine brought to me with a cup of hot tea with honey and lemon.
Get well soon, Becky. Drink lots and plot their downfall.
I really enjoy your poetry and hubs. I do, I do, I do!
Plotting this bunches downfall would be easy. If I quit feeding the goons, they would all starve to death. I wanted chicken soup, they brought me a McDonalds cheeseburger. How ya gonna get well on that. Oh well, just my sarcasm being released by not feeling good. I will be more cheerful when I can breathe without coughing.
I went to the Dr. yesterday. I have a sinus infection and bronchitis. I am now on anti-biotics. I will start feeling better in a day or two more. Takes about three days for the anti-biotics to work.
TL, concise, powerful and to the point.
The point as I saw it anyway.. A man, having reached by whatever reasoning, perhaps clear, perhaps not so, the conclusion that the end is preferable to the journey, has the courage to take the step to which he has become resolved.
Not just one, but fifteen individual steps in fact. By himself, in both senses. No pause to reconsider. No cry for attention. No note of blame. If that's not courageous, I don't know what is.
Certainly wouldn't want to upset any of your commenters, but I realise my interpretation puts me at odds with Nikkij504gurl's view; "It's a terrible thing to ever want to give up your own life, to not care so much that we give up everything".
As you know from my recent piece, I think there's room for the opposite view. If I were to paraphrase, I'd say that, in many circumstances; "It's (or can seem to be)a courageous thing to be prepared to give up your own life, to care so much that we give up everything".
It's all about perspective,and situation, I guess.
Cheers
IntimatEvolution, and I enjoy your visits, I do. I do. I do.
Thank you for visiting and I hope I never disappoint you.
I never really saw McDonalds Cheeseburger as the classic cure for everything, before.
It has thrown down so many well lived icons.
When there isn't a call for chicken soup; to make a very ill person better; to mend a broken leg; to heal a broken heart, where is our shared culture going to?
It would be like watching a black and white cowboy movie, and the dear old white haired doctor coming out of the bedroom where sweet Suzie-Lou is having her child, and not saying, "Bring me blankets and plenty of boiling water".
MsDonalds cheeseburger! I despair for Western Civilisation as we know it.
Thank you WOL. I cannot say more as you have cut to the centre of the piece, and realise the enormity of the act. There are few actions that have the potential magnificence of this; or perhaps the sordid self indulgence.
I realise there is a polarity of acceptance of the hub, but that, surely depends on whether it is read objectively or subjectively.
Regardless, I would hereby like to ask your permission to place a link to your particularly worthwhile hub: "Are You OK?" The Question That Could Save a Life. on my hub, so that any new visitors, or re-readers may be inspired by it.
TL, I'd be very pleased were you to link this piece to mine, thankyou. There's a powerful touch of the finality of the act, as well as the immediacy of the concern, too late, of others, in your poem; perhaps the link will provide readers with enough actionable information to help forestall, or even prevent such an event from touching them in reality. It's not too much to ask, is it?
Thank you for the permission, WOL. Let me know if this is as you envisaged it when I first asked your permission.
I'll go for Best of Three, Linda. That's almost like winning Best of Class at Crufts, Innit?
Ian, I did not want to comment. I saw your piece when you published it, and I was "touched" by suicide. The song is very disturbing to me.
I have one instrumental song that helps me cry. Yes, I listen to it to cry to make things easier.
I did not read the comments except for those between you and WOL. There was too much suicide for me in the air, not only you two guys.
I have to side with WOL - it takes courage. Maybe I did not have enough of it. I think the only phrase that served as a real stopper for me was "Your son will never get over it".
Since then no matter how I feel I remember that any mother is better than no mother.
It is not easy to help who are so down for at least one reason - those who do not feel it - DO NOT understand.
I wondered often why nobody helped me with my depression, not my parents, not my ex - they could not. They did not have a clue.
It all comes so late:
Good judgment comes from bad experience that comes from bad judgment.
TL, that link looks fine to me, let's hope the two combine for someone's benefit.
I'm going to comment on kallini's observation above, (if I may intrude into your comments section..)then I'm going outside in the bright Aussie sunshine to lift the gloom, and remind myself that it's only us humans whose own minds and emotions create the very problems that our own minds and emotions cannot fix. All part of the human condition. But debilitating nonetheless.
Here's to blue skies.
kallini, I'm as uncomfortably close to this whole subject as you, (but I won't be giving any more away..).
I also read TL's poem when it was first published, but didn't comment, because of that rawness, and sense of 'dislike', for want of a better word, of comments and opinions (not just here at HP, but in society in general) that are not intended I'm sure to be glib, but absent real experience, can't help seeming that way to the 'unfortunately afflicted'.
As I said in my hub to which TL has linked, I hesitated to write it because of the concern that it too would seem glib. But (in the same way you say above that "any mother is better than no mother")I concluded that, if the article simply lets people know that, while 'talking won't solve everything, and may solve nothing', a genuine sign of concern is nevertheless a welcome thing. Even though, many of us won't / can't open up, often because of our sense of self-loathing. "It's all in your mind", sounds like such an easy DIY thing to fix - and might be, if your mind was sound.
Anyway, enough.
Except; on courage. I didn't say it, but perhaps should have, that I believe there is exceptional courage in wanting to go, believing it to be the right thing, and yet remaining, and enduring, for the benefit of loved ones. "Your son will never get over it" sums that up.
Keep smiling.
Thank you, WOL. I actually want to write an article on the topic, but only when the time is right. I have the title "Will you come to my funeral?" I guess the number of guests would be ZERO, Ian, in any case politely declined the invitation saying "funerals are no fun".
I only shared the true thing that stopped me. It is an anchor. Experience and knowledge as well. And shame. Shame that when I was first in the position who should have helped - I was insensitive. I did not understand. Nothing happened - we did the right thing, we took my father to the hospital and that was it. But later, I was horrified ... when it happened to me. That is why I said, there is no guarantee that those with all the answers will not be faced some day with the questions.
I think sharing is important. I openly admit what I have and what I did - others who keep silent might benefit from it. Sharing takes courage, too.
TL, given the 'life and death and struggle' triangle represented in your poem, and our ongoing discussion, it occurred to me that you might enjoy the story of how one member of my family, my father, faced in his early 60's with a life supposedly from then on dependent on the taking of daily doses of prescribed medications, elected instead to stop taking them, hit the road, and take his chances with destiny.
It inspired me then, and still does. So much so I wrote a hub about it, which I won't crassly link to here. But,if you're interested, look for "What I Learned About Trees And Life From My Father" in my profile.
Cheers
Thank you, Guys, for high-jacking my comments section. It is all relevant and I enjoy getting to know people better through this. i would prefer it to be in a coffee lounge at one o'clock in the morning, with Dakota Staton singing 'Trust in me' on a record player, or even on a CD player, but this will do for now.
Answer my question WOL: Where in Australia?
TL, deep philosophical chats in a coffee lounge in the early am, between a Paki Pom, a Russki Canuck, and a Kiwi Aussie... sounds great to me. (I'd like to hear John Hiatt singing "Have a Little Faith in Me" on that CD player..)
The answer to your question? queensland. If you want to know why it's in lower case, the answer to that is in the comments section of the hub about my Dad that I mentioned earlier..
You know, after all this time, I realized today that I've not been following you. That has been remedied.
This was beautiful, painful, and poignant, and I came over from WO's hub.
Stunning, really.
The internet makes strange bedfellows of us all, MOT. (Figuratively speaking, of course)
I just started following you Motown and as I was writing a "why i do" it saved and published just as I was about to correct a spelling error.
Eeek!
Thanks for the comment. We have chatted on Mark Ewbie's hubs lots, Innit.
Well you know how I feel about this topic as you read my rant on suicide ages ago. Thanks for writing about it too. When I was 16 a fellow waitress smiled one of her spontaneous Colgate smiles at this awkward fellow who frequented the ice cream parlor/restaurant where we worked. He came up to her later and said he had been contemplating suicide that day. He was gay and a Christian and he said the two didn't work very well together. Her smile made him take pause. A pause, I guess, was all he needed to rethink that solution.
What an amazingly beautiful comment, Randy. Your comments are the first things I have read today, and they have made me feel that the world is a better place because of you.
I am such a bastard. I have neglected you and your great works for far too long.
I hope you read WOL's amazing hub.
Ian
There's not much to be said on the nature of suicide that hasn't been touched on by the throng of commenters here. However, the structure of this piece caught my eye. In the first stanza, each line gets longer than the last as the tension builds. Good technique, whether you meant to do it or not.
Thank you Doug, for your appraisal. I had to check it myself, and yes, I seem to remember attempting to build the feeling of the "inescapability" of the act, and then the diminution at the end.
I think it works... I thought it worked... I now know it works.
The again, Doug; Maybe not! I don't think I am as clever as that.
Ha ha!
twilight ..this post had really made a sense and awaken with fear to woke and see that what you are thinking. The negative thought as i have mentioned in my post of mental pain, is the only reason to make a suicide. and regular updation of mind alone with such negative thoughts make it firm to make an attempt..only one is sufficient to end with.
so sad
Moneycop, than you for your visit. I think we all need to put our foot into the water of pain and despair, but only the very lonely and the deluded will swim in that water if there is a person on the bank to lend a hand. It's just being able to see that one.
Terribly sad but beautifully composed.
Thank you Vinaya, I appreciate your visit. Please return whenever you like. You are always welcome.
Nicely done Ian.. As you have highlighted that so few words on such a contentious subject can indeed help. Thanks for those words.. take care.
Where have you been. You were my first follower, and then you disappeared.
Thank you for your comment.
Where have you been. You were my first follower, and then you disappeared.
Thank you for your comment.
No I didn't disappear or stop following favorite friends. I just got sick of constantly getting banned here, for speaking out while trying to help others retrieve their stolen works from organized article scrappers, illegal (as in stolen content) e-book sellers and more local, apathetic parties who shall remain at all cost... Silent.
And... "You are most welcome Sir."
This is a funny place. In another era, via another medium, the voice perhaps, one would have said, "What's a nice thing like you, doing in a place like this?"
Becky Katz Level 8 Commenter 8 months ago
So very sad.