Suicide Headache

By Richard King Perkins II

 Pain from another life is slowly tumbling me forward through time
like a lava lamp filled with moonshine agony.
If you will simply split open my face and see what remains,
you’ll find only the beast that hides in the cave of my shattered sense.

The cessation of pain is the greatest pleasure and I will gladly
cut off my nose to liberate my face.
Like a hyena chattering with giggles and deadly intent
I will do anything to tame the creature that mocks my life and sanity.

Girded by a heaping scoop of crazed inspiration, I find myself
stripped bare, tying a rope around the balcony railing, making a noose.
I fasten the rope around the base of my pony-tail
then drop myself indelicately over the balcony’s edge.

When I awaken, I’m amazed that my scalp has stayed attached to my head.
But that isn’t the real relief. I feel my pain unclustering,
leaking out the orbit of my left eye
even as the acute burning on my head’s surface increases.

This is no victory. All I can fight for is stalemate. The beast will return.
The best I can do is hang here in the air of neutrality,
hovering in naked suspension, preparing for the next attack
in the unrelenting war of the skull, this crucifixion from the inside out.