Imported Poems

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SUICIDE

A Gothic Horror Story

by Robert Davidson

I have killed myself
and today I attend my own funeral -
But last night I went down to the morgue
and there identified your body

Electric light gives a certain grace to the dead!
those awful slabs - unknown corpses laid out side by side
rigid forms cold on marble slabs

Water distends a corpse unpleasantly
parchment skin bloats a drowned girl
Your smile frozen, mocking - your stiff set lips -
and then comes a moment in which
I have gone through more than I lived in years

Speechless with emotion, I cried
life is very cruel and love the cruelest cut of all
If I could not have you, why then -
I gripped your dress and your flesh with it
and made you face the darkening river.
You didn't think I'd do it!

What should I do with my love for you?
hate it, fear it, because it is too much for me?
Such cruel stabs of pain love gives -
I stood on the very knife-edge of life.

In all things human there is a shedding of tears
as we struggle with each other for love
And now in a dream scream
I burst my skin open, letting the blood run
I open my throat with a knife.

As a ghost I stand by
as they lower my coffin into the ground -
In all the searchings of my heart
I have never felt more wounded, more broken, more alone
Your last words to me as keen as blade-thrusts -
Now knowing my soul would never rest
I knew my defeat was complete.

Copyright 2006

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