Keeping it a secret is more dangerous than glorifying it.
A mere embankment of pills
holds back the raging sea,
forever threatening to consume me.
I reach out towards a life raft
but it is an illusion.
Life is a stupor.
🫀
A chilling breeze
nips at my tired feet
but the deafening silence
numbs the pain.
🫀
You did it the Norwegian way:
a walk in the forest that was
anything but innocent,
and with no return planned.
I grieved for a long time,
but I now realize that
I recognize you
in myself.
🫀
Every time I decide to die —
on any given day,
there is always someone
who asks: “What if
everything seems different,
and better tomorrow?
What if you miraculously
get totally healed,
or win the lottery … or even
fall in love? Wouldn’t it then
be a shame if you had not
stuck around to enjoy it?!!”
These are, of course, often
the same persons that prescribe
staying in bed until noon, or
doing something “fun”, as
a cure for chronic depression.
And then there are those who
condemn all who choose not
to suffer here on this prison planet
until the bitter end … no matter what:
“Who are YOU to get an ‘easy way out’
when the rest of us follow the rules
and accept the daily consequences?”
To these moralists, we who suffer
in life have ourselves to thank for
our troubles; and those of us that
choose not to suffer in order to learn
are hopeless sinners that will either
rot in hell, be punished in the afterlife
or … in the least … bring shame
upon our families for years to come.
Sometimes I think that the only
worse Hell than the one I myself create
is perhaps the Collective Hell that
sets the parameters for life (and death)
on this unforgiving planet.
Enough! Stop the world …
- I want off…
🫀
Forbidding visions of moon-parched
skulls with infra-red light glowing
from vulture-ravaged eye-sockets warn
the curious and the soul-dead against
that which does not concern them,
for admittance to the ever sacred
Fields of Transmutation and Catharsis
is by invitation only.
The well-oiled hinges on the gates of
Death never creak over human tragedy,
but rather rejoice at the prospect
of purification and recirculation of
mass and decomposing archetypes into
new forms of energy.
Tending this soil, so richly imbued
with essence of fertility, is an
age-less, cloaked gardener who works
in silence and darkness; and who,
from time to time, shakes his head
in bewilderment over the futility
and masochistic madness of those who
would resist transformation.
🫀
You fooled me…
in so many ways.
I was supposed to go first, damn it!
And that you managed to fool me
when you finally committed suicide…
What can I say?
We have a lot to talk about
when we meet again.
But – I’ll never get rid of the pain… even after
all these years.
No new boyfriends are good enough,
and almost no people are intelligent enough to talk to.
We love each other more than we should.
No one can promise to be here forever,
and no one can protect or fight alongside each other
forever.
We all have our own way of dealing with…
no matter how much we’re together.
You fooled me… but
I forgive you – and
I understand.
🫀
dear God:
i am but a liar,
my Lover.
i promise to stay,
but you know i
will often forsake You.
i swear to friends and family
that i will bid them “farewell”,
but i will steal my way back to you
in silence, My Beloved …
like a thief in the night.
I am the kind of author that half the people love to hate, writing with raw emotion but often without providing the Reader with a romanticized ending, or an exit. These works were part of my book entitled «Jisei» (a form of Japanese ceremonial suicide): a six-months diary of a person with AIDS, which shows the full spectrum of feelings, thoughts and experience — day by day, poem after poem… in several different languages to show the universality of depression. My colleague Edmund White hated it. He worked hard to show a more proud if not defiant image, where I for once in my AIDS activism bared my insecurities, self-doubt, and at moments longing for final release. It is a courageous book, and not easy for many to read because it strikes home. Depression is as common as the cold, and needs to be normalized — not squirreled away for private moments of self-indulgent drama. Perhaps several could find ways out and support if we could all talk a bit more about «the unspeakable».
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