Last time I committed suicide

[Doreen Peri]

Last time I committed suicide I was
on a ferris wheel ride going around and around
the downtown center, bent on never ever doing
it again whatever it was, oblivious to the wheres
and whens and what ifs. Last time I committed
suicide, I died as a matter of pride, opened wide
my legs to be fucked by the life i never had.
Bad bad girl. Slut to the curl of time which bent
all over the place, a trace of me nonexistent,
insistent upon the repeat, the sweet planned
resurrection, the damn crowned imperfect branch
of a circumstantial halo donned, and me, without
a stitch of clothes on, falling straight down off
the cross like tossed garbage, hands and feet
bled to be trampled on.

[saw]

love the raw language, it adds a sense of seriousness....and I won't try to guess on this one....it could describe many scenarios, but it seems to hint at repeating the sordid past...it speaks to being down, in the only language possible, that of the street

[Doreen Peri]

Thanks, Steve.. I wrote it because someone said he used to deal with patients who said, "the last time I committed suicide" and I thought that was a terrific phrase ... he said it in response to my poem "The Morning I Didn't Wake Up."

I stupidly asked him if I could write the title. He said no, that he wanted to write that title first since he's been thinking about writing it for many years. I didn't have years to wait for him to allow me to steal that line, so I stole it anyway and wrote this. It just poured out of me. It doesn't MEAN anything. It's poetry. It's not supposed to mean anything other than whatever the reader wants it to mean.

"Good writers borrow. Great writers steal." — TS Eliot

Not that this is great writing or anything, but I'll never ask permission again. I steal words out of people's mouths to use as metaphors or prompts all the time! Why I asked permission, I have no idea.

[saw]

Agree !...on all counts.....poetry no different than any other art......steal, borrow, twist, morph, transform, retrofit