Gold Label
Gold Label
by a. jezzy
Johnnie came to me from his home beneath the sink. I have nothing to give him but hotel shampoo, he tells me not to worry, takes his products and goes home to dish detergent.
Months went by and I waited for his preaching’s to come true, my hair is now greasy, my bagel is stale, my brother is in denial, my dad is at Virginia Tech in the planning stages.
And my mom lies.
Johnnie finally came back wide eyed and bushy haired. He had seen and applauded my neck snapping and my arms bleeding. He took my good wrist and sliced me open. But I wouldn’t bleed for him. Johnnie has always been a friend and gave me a band-aid.
Now I hallucinate
I scream
I cry
Now I have hate
I have anger
I have my own lies.
Yesterday I peeled off my skin except that around my band-aid. I fed it to the fat yellow cat outside my steps. As he ripped off chunks the size of my face (ha) I smiled because maybe now I could be someone else.
Johnnie likes to sneak into my dreams, poison my thoughts. He’s killed me three times today,
one drowning
one bullet to the chest
one suicide.
He hands me a joint after each and tells me to enjoy myself because he always comes back.
I liked this more than I like most poems on this topic, but it was still real depressing. Your take on psychotic depression seems creatively genuine. Some grammatical issues but I felt it.
i like too. i especially like the bit with the skin around the bandaid and than the ha in paranthesis in the middle of it all. that was refreshing. i understand this, i think, the best i can anyways, not being you in particular. i think lotsa folk idealise death as starting over, not as an ending, but it’s never gonna be enough proof to convince me that reincarnation works more than just figuratively. that kind of stuff is too overwhelming to ever correlate with the human condition- no focus allowed. anytime i try to figure out anything i just see god in cloud form screaming all playful “nope guess again!”
I don’t even know what to say about this. Like Matt and Cerebella, I really liked it.