Ride The White Pony

Actually, while I'd love to take credit, this poem is really the work of one Dorothy Parker. Dorothy was a terribly unhappy and mentally ill woman, who irrationally blamed herself for the deaths of members of her immediate family. She drank heavily, smoked heavily, and was unable to manage her finances. Although she was a prolific writer who even won an Academy Award for her efforts, she professed that she hated nothing in the world more than writing. She believed she was deserving of punishment, and punished herself most often through the act of writing. While she rubbed elbows with the big-wigs of the time (F. Scott Fitzgerald and others) and even married twice, she was continually miserable and alone. She believed that everyone around her was doomed to die - as they inevitably did - and even though she attempted to take her own life on three separate occasions, she lived into her 70's, where was too afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis to write. Hers was a sad, sad story.

Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
And drugs cause cramp
Guns aren't lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful
You might as well live.

I have more in common with Ms. Parker than I would ever want (without the talent for writing, mind you). I share her despair and fear that one day I will share her lonely fate as well.