July 14: Marianas Trench, Jericho Brown, "Herman Finley"

Okay, I am a little down tonight.  I am going to wallow for a few hours.  Actually, I've been wallowing since about 6 p.m.  That's five hours and counting.  You will have to excuse me this evening, Constant Readers.  I have been drinking a little, and the night is stretching out before me like the Marianas Trench, full of blackness and weird oceanic danger.

Jericho Brown's poem, which I thought was going to be a wallowing poem, sort of turns out in the end to be life-affirming.  Not what I was expecting.  I thought it was going to be a little more Emily Dickinsonian (I know that isn't really a word, but I like it).  Instead, it's more like It's a Wonderful Life, without the angels and ringing bells.

Saint Marty promises that he isn't going to try to jump off any bridges tonight.

Herman Finley

by:  Jericho Brown

I didn't tell you that, in the end, he begged

For the end.  Death like the bed after

The bedtime story.  Death like a widening

Crack of light beneath the door. 

He begged them to let him

Go so he could go.  Said I want

To die.  Then said kill me.  Please. 

You and I endure that first pain.  

We just want to die.  People with that

Other ultimately physical agony say

Kill me and know they won't discuss it

In therapy.  Kill me.  I’m thinking

Of him today because I want to die

And I am ashamed to say it.  My thinking

Is red and sticky.  Rather than kill me,

I'd like you to listen as I live

In a perpetual whine.  Can’t I still be

Somebody’s baby?  Say yes for yourself.

Call me some time.  Every day I wish to die,

Remind me how he insisted.

Kill me.  And I’ll live again.

Even Death is in a good mood!