1.
If you own a switchblade,
that iconic weapon of despair,
are you honor bound
to use it 
when you suicide?

2.
Would pills
or other medications
be more sensible
or potentially easier
on the survivors?

3.
How much are you liable
for what arguments for and against
self-harm you inflicted upon
a friend before you acted?

4.
Does any of this feel like more
than a social media art project?
Does anything posted online
move you anymore?

5.
Don’t you wish right now
you’d never breathed at all?

I grew up in Springsteen territory
dreamed early that I was born to do something
somewhere else
but when it came time to leave
the highways were pretty empty
they weren’t
jammed with heroes
either broken or whole
because no one ever left my hometown so
I went on alone to the next town
just like it
and stayed there pretending
I was one of those aforementioned heroes
when in fact
I was 
promise
unfulfilled and 
in my boots and jacket I knew deep down
I had just posed and then posed and then
posed some more and now
I’m stuck in the pose
the bones ripped out of my back
my tender exterior hardened to a shell
I can’t move 
but I look
like I used to
look good
standing still