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Frank Horne
My little stone
Sinks quickly
Into the bosom of this deep, dark pool
Of oblivion ...
I have troubled its breast but little
Yet those far shores
That knew me not
Will feel the fleeting, furtive kiss
Of my tiny concentric ripples....
high and higher like a messenger
hanging herself with her own hand
an hour or two of simplicity
where I was open and sufficient
do not tell tales
concerning pain
one of my friends walked up to me today,
and he said "you gotta love depression"
then he pulled back his sleeves to show me his wrists.
i think im going to cry
if i dont save this life.
i didnt even know i had one to save
the last time a classmate did it,
so now that i know
im going to try my hardest.
lacey, dont kill yourself.
its not worth it.
youll be okay,
i promise.
im here for you.
"I tried, I really did
it was never enough
but now i don't wish to try anymore
i just wish it would stop"
the mother read out surrounded
by her daughters blood.
And for what felt like the millionth time
I told them to stay, to wait,
stick around, smell those sweet roses
and that things would get better, eventually;
please stop dancing with the razor's blade
and come down off that stirr'd chair.
But they ever-so loved the chair,
as they stood there all the time
lingering, twirling that ebon blade;
and I could only urge them to wait
in hopes that someone, eventually
would help them with those thorn'd roses.
Though they did remind me so of roses,
sprawled around a gardener's chair
that he'd get around to dealing with eventually,
but letting them withstand the test of time
I saw him
Blade to skin
Cutting hard and deep
He told me to go
To leave him alone
So I did
Not long after that he had attempted to kill himself
Because he was sad
So was I
I did the same
A nuse around my neck
But I was found
By my mother
Just as he was
You lie there.
Too still beneath the waters,
More than a reflection,
Less than a tree:
Your limbs gleam upward,
Your dank leaves are like the hair of a drowned woman.
No longer do you know the touch of spring,
Nor will the birds build their round nurseries
Between your white fingers.
The wood has forgotten you,
The breezes have forgotten.
But the moon mourns.
Slipping a silver shroud about you
Pitifully,
As you lie, still beautiful.
In your unhallowed grave.
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
For fifty years,
Cruel, insatiable Old World,
You have punched me over the heart
Till you made me cough blood.
The few paltry things I gathered
You snatched out of my hands.
You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips.
You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul.
You look at me now and think,
"He is still strong,
There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there.
At the end of that time he will be old and broken,
Not able to strike back,
But cringing and crying for leave
To live a little longer."
Those twenty, pitiful, extra years
The hill was low, but stretched away
A straggling mile or so to where
The sea was stamping, tossing spray
Beyond its bulwarks black and bare :
A sullen sea of gray.
Ah me, it was so desolate,
And sadder for the sea-bird's cry
Thrillingly thin. There seemed a weight
Brooding, as if the leaden sky
Hung heavier for hate.
The grasses jerked as they were stung
By vicious winds. A daisy's head
Crouched in a tuft till it was flung
From its uneasy, troubled bed
And tost the waves among.
A bent, old man was climbing slow
To you, so far away
So cold and aloof,
To you, who knew me so well,
This is my last Grand Gesture
This is my last Great Effect
And as I go winging
Through the black doors of eternity
Is that thin sound I hear
Your applause?...
You have made my voice
A rippling laugh
But my heart
A crying thing ...
’Tis better thus:
A fleeting kiss
And then,
The dark....