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The following can also be found in the book Jasonettes. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy; or click here for the rules to writing a Jasonette.
In the world
under the world just above
somewhere we like to call home
each of us grapple with our own death wish
Down into the earth we all dig with
tiny plastic children's shovels
Or attempt to plunge straight in, headfirst, much as
the ostrich contemplates life
Here is where
ink turns miraculously into blood
Night lingers throughout the entire day
Killings somehow twist themselves into suicides, and we somehow
tow the line between optimistic cynicism and despondency
How, I don't know
And some tell me that their god helps them
to present a happy
grin to me
over this persistent wish to
die screaming and clawing their throat
Water fills my hole even as I shovel furiously
and I drown even as I am buried
Suffocating in my private
deep underworld which they will never see, never touch
Everyone but you thinks
atheism is trite
Deep rumblings from confused teens
Nihilistic empty threats from hipster artists
Others believe they stand in my kiddie-shoveled underworld
when they read my blood-soaked ink ramblings
I know the truth.
The world just under the world where we live
holds countless crimes and
I know the
nighttime atrocities I have committed
Kitchen knives I have plunged into
hearts, fingers wrapped around windpipes and squeezed so tightly
Each sin perpetrated consciously, maliciously, with no guilt
Sometimes even to you
Just gods have no place in our secret worlds
until I'm ready to
say that it's
time to let you creep
into my hole, to drown together
No one's glimpsed my pitch black underworld except you
Because, I discovered, you'd been there all along
Even now you're there
Denying god, forgiving my sins yourself, awaiting my return