men are falling off buildings like the
shingles off my house or the tears off my chin,
screaming swan songs till they hit
the bottom with a broken splatter.
[their melodies still echo, long after
the vocal chords that sung them have
decayed.]

girls are dangling from pearl
necklaces strung on bungee cords, their toes
a foot and a half off the earth which is just
not worthy of their feet. [there's a bleached-tooth
grin caught in the hold of suffocation as
pale faces turn in unison to the call of their
collectively horrid name by the wind's
chapped and peeling lips.]

there's this awful taste in the back
of my throat, probably from the rainbow
of medications i ate like fucking skittles,
and there's this weird haziness in my head,
though i can't tell if its from the car
exhaust i've been inhaling or my own
selfishness finally winning out over what i
value most. [now that i think about it,
it's probably both.]

[every sixteen minutes someone commits suicide.]