Reflections: An Excerpt

I find this to be exactly right:

"I do not think of suicide as the act, the death, the fall from a height or the trigger pulled. I see it as a long illness, an illness with origins in trauma and isolation, in deprivation of touch, in violence and neglect, in the loss of home and belonging. It is a disease of the body and the brain, if you make that distinction, a disease that kills over time."

        ~ Donald Antrim, "Everywhere and Nowhere, A journey through suicide"; The New Yorker; Feb. 18 & 25, 2019

Reflections: I'm Still Alive

Just a quick note here to remind myself -- and the void into which these few words are hurled --
that I've survived another year, another birthday, and another long period of yearning for an end to it all.

Rodak's Writings: A Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction

As Miss Kitty squatted to pee in the dust by the side of Main Street, her modesty protected by her long black hooped skirts, gimpy Chester struggled hurriedly past her shouting, “Mister Dylan! Mister Dylan! A cowpoke’s been shot over to Fern Hill!”

Hitching up his gun belt with a pout, the Sheriff peered over the double doors of the saloon to see what all the commotion was about.

Miss Kitty having moved on, a stray mongrel hurried over to sniff at the intriguing new muddy spot, still damp despite the heat of the sun at high noon.

The sheriff now shrugged and turned back to the bar, awarding priority to his still-foaming beer.

Resigned to being ignored, Chester stood asymmetrically without, thumbing through the pages of a dog-eared paperback.

On a hilltop half a mile out of town, a nameless cowboy quietly bled out unmourned, never having drawn his trusty Colt.

Reflections: This

When I realize it was love that turned into this, I'm quite certain that "this" is hell.

Rodak's Writings: Another Poem I Don't Want to Post on Facebook

Prevention Lines

If I say

I have lost everything,

I will soon begin receiving

lists of things

I still have.

If I say

these remains

are insufficient,

I will soon be told

to get help.

If I get help,

I will soon be asked

how long I have felt

this way.

Since I lost

almost everything,

I will answer.

Rodak's Writings: a Painful Poem

If, Not When

If only I can

get you wondering

what it would be like,

despite all the speed bumps

and Do Not Enter signs

on this one-way toll road,

I will have won

some kind of dubious

and Pyrrhic victory.

Rodak's Writings: An End-Stage Poem

And Suddenly You’re Old

The records of your fuck-hungry youth

don’t spin anymore.

The eyes of young women you encounter

are the eyes of an alien race:

They make a brief taxonomic evaluation

then quickly move on.

The eyes of old women demand payment

of some long-standing debt,

for which you no longer have the currency

to satisfy.

You have watched your father --

who taught you how to swing a bat,

who taught you the words you now employ

to curse your failing body -- die without warning,

on a day that began as routine.

Then time becomes a crushed and soggy tissue,

disgusting, no longer of use.

And suddenly you’re old.