The Suicide Notes

Dami Ajayi

Séance

Voices from Ezra’s vortex
Was control at the séance;
Germanic rasping of crumpled words—
So we called in the first poet

Plath was reserved
Hid her face in shrouds,
Still cared for Ted,
Held steadfast to her Bell Jar

 Wallace was next,
Brackish enamel from tobacco chews
Grinning with hair swept down
Lost the bandanna, he said
Also the blues, we thought

Suicide is escape
But please let me have Prozac,
The key to that secret stairwell
That opens into heaven

The dregs of reality
Are discarded, sublime
The cure is burnt offering
In the air, everywhere

Just close your eyes
Listen to the wind’s vocals
Pull yourself out of Liberty’s embrace,
And jump face down. . .

Portrait of a Poet

Dear Mr Kafka or Hemingway,
Concerned with consigning
Experiences into distilled literature

You halved your life in a bargain
And lived part a pedlar hunting memories
The other half a hermit
Intrigued by the clatter of typewriters.

Four elegant story collections,
An unfinished novel and numerous
Essays doomed to die as manuscripts
Your genius is known only by you
And every of your ex-lovers.

Your observations barely scratched earth's surface
Like a cockerel or a failed artefact archaeologist,
You missed child support and
Skipped graduations; not even a card
Every other Christmas.

No second chances for reviewing inactions
And helming ways;
We go to the evening of your life
There is a gun waiting by the typewriter.

The Life of I

So many burnt offerings on the ashtray,
Captured gestures sublime as whorls of smoke

So many dismissed thoughts of an author,
Misfired missives that blot virgin A4s

Revised versions of The Life of Pi
Are squashed balls, curdles of a waste bin

But this is The Life of I,
An unauthorised unwritten biography

Ink in the shaky hands of a paraplegic
Writing has become a disability

Elegies rewritten in rented apartments
Without a view of the sea or sky

Not even the birds are a witness
To the funeral of my thoughts

I kill them slowly with nicotine;
I grief them softly on arias

When they find me shortly
What would remain is a suicide note.