Suicide Attempt of a Dear Friend

You called me tonight,
To tell me you were tired of life,
Tired of failing, tired of
flaws that seemed to encompass
your life in its entirety,
Called to tell me that you were
tired,
Well, fuck, baby, we're all tired,
We all want to take that leap
of grand gesture into the arms
of some unknown angel called
Death and have him embrace us
just as we are,
Flawed failures of a God
that loved us anyhow,
You called to tell me your
mother's phone number,
Your words so slurred and garbled
that I couldn't make it out,
& I tried, because I knew what you were really
saying to me between words and epitaphs in
your mind,
You were saying goodbye,
But so drunk and hopeless you couldn't
speak,
All I understood was mumbled
something about your mother's phone
number and sleep, sweet sleep,
the sleep we all dream of late in the night
when no one should concievably be awake,
If, for nothing else, this very reason,
We run out of songs to sing,
alcohol to drink, cigarettes to smoke
and so - we think to ourselves
"Gee, I could always kill myself."
So 1am the ambulance was called,
your name, number, address, all property
of their hands,
The magical angels in white,
Who have, hopefully, come to drag you
away, kicking and screaming to
the hospital, where they will
pump into you a new kind of plastic hope,
and no, I couldn't "not call anybody, please..."
because then your death would be on me,
don't you see?

I could never just let you go,
Not like that,
Not in pain,
We all deserve to die,
But happily, surrounded
by loved ones and friends,
old and wrinkly paper grandpa's
and grandma's - not forty-something
alcoholics who have fallen apart for years...
Not alone, not with your cats, not with your fish,
your online friends, and nothing more - The Doors
playing in the background in hopes you would fade off
into Shangri-La

Couldn't let you go - not like that...