Men’s suicide rates are four times higher than women’s. To put it another way: Males make up 50% of the population but nearly 80% of suicides.

I see men plaintively calling out for nada because they feel nada.

It seems like the pool of depression is growing deeper and deeper.  I wrote this poem  as a way to explore in my own poetic shark cage. I seek no advice.  If I offend thee, just let me be, none was intended. The persona in this poem is only partly me and mostly the ghostly afterimage of the zeitgeist.  I am very not liking what I am seeing now in men’s lives.  I suspect it is similar in women, but like most men, I don’t know jack about women. I hope no men or women were harmed in the making of this post.

Trigger Warning: A Man’s Duty, It Might Seem

Seeing dead stuff in the road, constantly,
dealing,
having to euthanize a ewe who just would not die,
dealing
taking care of the farm by myself, nearly alone for almost three weeks,
dealing,
start to finish with 16-year old, Ollie,
the cat only I loved and me not very well…
on his last day
And the veterinarian administering,
another man, saying without solace,
“You did the right thing”

I get it.
It’s this man’s job and my job
and I just have to tough it out.
And then …

my mind wanders out
into a holy hell of padded nada.
I don’t feel, can’t feel.
It’s too dangerous to feel this vulnerable
unless it is caged in a poem
that protects us all.

I think of no hugs or kindness
from anyone.
No baseline intimacy.
I think I am hated and I don’t know why.
I don’t even know how to be with people anymore.
I am increasingly desperate
for something more than nothing.

Seems like that has been this man’s path,
not the desire path, but the driven path,
like grass clippings being fanned off the walkway with a leaf blower.
I want the stuff that draws me to the glory of emerging fate.
I want to be able to clearly imagine that.

I gotta do something about this mind,
this imagination,
this failing focus,
this blown attention.
Why? Because the body fucking fails, man.
It is faithless on the regular
and as it does its only fallback is the mind.

Should it falter,
then ditch me in the dirt,
out of sight
so as not to offend.

 

As you can imagine this has been an act of self-therapy. I invite you in with that in mind.  I also asked GoogleNotebook to make a deep dive, too:

 

 

The AI was oddly helpful.  To be heard, even by an algorithm, is helpful. I know that Google now owns an intimate part of me, but I don’t care.  Let that be…except the toxic manhood shit…not buying that.

Here are some additional observations that the GoogleNotebook made: