Jack Bennett
The bells ring out for me
I can hear her voice screaming
She’s begging I come back down
That I come back down from this edge
But I can’t
The bells won’t stop ringing
They block her voice out
It’s all I can hear
The bells
Until they smash with me
Against the cold hard ground
I am an awkward chord progression
Hanging in the air
That everyone wishes would end
It’s not a problem
I tell myself
With a diagnosis at hand
The solo comes
I’m in the spotlight
I try to find my note
My special note
Up and down the guitar fretboard
I can’t find it anywhere
So I let myself swing back and forth
With the noose around my neck
Legs swaying in colourful mist
In front of the audience
Clapping without caring
I grab a chair from the kitchen
Moving it to the centre of the room
Where a noose hangs from the ceiling
I learnt the hangman’s knot
From the scouts
One of the only things I could do right
I stood up on the chair
And looked around my living room
So dark, so empty
There’s no substance
Empty pots, dirty plates
There’s no living here
The window shows me
The bleak landcsape of the moors
Lifeless, dead trees
Grey skies
Carcasses of sheep
I look through the noose
A land of sharp, green grass
Vibrant, powerful colours
Flowers of the rainbow
Pure white skies
Bustling wildlife, birds of paradise
Singing sweet songs of euphoria
I kick the chair
My neck doesn’t break
So I guess I’ll just have to wait
The two worlds merge together
Like broken clips of film
Till I’ve lost all distinction between the two
Out of focus, blurry
The pixels dislodge and fly off
In all directions
Losing colour as they fizzle out
Fading into a harmonious white
My body breaks up
Melting into the white fabric
I see bits of memory float away
Dreams, reality, nothing..
A prison holds me
Not a small cell
With bars, locks or keys
But a body
Made of weak flesh
That locks me in
I’ve tried to escape
Numerous times
Through pills, drinks
Women and music
Books
But it does nothing
So in a last attempt
I raise a hammer to my forehead
Repeatadly cracking open my skull
I’m so lonely
It bites at me like a dog, gnawing at my
Bones
Threatening to take me
Piece by piece
My soul needs to touch hers
I need to be grounded
I want to float
But she is my paper weight
The one that shows me reason
When what I want is madness
My obsessions get worse
But my affections grow stronger
I gently think
Then I’m hit by a train
God is the driver
She jumps in front of me
To save me
We’re both goners
“I’m so fucked”
He paces up and down
The edge cliff
His face
So disfigured
He hears me puke in the bushes
And jumps
I hear him hating the Gods
For shaping him so blindly
I cry
From my heart or from my
Gag reflex
I know not
He rushes over the wall
Into the woodlands
Fully dressed in his rehab atire
Sunglasses masking his face
His chains still attached
His mind is only set on the
Pain
The attachment
The addiction
The deep, black, gaping hole that is
ever growing
Punching out all thoughts of optimism
His daughter, forgotten
His wife’s words stinging his mind
His friends, against him
His mum, ashamed
The thorns provoking his clammy white skin
Are no where near as painful as this
Tearing off chunks
Of what is left
Of his skinny frame
He is there
At the end
A garden shack
A heroin kit with his name on it
Followed by a shotgun, straight from above
His favourite cigerettes lie on the table
It’s as if an angel has bestowed gifts
In order to ease his passing
He smoked his last drag
in order to calm his mind
Cooked his heroin
Injected
Floated… Floating…
To the caves…
Full of sounds and smells…
So many kinds of smells…
Far away from people….
His subconscious slowly, gently lifted the shotgun
To the back of his mouth
Thoughts drifting like clouds
Time slowing down
Dribbling on the barrel
He pulled the trigger
Floating….
Far away from-uh p-people…
To-uh a cave-er full-oh of so…sou-und…smells…
