Obitus of a Suicide

—in the afternoon. I know right? like {hiccup} Oh my God. Haha!!

—Pooky, pooh, ooo what iss ittt? Hand me a tissue. Don't eat that—

—but we saw the Daily Mirror said "150 Strike Over Game of Brag"

He could feel something still. The snow, the damp, was creeping. He imagined his toes, same as his fingers, in slightest motion, walking-feet, white at the tips, maybe blue, or black even, like smokers'. Their consequences, of the Poor in judgement, and their lack, of Circulation. There was a warmth, too. He'd pissed himself, truth, and he knew that that warmth had already passed. It was another kind of heat rising. That which yields not from incontinence, but from ecstasy of the last thrusts of Life, the climax that is coming when suddenly frigid Death wills itself to finally, finally orgasm. He wasn't sure actually, why half-dead, he'd thought of sex. It'd been so long since he'd had his own hand, never mind, a woman. Yet fucked was what he felt. The temperature was numbing his body, not yet his thoughts, which strayed and roared like the stone lions in front of the Central Library, silently. No, sorry, he couldn't tell how long the body had been lying here in a foot of snow behind the park bench, waiting, for cataloguing. His eye lids lifted to the sky, bird's eye view, of the carcass in the landscape, folded and unfolded, like a claim ticket. It lies, lost. That was all he knew, though in his mind he kept searching the surroundings furtively.

He took something. Couldn't remember what it was, though. Of course, he'd got all the paraphernalia beside him now, still and mostly dispensed. The next of kin will inherit it, his legacy, in frozen assets and pins and needles, and empty shots.

(These thy gifts which we are about to receive...)

They will know this one died of overdose, of the excesses to which he was given, from birth and throughout the allotted shopping spree of growing up. And he wanted to be discovered: an Artist, manic depressive, rich and impoverished, fit to hang, a whole body of work, there upon the wall, framed and tacked. That was his profession. His work, he could see it, wallpapering the Capital coffin, a postage stamp for trade at the Metropolitan, the L'Ouvre, and all those places where bodies of ill repute are laid.

Blast it. Who will find this postscript? with his signature.

Bury me, please.

Bury me.

—Ho, ho! Bro, what we got here?

—What? Yesssss! Bum left some stuff. Anything good?

Light, light, a little breath, faint now. Smoke. Come closer, shadows of men.

A-amen, A-amen, A-amen, Amen, Amen

A-amen, A-amen, A-amen, Amen, Amen

Let me tell you something children

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

This little light of mine...

So goes the song, to the cradle of black people, the trodden brown hands in the ground, the specks of white rising up, the straight, the undefined, sung in solidarity. The protest placards and candleholders, that flicker, wavering in the zephyr. Balladry, it is, for the dance of life that grabs— by Jove that's not—

—Hey! Coppers! left, let's beat it.

A crushed remnant cigarette landed, moist, sizzled out, adjacent to his head, in the scamper and nothing to be done. Who will do a dying man a kindness and remove this stinking wet butt— ?

Hullo Darkness my old friend

I've come to talk to you again

Ahh, the face lifts itself in perpetual adoration. All tithings go to the holy church of Man. The entrenched milquetoast wants proper burial, palms pressed to the face, self-effacing. He would gladly forgo the biscuits dipped in tea offered by decorated pansies in their manicured gardens. Open the mound, like for the first snake bite, like it's the first time, Templar in the bush, with Dispensation. Or suck the bone dry, as a delicacy. Marrow after all is oddly enough, he remembered reading, believed to have been the "first" animal food in the human diet, buried like that, so that one must kill, and kill, and kill, cutting through flesh, muscle, tendon, and skeleton. He saw himself, drained, double crossed, deaf to Jesus Christ.

Bury me. Bury me with finality, if only like a turd in our global yard.

Bury me, he wisped through the thin crack in his teeth.

Mother Teresa, have mercy, she reached out from a sleeve, to pull. She had eyes like Saint Elizabeth, fingers like his governess. Her voice a creak in imitation of old floorboards upon a besieged pirate ship. There would be no mercy. The new cold draught stung, with contrast of subtraction. He remembered failing his arithmetic, confused by the minus sign. Fifteen lashes with the ruler, back in the day, though we no longer believe in corporeal punishment, do we?

—no sense in such a blanket goin' to waste now dear won't need it. Good wool, certainly can use it in this treacherous cold, somebody can, what's it to you now?

Thank God? He was not yet naked before the Lord. Shifting the corner of his coat was beyond him, there was not enough left in the tank, to move an elbow. Once he had filled the giant aquarium at Uncle Fredrick's, back and forth filling buckets like the sorcerer's apprentice, having devised a pulley system that required merely the lifting of a finger to adjust the tap and activate the crank. Leveraging imagery of the memory was too much nausea. He felt the first silent heartbeat. His first mature unexcused absence from the roster.

They pointed at him, small fry fingers on long arms. He heard the taunts in the halls. This is not an asylum. The broken leg was oozing blood, and he swore, a shattered femur would surely emerge at any moment. Like an ass he'd fallen over Miss Andrya's ankle, extended oh so delicately, gracefully begging to be looked at in nude silk stockings, envied by the ladies and caressed visually amongst all eligible bachelors, and he was a handsome nose, in a book.

Worm! flat upon his back unable to squirm against the giggles in surround sound.

—who is that?

—shit knows who

—wonder what his name is

—deadbeat, dumbass

—maybe it's Deadass, dumbass

—diddle off

Elementary youth, they ran on home, scattering in different directions, smaller than ever. He remembered the thin royal blue primer and his errors marked in red pencil.

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow...? who sang him that as a babe? he could hear her voice, miles and miles away, her mouth expanding to full eclipse, echoes in a chorus. He remembered his mouth at the breast, and that blissful feeling of fullness, milky white clouds, and the scent of cookies in the cotton fabric.

His hair, once lively and ruddy as cinnamon itself, was white, fleeced, and against the drift it looked the color of yesterday's dog-walk urine. He couldn't see it, but in the fetid odors of the city, he could imagine it, pallid and as a squatter he knew it could just as well be human. The smell was, after all, his own, even Death was rejecting it.

01.17.2024

Banned-book Sequel Challenge @Prose

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Sequel to Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, James Joyce, 1916. Protagonist Stephen Dedalus, as an old man, dying (having committed to suicide), lies behind a park bench, unable to communicate, but aware still of passersby and thoughts that surface. His one maniacal wish is to be buried. He has welcomed death, by his own injection. He rejects the idea of prayer, or God, and barely recalls his mother. No one gives a damn except to strip him naked of all his belongings. In the end, he is left, homeless, alone, ignored, yet leaving a body of work, somewhere, that he reviews in his mind as an obituary. As an Artist, he will be buried and unburied in endless cycle of exhibition. New snow blankets him, like a comforter, once again "faintly falling," as in Dubliners... a tribute to James Joyce's classic chiasmus.