Spanish Toothpaste

We left him behind

The boy with the dark eyes

He brushed his teeth in Spain

We called it suicide

His name was Larry. Was he happy?

He said "Ignore the connotations,

The rhetoric is deceptive."

And, "Don't search for exposure

You'll be destroyed like photo negatives."

"I am not your reflection in the mirror."

He used chemical imbalances

Would away from reality slip

Life made him scared,

Life was the bad trip.

It was the faces he saw when he didn't know where he was.

We all felt stupid because we thought

He was the naive one

How wrong we were, what a fatal mistake

He knew all along

We thought we knew better when we knew nothing

We surrounded him with lilies and black candles

Had rosaries instead of friendship bands

His jerky spasmodic death throes

Tore the patchwork life quilt into strands

All my life was waiting for this moment

I remember that boy...

He used to talk in rhyme all the time

Beautiful and dark poetry

until we cut his tongue out

And made him swallow his vocal chords

He won't be making that noise anymore

This poem came about after I found out that the word Colgate translates into the command 'go hang yourself' in Spanish. I know that the rhyme scheme... dissolves... in the last stanza, but hey! I don't care, it's just poetry. It gives it an unequal faulted charm... or something.

!!